I crashed heavily in May – the damage to me I thought was worse than to the bike (my shoulder is fecked and I’m having surgery on Friday). I had been riding my Scandal since without evident problem but I bought a nice new Soul in July – for reasons of ‘I need one’ rather than any suspected problem with the Scandal.

However, I was cleaning the frame with a view to selling it (I won’t now) and noticed this – given the characteristics of thin-walled Aluminium tubing I assume this dent constitutes an important structural weakness in the bike and it would be unwise to attempt to ride it.

What does the panel think?

I would ride it. Buying would need a hefty reduction in price but if it were already mine……

Personally, I’d keep riding that. I’m sure there are loads with similar dents that have ridden without problem.

It’ll be worth asking Brant, or On-One, as they’ll know the properties of their tubing best.

Assuming the crazing/crackling is just the paint it looks all right for you to ride.

Ride it until it breaks. If it does. I had a bigger dent than that in the tt of my bullit and it survived a lot of abuse and believe its still being ridden hard by its current owner.

My old Orange had two things like that on the downtube – rode it for 6 years like that…

I’ve got much bigger dings/dents in my frame and been riding it for years. Admittedly they are in the bottom bracket area which I would guess has thicker walls.

I’d ride it – it’s not crumpled, and it doesn’t look that deep.

OK. Thanks

Nice frame

Looks OK to ride but might depend where on the bike it is and whether it could cause the tube to buckle under heavy loading. Looks like the downtube? If so you’d get some warning as the downtube is mostly in tension, with a bit of sideways bending. Top tube I’d be more worried.

My Scandal has the same kind of thing on the down tube from a rock strike, I’ve happily ridden it for a year since without having died.

I’ve often wondered if the people that repair dents on cars would be able to fix something like this

What they do on cars is amazing

As it’s on the downtube I’d keep riding it, under tension there as has been said.

Is the frame a 26″. if so i might have it off you for the right price.

I’ve often wondered if the people that repair dents on cars would be able to fix something like this

That’s just filler – cosmetic, not structural.

Got much worse dents in my Scandal and still ride it . Been there for over a year and all is fine.

You could tack a wire into it car repair style but a slide hammer to pull it out before filling would be a bit excessive :O)

It’ll be fine – adds character.

It looks close to something that may fail over time. My stump jumper took 5 years to finally start cracking from a dent which had corroded. My dent did look a little bit worse. I would ride it as long as it is in a visible place that you will subconsciously check from time to time. .

I had similar in an aluminium frame a few years back, i marked the frame at the points where the ding ended, i.e. marking where the ding ended, and then monitored this to make sure it didn’t grow. In the end the frame died from another crash.

I dinted my Inbred (steel, obvs.) on the first ride, and significantly worse than that. I fell off onto the only boulder in the field. It must have been magnetic…