kevmk81

I have a couple questions... first there is a dent above the FD on the seat tube that looks kind of out of place. Does anybody know if there are usually dents in that area? Second, if that dent is in fact a bad dent and not by design, if it's not totally bad, should I take it to the shop and get it fixed? Will it bend even more if I ride the bike like it this way? The dent is maybe 2 cm long, maybe 2 mm deep. By the way, it's the a Trek 1500.

BoBTFish

This is intentional, I believe to do with aluminium frames having wider tubes, so the dent is there to allow the derailleur space to move. I just checked my Trek 1000 to be certain and it is there too.

EDIT
In fact, this just stolen from this site https://www.velonews.com/tech/report/...es/7728.0.html

"As aluminum became the material of choice for many performance road bikes, the tubing diameters (in comparison to steel frames) increased. This has crowded into the space required for the drivetrain. In this case, that ‘dimple' in the tube is necessary to allow the cage of the front derailleur to drop the chain to the inner chainring of the crankset. This is especially necessary for bikes with triple chainrings.
Dean Gore"
Trek Bicycles

kevmk81

Hey, thanks for the info!