Well, I have another. My beloved SR Semi Pro

http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/u.../photo-120.jpg
http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/u.../photo-129.jpg
http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/u.../photo-130.jpg
http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/u.../photo-131.jpg
http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/u.../photo-132.jpg

http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/u.../photo-134.jpg

Can you guess what happened?

^ Sewer grate meets front wheel?

Can anyone suggest a cost-effective way to return this to its former glory?

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7027/6...e87f5e6f_b.jpg

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It was safely (well, maybe not!) packed into a shipping crate complete. It came out looking like this after it arrived from London in a PCS (permanent change of station) move back in '96. Looks as though a forklift backed right into the crate.

DD

^That sucks, DD. You could bring it down to Puyallup and we can play with the torch some. Can't make it any worse and I'm sure it'd be a "fun" way to get some practice in ;)

edit: actually, I'm sure we could make it worse, but not any less ridable :innocent:

Stupid motorist. bike meets trunk

So sorry to hear that - not only the frame, but the bar-end shifter ate it, too. Going to try for a repair?

Andy: I might at that - it's so far gone the best bet would be to turn it into a shop-stool - or one of those drivetrain demonstrators Schwinn used to have in their shops :)

DD

Fortunately I do have another shifter lever, but this one is a goner.

Condolences hairnet, hope you fared better than the poor SR.

Seeing as you're 21, let me offer you a bit of friendly (fatherly) advice. Ditch the frame before you discover that the next part to break is a fork and you're on the bus to the hospital.

Or do, as the previous posters have suggested and fix what you've shown them. After all, they don't have to ride your bike and pay the consequences of whatever fate befalls you.

Ever ask yourself, "What could have caused this seat stay to break free?" The number of answers that I can think of suggest that it might not be the only part ready to break free.

Your call, dude.

Edited: Clueless, I've posted to a thread that started some time ago. Doesn't change how I feel about that bike but seems pointless to have responded to his March '12 post. My mistake.

Your frame is dead. Move on.

silver solder and a torch.

clean the paint away from the area and I swear its a quick fix.
find a good plumber, or a coppersmith, he will be done before the coffee is warm.

mig welding is also a possibility as the heat is only on it for 2 seconds.
it just wont look so great.

I fixed some dents this way, pushed a ram through to get the dent out and mig welded material on the low spot, a split second at a time, then filed it smoth.

Oh, that's easy to fix. Just replace the busted lugs and bent tubes with new ones.

Seriously though, I hope you wear a helmet.

+1. Yes, the mysterious, but ever present, local frame builder. Kinda like Santa Claus.

But, to your point. I have, and I'm sure many others here have as well, picked up bikes with defects we didn't see at the time. In the speed of the transaction (i.e., this guy is a crack head and I want to get this bike cheap and get out), it is often very difficult to do a full inspection. Just consider it part of the hobby (yes, this is a hobby).

I guess I feel that recycling bikes is a unique hobby. The most significant difference being that cycling is inherently dangerous. Yes, I know that breathing is dangerous, and walking, etc. But the very nature of biking is a combination of speed and traffic, two things that do not mix well with tube corrosion, weakened lugs, stress fractures, misalignment, and any other number of problems that may befall a bike in its lifetime.

The fact that used bikes are cheap, does not make them ideal objects for transportation.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't spoil the fun of this thread, or any other for that matter, but I've been over the handlebars more times than I like to admit. I've got scars from face plants on pavement and I've been over guard rails because I didn't control my speed. I know the consequences of riding hard on equipment I trust, the last thing I'd want to read in this forum is that a repaired bike had developed a bad speed wobble coming down a mountain and landed the rider in a hospital.

New frames are cheap. There's always time to look for another bike when you distrust the seller. But bodies are difficult to replace.

No offence, but you did notice this is the C&V forum? None of our bike are new. I'd be willing to bet there are quite a few that have been repaired and are better than new. As far as why that broke in the first place - it's not the best seat stay join ever put out by any factory. I'm no framebuilder, but re-brazing that would be a piece of cake and with a bit of extra brass added would be stronger than new. I'd go ahead and add some to the other side while I was at it, for aesthetics and strength.

True, the "new frame" comment wasn't clear. But "new" can be another used bike frame, just one that doesn't have obvious signs of weakness.

Sure, it doesn't take much to re-braze a seat stay. But what was the cause of the break in the first place and how long or hard was the bike ridden with the broken seat stay? Here are some very real possible causes:

1) Your suggestion, and the one the bothers me most, shoddy build quality. Where would that shoddy quality begin and end? If the seat stay broke during normal use then the other side is suspect. And the same is true of the chain stays, the seat tube and down tube lug junction. The list goes on.

2) The bike was broken while touring. A heavily loaded bike runs into a deep pothole and the impact is sufficient to bust the seat stay loose. What else was badly strained? The forks and headtube would be obvious areas to suspect additional weakness.

3) The bike was run into something immovable, while mounted to a roof rack for example.

4) The paint was improperly mixed or applied and corrosion is eating away at all the joints. Many bikes deteriorate from the inside out.

I won't disagree that repairs can be effective and durable. But riding a bike whose history you have no clue about, was never made "strong" to begin with (Raleigh has a extremely uneven record of manufacturing quality especially among their low range builds) and which shows such obvious signs of weakness (such as the one with the busted seatstay) is a little like riding a motorcycle full speed around a blind corner. You don't know what you might hit: loose gravel, a rock slide, a disabled car, another motorcycle, etc.

I would not trust that with a duck tape wrap.



Spray it down and clean it up with WD-40, then duck tape wrap with a slathering of 2 ton epoxy 'll do the trick.

Did I somehow wind up in the 41?