icemilkcoffee 

So I got this Trek Y77 off Ebay:


Right after I got it I noticed the seatpost that came with the bike is very loose in the seat tube. Turns out the PO used a 26.6 seatpost instead of the correct 27.2. As a result the seat tube is cracked under the clamp:


It was so crushed in that I couldn’t put a 27.2 seatpost in. So the frame was toast. After a bunch of wrangling the seller refunded me most of the money. Then I went about trying to fix the frame. I had to cut short and chamfer a 27.2 seatpost and push it in from the bottom to open the seat tube back up:

After that I saw the horror of horrors: a nasty damage on the chain stay:

Looks terminal. And yet when I tried to flex the rear triangle the right chain stay felt just as rigid as the left. I test rode the bike for an hour, and it felt very very solid…..until I broke the chain anyways.


Here it is with changed rims, saddle stem and bars out on the test ride.

One nice discovery is that this YFoil frame fits 28mm tire with ease:


So now I am stuck with a frame that I cannot in good conscience sell to anyone, but rides very well with no discernible issue. I have no choice but to ride this one till the crabon assplodes!
First order of business is to slap a big glob of epoxy on top of the chewed up chain stay to stop the loose fibers from fraying any further.


to be cont’d

scarlson 

Nice! My kind of attitude. Just keep your eyes open for cracks and your ears open for creaks, and damn the naysayers!

Plus, a failure to the chainstay is less likely to cause a serious crash than many other areas I can think of.

And good work on the seat tube! Is that tube completely carbon? Or is there some metal grafted in there? I don't know much about these y-foils.

jamesdak 

First off, welcome to the club. As much as I hate to admit it, my Y-Foil is one fine ride. When I rode all six of my old C.F. bikes back to back this summer I ranked it the second best, losing out only to the Colnago C40.

Sucks about the damage though, I hope you are happy with how you worked things out with the seller.

Any thoughts to having the stay professionally repaired? I feel the frames are pretty beefy and strong with that relatively small rear triangle.

Glad to hear your's can fit 28mm tires, not happening on mine with either wheelset I tried. I can't even run Conti GP 4000s II 700 x 25's on it. My fit that size with the new GP 5000 tires though.

I'll be looking forward to hearing about your riding impressions of it. Despite the appearance I have found that only strong side winds seem to upset it. It slices through head winds and even strong quartering winds from the front with no noticeable issues.

Anyway, congrats on the find and the positive attitude!

There's a metal sleeve inside that seat tube area.

icemilkcoffee 

Yeah I am thinking the same way. The 'seat' stay pretty much prevents it from having a catastrophic failure.
The seat tube is totally carbon. No metal inserts.

Nah... I think the frame will probably outlive me as is!

Right now I have the 700x28 GP5000 TR on there with room to spare all around. I am very surprised that your frame doesn't even clear 25's. Where exactly is it interfering? I wonder if they have a totally different mold for each of the different sizes.

jamesdak 

So much for trusting my memory. The seatpost is fiberglass lined, not metal and you don't use grease according to the tech spec manual.

The may be different per frame size. Mines a 55CM. Here's shots of the clearance with the tires. In truth those GP4000s II 700 x 23's probably measure out to 25mm even on these narrow old rims.

Wildwood 

Sunken costs vs risk aversion.

aka, ...the terrible dilemma.

nomadmax 

You're at a fork in the road. I'm still glad I saved this bike.

Guerciotti BB Crack?

icemilkcoffee 

To finish the story. Today I was able to put finishing touches on the YFoil: hard to find B-41T chain ring:


this is like the cheat code for the Dura Ace 7700 - the 26t total capacity forces you to run a 11-23t cassette with the usual 53/39 chain rings. Now with the 41t chain ring I can run a more reasonable 12-26t cassette
I put that together with 170mm cranks, new cables, gold Deda tape, new cassette, new waxed chain, and Phenom Elaston saddle. No way was I going to cut the Dura Ace seatpost I put on there originally. So instead I got a Trek seatpost to cut to length. Here it is in the final form:






I had an NOS Supacaz bottle picked out for this frame. Too bad it won’t fit:


this frame just barely has room for the standard bottle and cage. Oh well. Back to the boring standard bottle.

jamesdak 

Looking good!

I'm running a bottle cage adaptor on mine that gave me more flexibility for positioning things. I think it's made by Wolftooth. Let's you run the bottle cage higher or lower than the factory position.