Now I have my sweet ride back together as you know from previous posts. Just to fill you in on my love for this frame I have a few details about the repairs undertaken by Ewen.
I discovered a crack on over the Easter period by accident as I was sitting in the shed looking at something else. For some reason my eye caught a familiar line on the frame. I tried to wipe it away without luck. Crack time.....
After a quick email Ewen picked the striped frame up and I indicated that maybe the dents from my head on could be fixed. Part of the reason for using Ewen to build a frame was for the very reason that if I had a issue it could be repaired easily, sure I could have bought another OS built frame but repairs would be timely and costly.
Now I am always after answers why things fail, sometimes these questions cant be answered other than I am a big unit and I break things.
Ewen worked out that with limited information from the frame tube supplier that the heavy duty seat tube had cracked due to the use of a undersized (0.2mm) seatpost. Ewen had been trialing a new super sized seat tube to build a strong bike for me. The decision was made to reinforce the area for the repair and increase the diameter of the tube by reaming it out to take a 30.0 Thomson seat post that Ewen supplied to me free of charge as part of the repair process.
Ewen decided to use a Fat Chance inspired seat tube reinforcer, which in my opinion adds another element to the frame that works with the diamond shaped bottle bosses, chain peg and the stainless touches around the track ends at the rear. This reinforcement will hopefully hold up to the torture of supporting me around the trails.
He also sorted out the dents with a bit of loving metal work, which I am happy to say have it back to normal.
As I also sweat battery acid a few of the cable guides were slightly worse for wear as the powder coat had failed to get into all the nooks and crannies. Ewen swapped these out for me for a newer style he was using, it enables the powder coat to get in and cover the frame.
So after a gloss coat of silver powder coat, new decals and a few hours of love in my shed the beast is back together ready to rock and roll.
So frankly readers if you have a need for a custom frame dont look any further than Ewen. He builds a sweet frame (I have 2, road and 29erSS) and I always check what is coming out of his work shop as there is many a sweet bike being nurtured from bare steel tubes.
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