Bay Area Biker

I’d been holding onto this busted road frame for over four years…

…and this year I finally got around to fixing it.

WHA’HAPPENED?:

I broke the frame at the Shorewood Criterium on July 15, 2004 just about midway through that year’s Superweek race series in Wisconsin. Somehow I wiped out on my left side in a shady turn on the backside of the course. As I lay on the ground, in the middle of a pack of riders travelling ~32mph, one enterprising rider from behind, rather than fall, stop, or simply ride around me, instead rode over me, and during this maneuver my carbon driveside seatstay was snapped beneath that rider’s wheels like so many blades of grass beneath Lance Armstrong’s in stage 9 of the 2003 Tour, when he cut that switchback to avoid the fallen Beloki. I opted not to grab a pit bike and finish the race that day, but I was able to finish out Superweek that year, thanks to my supremo team manager at the time, Ponch, who rush-shipped me a replacement frame and some new bar tape. Rather than toss the busted frame into a recycle bin, though, I held onto it – the frame’s main triangle and chainstays were steel, which gave me hope that someday it could be fixed.

I continued to ride and race the replacement bike for the next couple years until it was stolen in November 2006. I had already more or less stopped racing in May of that year, which meant I was doing way more commuting than training, so I opted to replace the replacement bike with something a little more durable and versatile (my beloved Bianchi Roger), a choice which guaranteed that I wouldn’t be doing any road races for some time to come.

Finally this year I mustered enough time, money, nerve, and desire to get back on the road to give the repair of my busted old frame a shot. Had it been any other tube on the frame that was compromised, I would not have attempted to fix it myself. The seatstays were the only part I felt I could cut out and replace that didn’t absolutely require a frame jig, especially considering how beefy the chainstays were.

I ordered up some basic steel seatstays and a brake bridge from a frame supply shop, and picked up some brazing rod from the hardware store and headed over to my buddy’s shop to get to work.

HACKING AWAY:

First off, I sawzalled the lower legs of the seatstays off just below the joint where they bolted to the dropout.

Then I used cutoff wheel on my Dremel to remove the wishbone mount off of the seat tube. As careful as I thought I was being, I still managed to gouge into the seat tube during this removal. I decided that I would create a patch out of the leftover metal from the wishbone and braze that to the seat tube and then braze the new seat stays onto that patch, rather than directly to the seat tube. The gouges weren’t really that bad, and I probably could have just brazed them in, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

To prep the dropouts to accept the new seatstays, I tapped into the cutoff portion with a drill bit that matched the diameter of the seatstays, in order to create a little seat for the end of the tubes. The dropouts had a square profile, so I used a grinder to round off the corners, creating a smoother transition to the round stays.

“…JUST GONNA BRAZE ALL IT BACK TOGETHER…”:

Although the rest of the frame is TIG welded, which I have some experience with, I decided that I would braze in the new seatstays, a method with which I had no prior experience. The reasons for this were: a) I knew brazing to be slightly more forgiving of mistakes, since it was accomplished using a lower heat. b) I really don’t recall being all that talented a TIG welder. Ultimately, I figured that if I screwed up and had to cut something off and start over, then brazing was the way to go.

I formed, brazed, and filed my patch for the seat tube and then got to work on mitering the seatstays. I didn’t have access to a mitering jig, so instead I used a the Dremel and a file, freehand. With this method it’s really slow-going work; constantly checking the fit and filing a bit more. Once I’d gotten the first stay to fit perfectly, there was a lot of pressure to get the second just right. I wasn’t keeping close track of time, but I think the mitering took at least two hours. When I was comfortable with the fit, I drilled a small breather hole near each joint on both seatstays, four holes total.

At this point, I decided to go ahead and completely braze, rather than just tack, the seatstays before mitering the brake bridge, but just as I began tacking in the first seatstay, I ran out of acetylene gas. Running out of gas during welding is not quick and obvious like running out of gas in a car. It’s more of a 30min process during which you continue trying to work not wanting to believe that the flame is really getting smaller and smaller; and it’s only when your patience reaches a melting point that you realize that the metal no longer will. The gas place was already closed for the day, so I had to put the project off for another week until I could get the tank refilled, bummed because I’d hoped to do the deed in one fell swoop.

A week later I was back working on it. Got the seatstays brazed in, nice and ugly-like.

…then the brake bridge mitered…

…and brazed.

I spent the next umpteen days here and there filing down the excess material from my brazed joints; not as unpleasant an activity as I would have guessed.

PAINT IT, ALMOND:

Painting’s never been my strong suit. I’ve undertaken a number of random painting projects in my life, both rattle-can and paint gun, and I generally just don’t have the patience it takes to produce a good looking paint job. I was determined to do this one right, and after a few missteps, I think I got it.

I decided on the color at the hardware store: rattle can “Almond.” Here’s the result of two weeks, four coats, and plenty of wet-sanding:

Once painted, I realized I should have spent a little more time with a file and sand paper on the seat cluster, but it really doesn’t look that bad, especially once I got the bike built up.

FIRST RIDE, APRIL 17:

For the maiden voyage, I didn’t want to make it too easy for myself to get home in case of massive seatstay failure. With that in mind, I called up JC and asked if he wanted to head across the Golden Gate Bridge to do the Paradise Loop. It’d been years since I’d ridden a road bike, and I was surprised at how different it felt from even my ‘cross bike; much twitchier, not too graceful at sub-15mph speeds. But it felt good, very good. Five years ago I rode this bike fanatically, and after a few miles I found that the geometry was still in my muscle memory. I’d worn my best mis-matched kit that day, and when we got to Lyford’s Stone Tower I called a stop and made JC take a pic of a proud roadie reborn:

I took the bike out three more times before subjecting it to the real test: King Ridge. The last road race I’d entered was Berkeley Hills in May ’06 (I DNF’d), and almost exactly three years later I was happy to be able to return to the scene in a Grasshopper, and after that ride I’m pretty confident that this frame is (re)built to last.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.