I have an early 90s Marin Team Issue in nickel plated steel. Before I had it it had been modified for disk brakes and had had a few cable guides fitted to the frame, plus a holder for the rear brake caliper welded to the rear triangle as shown in the attached photo.

I am now considering returning it to caliper brakes and would like to get rid of these added bits. The nickel plating is not in good condition so I want the frame powder coated.

My question is about removing the added bits. I could cut and file the cable guides without any damage to the frame, but am not sure about the rear caliper holder. Can I get an engineer to take it off with heat or will this damage the frame? It's not the end of the world if I can't remove it before powder-coating, but it just wouldn't look as good

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k

The disk brake mount looks to be pretty well designed, a nice item and not the usual hack job. It also looks like it was silver brazed to the stays given the lack of plating damage, lack of any bolts and hope that it wasn't glued(). I would use heat to remove ONLY as a last resort. Heat will have to be higher then the original brazing temp and will be over a larger area then the brazing of the bracket used. So more chance of dire consequence. The simple but slow method of removal is to first cut off as much as you can with a hack saw then grind off pretty much all the rest with finishing with a file and emery cloth. You'll want to etch the rest of the frame before paint any way and I wouldn't trust the powder coater to do a safe sand blasting (unless they've got a good reputation for painting bikes and describe their methods). So I'd deliver the frame ready for the pre paint prep. Andy.

^This

Cut off big chunks,grind close as you dare,finish with a hand file.

Or make a modification to fit a Kickstand On it.

I'd heat it and take it off, you're just as likely to heat/damage it grind/cutting and if it's silver brazed then it won't effect the tubes at all.

If it's brazed or soldered, then you can heat to melt the joint. But a weld melts at the same temperature as the tubing and therefore can't be removed by heat.

For a weld, it's strictly cut, then grind or file. I also suggest that you aren't overly finicky about filing or sanding to the original contour. The tubing is thin walled so there's limited margin for error if you accidentally remove tube wall material. file and/or sand close by eye, then pick a place to quit while you're ahead.