flipchip

I was curious if anyone knows anything about this model.


Mocked up

Its a Commencal Stewart high end road frame. No idea the year as it barely seems to exist online. Seems to have originally come with Record 10spd. The only references I can find to it are on french forums, but there are very few threads and even then and I cant find one that looks like mine at all. Its all aluminum with carbon fork, of a seemingly non-existent tubing called "nuts nec+ultra SL aluminum". Its disturbingly light and the welds are unlike anything I've ever seen on a bicycle. The headbadge is engraved with "Stewart 0386", possible limited run? I'm familiar with Commencal from their mtb racing pedigree, but I've never heard of them making road bikes, especially anything of this caliber.

PeteHski

Not much on a quick Google, but it appears to be a 2004-2006 endurance road frame. Geometry is listed on Geometry Geeks if that helps.

georges1

The "nuts nec+ultra SL aluminum" is in fact columbnus airplane aluminium. It was a high end aluminium frame like a caad6-caad8. The shifters shown on the bike are dura ace 7700 shifters

flipchip

Interesting, where did you hear about it being airplane? The shifters are mine. The only thing on the frame as purchased were the fd, saddle, and seatpost. I actually ended up finding my exact frame on the wayback machine, which I'll leave here for posterities sake in case anyone has a similar frame to mine. https://web.archive.org/web/20040608...3-stewart.html

Duragrouch

The welds have been post-dressed, i.e., sanded, probably with a power handheld strip sander, as has been done on aluminum Cannondales for decades. My 'Dale of late '80s vintage had welds dressed to a radius, those above appear to be more of a 45 degree flat fillet. I was always impressed by that finishing on mine, and great care was taken to not undercut into the tubing at the weld edge. Good dressing results in less stress concentration at the weld edge. Plus it looks great. A recent post of a Dahon Archer aluminum model in Asia with 2x10 gearing, showed that same weld dressing, which would be a big step up for Dahon. My chrome-moly steel Dahon frame, the welds are much smaller than on aluminum, so would be much more difficult to dress the welds, it would have to be using hand files or a small grinder, and same on titanium; I've never seen dressed welds on either.

georges1

From a former bikeshop who was a long time sunn and commencal reseller and who closed 15 years ago ,he also used to sell Peugeot, Santacruz, Specialized and Giant.