A good while back I bought a Solitude Cycles frame off of here for peanuts.

It was in pretty poor condition needing new paint and as it was originally built for a Rohloff didn’t have gear routing or dropouts (Paragon) capable of running gears.

Despite being designed for 26″ wheels the frame has oodles of clearance – it will take my 29+ rear wheel.

From the off I really liked the frame.

Over summer I bought some geared dropouts, new adjusters and mounting hardware.

Then recently a local frame builder added some guides, filled a dent and added a HT scuff plate to match the one on the other side.

Sweet.

Dropped the frame off at my local, excellent, powdercoaters and told them to take it easy on the blasting as the Columbus tubing is pretty thin.

Picked the frame up today in glorious RAL6019 to find a pin hole in the ST and the seatstay brace peppered with holes 🙁

There are also a couple of areas under the paint that concern me.

Frame builder has had a look and given a very reasonable price to fix things but at the cost of my paint.

So …… Continue down the path of repair, just ride it see what happens and repair or wall hang.

The money is in the equation but the worry that’s grabbing at me is that all the tubes are sealed, no breather holes with the exception of bottle cage bosses and rack mounts. Having seen some of the 90s American exotica die from a combination of sealed tubes and our weather I worry I would be throwing good money after bad.

Frame builder thought the frame was structurally sound to ride and suggested butting a sticker over the pin holes but I told him stickers were resolved for cracks 😆

So ….. If you got this far reading the post congratulations ….. But what would you do?

If a sticker is out of the question may i suggest one of those self adhesive “carbon chainstay protector” things.

Oh and just ride it.

Seat tube brace

Your powdercoater didn’t spot the big holes in it before powdering? I use ESP, and they always tell me when they find holes so I can braze them up first.

Sadly no.

To be fair to them the holes are on the underside of the brace.

I’ve had half a dozen frames painted there and their masking and prep is very good as is their finish. It’s no fault of theirs.

I should have had it blasted first!

On a side note I’d been riding it up until now so I guess I’m no worse off am I ? 😐

I’d be concerned about how thin the metal is overall in the parts where it didn’t manage to hole

be fine for a million years that, just ride it

A million years – dammit I thought steel bikes were for life.

It’ll be fine. Probably….

Seat tube braces are a common rot point. The pin holes will be where moisture gathered, so at least it will drain now 🙂

I just did a disc mount, guides and a new St brace on a friend’s Raleigh 853. Once I took the old tube out (very thin and much worse than yours), it had also gone through the seat stays. So we also fitted some little patches before the new brace tube.

If it were mine I’d leave the holes, ride it and just keep an eye on things. Important areas like the head/down tube joint are unlikely to have rusted as they drain. What forks are you using?

Hi Mick,

Thanks for the encouraging comments!

I’ll be running a rigid fork and was going to build the bike into a gravel(sigh)/road/XC bike

Difficult choice, money versus emotional attachment, if you think you’ll use it I say keep it in service

I was just wondering what shape the fork was in – i.e. if original, is the bottom of the steerer / fork legs open and free to drain? Saying that, both those areas are pretty thick and would take an awful long time to degrade significantly.

The holes are almost certainly due to corrosion and not over-zealous blasting. We have a very severe iron oxide blaster that I sometimes use at work – even with that it would take an awful long time to blow through a non rusty tube.