“Oh, bother” said Pooh
Trek 1000’s like mine are made of aluminum, but they aren’t welded together, but instead glued to internally lugged bottom brackets, seat clusters, and headtubes. This is good in that you don’t need to worry about welding stresses weakening the joints, but it’s bad in that it’s stuck together with epoxy.
A couple of months ago, the 9-speed brifter to 8-speed drivetrain (via a Shiftmate) started developing the habit of when I’d turn around a shift (shifting up a few gears, then shifting down a few) I’d need to double-shift to pick up the slack before it would actually shift. I wrote this off as an artifact of the really long drivetrain coupled to the shiftmate, and replacing the 9 speed brifter+shiftmate combination with an 8-speed brifter pair made it all better.
But then a few weeks ago my trek started making annoying creaking noises whenever I’d accelerate briskly or push it hard up a ramp (like the ramp to the east of the Chavez Blvd Trader Joes) and my usual round of walking the bike verifying that all of the bolted together parts were properly bolted together didn’t seem to actually fix that wagon. And when I’d stop the bicycle, lock the brakes, and lean on a pedal the frame would seem to plane flex a bit more than usual.
So today, after taking it out for a 14 mile loop last night (with the usual crop of annoying creaking whenever I pedalled) I took a careful look at all of the joints on the thing, where I discovered, to my intense dismay, this nice vertical crack in the paint right over the joint where the right chainstay inserts into the bottom bracket shell.
Siiiiiiiiigh!
I wonder what the Community Cycling Center has in the department of used frames?