Hi all,
While mounting a rear rack on my Kona, I accidentally used bolts from the handlebar/stem clamp instead of the short rack bolts. They were too long and ended up going straight through the threaded eyelets on the upper seat stay mounts (near the saddle), poking out the other side of the tube (photos attached).
This chipped the paint and left bare metal exposed. The threads still seem fine and I don’t see obvious cracks, but I’m worried, could this have structurally damaged the frame, or is it just cosmetic?
Thanks for any advice!
by gratziani
4 Comments
It’s definitely structurally damaged, it looks like someone’s taken a tiny tin opener to it! Whether or not that’s catastrophic damage I don’t know, but that’ll be an area for stress fractures to accumulate in the future so keep an eye on it if you do keep using that frame.
Engineer and hobby framebuilder here. It’ll be fine. Put some paint on it to keep it from rusting though. Seatstays are in compression and most failures on a bike are from tension (chain stays, downtube). Compression failures are in the form of buckling, and given the short span of tubing between the bridge and seat tube it sold take a massive force to make it buckle there.
If you want a second opinion post over at r/framebuilding
Yeah no shit it is damaged
Are these plastic caps?