Fahrenheit531 

Never underestimate the tendency of this forum to expand from the specific to the hypothetical. I can almost guarantee the discussion would have shifted to various permutations of "Okay, but what if this were the case...?" We tend to get distracted by shiny imaginings pretty easily.

ThermionicScott 

Sometimes the wanderings are interesting, too. Especially in C&V.

I'm reminded of the tube stickers inside Fender amps during the Leo Fender era. Amps sometimes went out the door with stickers designating the wrong amp model (one assumes that they ran out of the correct ones since Leo did not want to waste money getting parts that might go unused), but with the right tube compliment.

Fahrenheit531 

Yeah, Fender was all over the place there for a while. But give me a Tele or give me death!

rgver

I dunno, there's a lot of answers to this thread

jj1091

That was easy. Thanks. Now it's a real bike with a real problem. Hypothetically speaking, I'd leave the decals like they are.

Johno59

Over the summer I encountered this very phenomena. I completely stripped two Raleigh Lenton Sports. 1946 and 1947. Everything was stock and the same except the lugs and the brazing. All the lugs on the 1947 were pitted and the seam wasn't flat. The brazing wasn't even and had leaked out heavily on one side and left unfilled
I kept checking and rechecking the serial numbers, catalog etc.etc as I was convinced it was a bootleg. But everything else (including the flamboyant sparkling green paint still on the steerer) stamped it as genuine
. It must have been apprentice Monday or a hangover day as the poor quality of workmanship was something I have never encountered on a old Raleigh.

merziac

This ought to be fun.

Johno59

The serial numbers were crooked and the numbering tool had not been shown to the seat post flush, so the profile wasn't even. Lenton Sports began in 1941 so maybe the Luftwaffe had paid a visit on the day/nite the bike was made, but it was a ' P' so well after the end of WW2. Old wartime stock perhaps.? But the only example I have encountered of poor casting /brazing.
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that the SA seat post was a bastard to get out despite no rust whatsoever. Upon closer inspection I noticed the brazing material had leaked into the top of the frame seatpost and interfered with the insertion of the SA post into the frame.

cb400bill

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texaspandj

Telecasters are cool. Albert Collins,Danny gatton,James Burton,Waylon Jennings,tab Benoit all used teles and reportedly jimi Hendrix may have recorded with one. Nothing can beat teles for that country twang.
Prince used a Tele copy.

exmechanic89

A total guess of course, but I worked in a shop in '82 that was one of the early Trek dealerships and I remember those early frames were sometimes pretty odd. We'd see really sloppy lugwork on some of them for instance, and compared to the Japanese frames we had at the time, they sometimes looked pretty crude. I could totally see the bottom bracket mix-up happening because of poor oversight. No way to really know of course, as you pointed out. I will say it's an amusing mix-up though.

old's'cool

some people should get a life.
Next, we won't be able to say ****

Murray Missile 

Happened to a friend of mine on his brand new 1978 Ford Fairmont. He'd had it a couple weeks and I stopped by one afternoon while he was washing it. As we walked around it I noticed the trim on one side was about a half inch wide and went the full length of the car along the lower body line. The other side was about 3/4" wide and only went from fenderwell to fenderwell and was a few inches higher, he'd never noticed it even though he had hand washed it several times. He took it back to the dealer the next day and FoMoCo gave him his choice of side molding and repainted both sides of the car so they'd match.

I got into Quality Assurance about a year later and have been doing it ever since, I've seen some pretty crazy stuff over the years.

Camilo

I have no desire to argue or dispute, but am genuinely curious about the specifics. This stuff just interests me.

I bought an 80s bike that had no tubing sticker, but the decals were pretty messed up so it could have been removed and/or lost. All ads or catalogues I found online that seemed to apply to this bike advertised Columbus SL tubing. I had no reason to believe that the original tubing stickers wouldn't have said Columbus SL if they'd been on there originally. I even found photos online of similar, if not identical frames that had SL stickers. But, I could feel and see the distinctive "rifling" for Columbus SLX tubing in all the right places inside the tubes. So when I replaced the stickers as original, I put on SLX stickers.

If someone was comparing my bike to any ads or catalogues relating to that bike, even online photos, he/she might think my SLX stickers were erroneous.

This is why I'm curious, and hoping you'll post the obsessive minutia like the rest of us would 8-)

[edit]: Now that I've read the entire thread, thanks for the information about why you think the tubing is wrong. Me? If the existing sticker was obviously wrong (like in my case), I'd replace it whether the accurate sticker indicated "better" or "lesser" tubing. But especially if it indicated lesser tubing - I'd totally "upgrade" the sticker - it would be more accurate and increase status points!