Bringing an F. Moser back from the dumpster
 

I always wanted to do something with this frame since I found it in the dumpster at the engineering building. The janitor told me about it, I wasn't in the habit of checking the dumpster. Moral of the story: always be nice to the janitor.

It apparently has been repaired before, The seat cluster has been repainted. Some engineer cut the drive side chainstay and seat stay to remove the drive side dropout. So I was, at a minimum, going to replace the rear triangle, because I wasn't going to be able to match a 30 year old stay. It had a replacement fork, from the other Moser. I'm not sure what that tells me about fixing this frame, but it seems unwise.

It was sitting in the attic and I kept coming up with new ideas for it, but never carried through. I know a couple of people here have had shells replaced by Franklin Frames, and one was told, paraphrasing, "young guys are afraid to replace shells." Well, I'm not young but I always thought it was a bit of a fool's errand. Anyway, so far it hasn't been so bad, but if I had to do it for a living I would starve. I think that it would have gone easier if I had replaced the blade on my sawzall, or gotten a cutoff blade for my angle grinder. Actually using a hacksaw is time consuming, but not difficult. I haven't taken any more pictures after I cut up the shell. I also cut through the shell in as many places as I could to make the pieces I was heating smaller. If they are big, it's a pain to get them to move. I feel like Drew on steroids, maybe more like Sid from Toy Story. I keep telling myself that the frame was already ruined and I'm doing this for science. Plus, who needs the aggravation of an Italian BB nowadays. I swear they used red loctite on the DS cup, but I see no evidence of any.

I have never seen a size marking that tells top tube length. I haven't measured yet, I think it's 55 seat tube 56 top tube, mostly out of wishful thinking because that's my size. You can see the missing dropout in the Sid'ed pic. There was a nasty dent in the DS chainstay, probably not bad enough to do anything about, but it's not hurting my feelings to have that gone.
Turns out that nice looking chainstay bridge bends really easily.

I'll post more pics when I'm done cleaning up the tubes. Even though the rear triangle is going away, I'm going to see if I can fit it in the new shell just for experience. I am wondering if it's not better to get rid of the CS bridge, but the rear triangle is really wimpy without the shell.

One of the reasons I decided to replace the rear triangle is that I want vertical dropouts. It's going on the trainer, and horizontal drops don't work to well on a Kickr. I'll probably convert it to a randonneur, just in case I feel like making it road-worthy








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Wow! Good luck with that - it's still amazing to me that so many on the board have the tools/skills/aptitude/nerve to do this stuff! I'd be proud just to clean it up and hang it on a wall. :)

Now this is gonna be an interesting thread!
I hope for quite a few red hot action shots (but for unterhausen's sake, no explosions!) :thumb:

Haven't had any run-ins with red hot scraps falling off. Bronze doesn't let go very easily. But I did switch to leather shoes before I did this just in case. I have a hole in the top of a pair of sneakers from taking apart a head tube, fortunately wool socks are a good choice.

It was originally a very pretty frame, although I'm not particularly fond of the Plum decals. Apparently they contracted for frames. I have no space for wall-hangers.

First rule of thumb when joining the Brethren of the Blue Flame: Wear natural fibers only.

Just thread what's left and run one of those uber-narrow Graeme Obree bottom bracket set ups he originally made with bearings from a washing machine. The praying mantis posture is optional. :D

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there is nothing left now, but I didn't take any pics. Didn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities

I got everything apart. I figured out the chainstay bridge had to come out and then it was relatively easy to plug the tubes into the new bb. The DT/ST didn't want to separate because there was an internal fillet, so I inserted a big bar in the DT in preparation for heating and it just popped loose. I'm taking the old rear triangle the rest of the way off next, I just wanted to see how hard it was to get to this point.
I didn't exactly work too hard to preserve the chain stays because they are going to end up as part of a wheel dishing tool or something like that.
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