I discovered on Friday that I’ve got a crack in the seat tube of my Santa Cruz Chameleon. 🙁 🙁 🙁

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HixH6uSMI7rLmfgw1FrgbzYW4R6EUlbXkA/view?usp=sharing

The frame is out of the warranty period.

I love this frame, so I’m looking out for a replacement (~2010 model, XL with EBB in case you have one!).

In the meantime, the crack isn’t in a critical structural position, so I wondered if I might be able to get it welded? If yes, can anyone suggest someone? I live in York in case there’s anyone local.

Thanks

If you’re the original owner get in touch with Jungle.
They are brilliant about stuff like this and may help you out.
A mate has just had an out of warranty Blur replaced with a new Nomad. 🙂

+1 for Jungle, they do stand by their products.

Unfortunately I’m not the original owner.

I’ll get in touch with Jungle anyway just in case they’re feeling generous. 🙂

The same happened to my XL Chameleon after about 6 months. Same era of Chameleon I think. It was warrantied by Jungle eventually after a bit of deliberation with seatposts. I don’t think the 100mm min insertion for seatpost is long enough on these XL frames. I had been running a 100mm shimmed seatpost which just met that criteria. Ran a longer one after that and has been fine since.

I’m not an expert, but that looks like heat affected zone (HAZ) cracking in the toe of the weld
I’d be contacting the manufacturer for an expert opinion before any fix is attempted

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts.

I’ve been running a Thomson seatpost and I reckon there’s about 200mm inserted in the frame.

I’ll drop Jungle an email to see what they think re HAZ.