Day 1000 of buying weird shit on offerup strikes again. You guys think I should cut this diy brace the previous owner did? I question if it’s even doing anything. Or should I leave it and get a welder to clean it up a bit?
by Mychipsareahoy
Day 1000 of buying weird shit on offerup strikes again. You guys think I should cut this diy brace the previous owner did? I question if it’s even doing anything. Or should I leave it and get a welder to clean it up a bit?
by Mychipsareahoy
7 Comments
I’m all for weird shit, but that’s such a kludge that I can’t see it being worth cleaning up. Personally, if the bike fits well, I would grind it off, smooth it back out, and paint or even powder coat to bring the frame back to life. But I’m also a sucker for old, lugged frames with tons of tire clearance like this one 🙂
I’d get someone to clean that weld up, make a unique frame
What a cool (weird) find! I’ve looked over the photos and really don’t see any evidence that the DIY brace is doing anything structurally critical: the head tube, seat tube and top tube all look okay in the photos.
If the frame looks okay in-person (you can see more than we can in the photos), I’d probably remove the DIY brace and use some sandpaper to clean up the welded areas then use beeswax or clearcoat to protect the tubes while leaving the steel visible.
If you ***do*** find evidence that the brace might be important, I think I’d still remove it and try to do a better miter / weld job. The concept (dual top tube) actually looks kinda neat, just really poorly executed for the class of this frame.
EDIT: in photo #2, is the top of the top tube (where it meets the head tube) dimpled? Or, is that just an optical illusion due to rust color? If that’s a big dimple, that might be concerning damage.
That is legitimately hilarious, and you should leave it there.
I would send it to my friend u/Bicyclebozo in Australia for free
Get the univega tube outta there and use it to break all of the the previous owner’s tools, they neither deserve or can handle them
Kinda looks like something was going on with the top and down tubes near the head tube. Which could’ve been the motivation for the modification. But those 2 globs of weld can’t be taking any stress or reinforcing anything it seems to me.
Perhaps something was repaired and the guy was smart enough to understand that welding repairs can weaken the steel, and so decided to install a reinforcement?
So now you have a conorumdum, take it off and risk something collapsing, or at least you’d be thinking about that all the time 🙂 Or have the bodge welded or braised up properly. Seems the second option is the safest.
But in either case a real frame builder should be doing the work I think.
Frame itself is pretty cool, worth saving.