Not the Turkey kind. The frame building kind.

I just disassembled a 1979 Trek 310 (yes a DB Ishiwata 0625 Hi-Tensile 310) to start my ritual of deep cleaning and polishing and looking into the bottom bracket shell I see some cloth-type material stuffed into the ends of the chain stays. Tapping on the chain stays they sound hollow up to the bridge just before the shell. Then they sound distinctly muffled.

Is this something that is used during the frame construction that is usually removed? Can't think it's a good thing as it could possibly hold moisture.
This is not a rusty frame and the paint is good under the stays but before I put it back together I'm thinking I'd be doing this bike a favor if I dig the old stuff out.

I usually treat the inside of the tubes with a rust inhibitor before I re-build so I know I've never seen this before.

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a long, long time ago this was a fairly common practice to press "stuffing" into the ends of the tubes at the bottom bracket shell

it was done to keep dirt/foreign matter out of the bearings of the bottom bracket

a major downside was that folks tended to employ cotton wool for the purpose which is distinctly hydroscopic and so provided an initiatory point for corrosion

once purpose made plastic bottom bracket sheaths became commonly available the practice became an archaic one


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I’m not surprised by your answer. I might have done the same thing if someone suggested it to me 40 years ago.

The odd thing about it is that the bottom bracket is an original Swiss Edco with cartridge bearings and so well sealed it is still silky smooth and I’m going to re-use it.

I think I better have a look at the bottom of the seat tube too. Inside it has some dusty oxidation but the inside of the BB shell looks like it might have when the frame was sold to the original owner.

juvela

You called it.
Stuffing in the bottom of the seat tube and the down tube as well!

Will carefully extract (in case there are any USA hundreds in there) and flush out the tubes with Boeshield and rags/brushes.

Thanks for the history lesson.
-Dan

More than one frame has been posted here that rusted out from somebody stuffing crap up their frame tubes.

You want to do exactly the opposite - holes at the bottom of a bottom bracket for drainage, just in case.

Sometimes you can find interesting papers inside frames! A good builder will have soaked the stuffing with liberal amounts of oil or grease.

I will add that I make one exception to the above rule. If the seatpost is hollow and you can see down it, I ram a cork up in there. Not the seat tube, the seat post. I can't fathom why more builders didn't do this back in the day. As far as I know, I'm the only one who does it and I can't see a downside.

This thread title keeps making me hungry.

Most all CCM bikes from the 30's through to the late 50's have corks in the seatpost.

There's never leftover stuffing in my world. I even make extra on the stove top and the 4 of us rip and tear Bruno, rip and tear!