This Space for Rent

Artistic bicycle repair

Dropout repair

I was given the frame from a Bianchi Strada (ca 2007, I think?) that had been discarded because the DS rear dropout had snapped at the chainstay (when the frame came into my hands it had a pair of replacement dropouts ziptied to the frame, so it looks like the person who owned it was thinking about replacing them themselves, but either lost interest or found a cheaper-than-repair-cost replacement frame before they could hack out the old dropouts and glue new ones in.)

I didn’t want to use the replacement dropouts that came with the frame (a pair of Columbus-or-clone short horizontal dropouts) because I didn’t want to have to melt the broken dropout chunks free, but when a friend got out of the framebuilding business a few years ago and sold me most of his framebuilding goop he included a set of half-plug-half-tab horizonal dropouts that were longer and taller than the original ones, so all I needed to do was to cut the chainstays & seatstays back and fit (after considerable filing to make the plugs small enough) the new dropouts into place.

And then I spun up the wheel and took a picture with my iPhone, which, as is traditional, could not keep up with the spinning wheel.

[Tomorrow I’ll braze the dropouts into place and replace the seized shifter stops, and then I’ll have a fully functional too-big (or french fit w/ insanely deep drops à la mode Eileen Sheridan) frame.]