no worries, it's interesting learning about these frames

Well, here's a little tidbit you might be interested in - Klein road frames contain a strip of weaved boron on the outside of each chainstay, and on the inside of each seatstay; the early Team Supers proudly proclaimed this fact with a decal on the top tube. The boron strips are covered with Bondo from factory; even the extremely smooth welds are refined further with an application of Bondo in these areas as well.

That said, the Klein frame you see above was already stripped of paint when I received it (bike painters never strip a Klein because of this; they sand the original surface, then paint over). The chemical stripper had peeled the factory Bondo off the chainstays; revealing the boron strips:



I reapplied Bondo in these areas and smoothed it out:



A poor photo, but it shows the Bondo used around the joints:



I'm still quite a long way from being done - there is a lot of Bondo work still to be done on the inside of the seatstays - but it's getting there. Sanding the Bondo absolutely smooth on the chainstays has been a very difficult job.

-Kurt

Need a haz-mat suit & a radiation badge to work on that thing.

1981

I thought boron is often used as a radiation shield.

Thanks for the additional catalog scans. Looks as if one could order just about anything.

-Kurt