My BluePigX appears to have a crack developing at the driveside seatstay/seattube weld.

Not the frame in the photo below, but similar. More like from 2-5 on the clockface and a little extended below the weld along the seattube.

I was thinking of seeing Vernon Barker as he’s local and has a good reputation. What’s the likelihood of a repair making the other side weaker?

Any pics/accounts of other people’s repairs would be reassuring! Have you gotten away with touch up paint or did you respray?

Thanks all 🙂

The only way I can see that can be repaired properly (other than a temporary job) is to put a sleeve over the seat tube and re-attach the seat stays to it. A big job imo and you got to love the frame. It should’ve had ideally, some sort of reinforcement to the top of the seat tube in the design to take the load of the offset seat stays – in my opinion of course. The top frame builders, Pott’s, Soulcraft and the like, fusion weld a head tube equivalent in thickness piece into the top of the seat tube to cope with this.

I may be proved wrong so good luck in finding a repairer

Warranty?

I’ve only had brazed failures repaired and I’m not sure if welded joins make for such easy repairs.

I would probably get a welder mate to attempt to fix something like that rather than paying/throwing good money after bad; if it cracks again you’ve not spent big money on it. I’d be loath to spend my money on a profesional repair on a frame like a Blue Pig which is £260. Think £260 with a warranty vs £??? for a welded repair and repaint?

That said I had my Kona Explosif repaired so I can try and break it again, properly 😈

My “bodge” repair would be:-

Gritblast and degrease the area as much as possible.
Drill little holes in the end of the crack (1-2mm dia)
Turn a 6″ long sleeve to go inside the seat tube and silver solder it (maybe also drill a few holes in the seat tube to allow application of silver lower down).
Build up a fillet of brass over both seatstay joints.

Rebuild with a smaller diameter seatpost (use an expanding reamer to make reduced seat tube fit whatever size smaller post).

Not perfect but will probably last longer than grinding out and re-tigging the crack