hello all
been doing some work on the "mystery rider" frame; pretty sure it is a Manton & Smith or Nonpareil at this point. Anyways, the tubes in the kickstand area were badly crushed, so out came the welders for some remedial treatment.
Here's the frame, showing some traces of the original paint details on the front and seatmast:
Here's the damaged tubes; the bottom was basically smoothly crushed, but the tops had three sharp & deep creases on each tube; it looked much worse in the flesh than the pics show...nasty:
Borrowing an idea from the body shop guys, we tacked some rod to the depressions, then heated and used a weight on the rod (with the rod end bent to an "L" to capture the weight) to form a crude slide-hammer; worked pretty well. Some filling using the same rod added metal to fill the tubes where needed...all over.
Here's how it looks after some careful filing:
Need to do another pass at this on the bottom and top, and it should be good to go.
More to come soon; we are going to build a quick jig to check the frame for trueness; the rear tubes are in need of a bit of tweaking for sure. The weld where the two rear tubes meet at the top of the seatmast will probably be removed and replaced as well, as it is incomplete.
cheers
greg v.
been doing some work on the "mystery rider" frame; pretty sure it is a Manton & Smith or Nonpareil at this point. Anyways, the tubes in the kickstand area were badly crushed, so out came the welders for some remedial treatment.
Here's the frame, showing some traces of the original paint details on the front and seatmast:
Here's the damaged tubes; the bottom was basically smoothly crushed, but the tops had three sharp & deep creases on each tube; it looked much worse in the flesh than the pics show...nasty:
Borrowing an idea from the body shop guys, we tacked some rod to the depressions, then heated and used a weight on the rod (with the rod end bent to an "L" to capture the weight) to form a crude slide-hammer; worked pretty well. Some filling using the same rod added metal to fill the tubes where needed...all over.
Here's how it looks after some careful filing:
Need to do another pass at this on the bottom and top, and it should be good to go.
More to come soon; we are going to build a quick jig to check the frame for trueness; the rear tubes are in need of a bit of tweaking for sure. The weld where the two rear tubes meet at the top of the seatmast will probably be removed and replaced as well, as it is incomplete.
cheers
greg v.