Bit of a saga this one and it's not finished yet :roll:
Ad put up in the For Sales on Yetifan for a turquoise and yellow '94 ARC. Enquired as it was a 14", pretty rare from what FTW told me. I asked the seller to check the headtube...of course it was cracked plus it had also had a crack in the seat tube near the binder bolt which had been crudely welded back up. I got the bike cheaper as a result but it came with the full Grafton/Ringle caboodle anyway so it was a no loser. I then had to decide if the I was going to do anything with the frame.
To fix it correctly there is only 1 man right? Yep, it was off back to FTW and Skip for a reincarnation and then up to Spectrum Powder Works for some colour.
As I bought the bike.
At Franks workshop
Strip!
Let the surgery commence
Seat tube, down tube and head tube replacement.
And from Franks blog
http://www.frankthewelder.com/?p=466
Spectrum then did a great job on the powder coating and from there the frame sat in Martin K's garage for a while. He got the cable guides ano'd purple, refitted them and then added the decals. Cheers Martin.
But as they say, the most obvious things can be overlooked. Martin had sent me some photos and only then did I notice that the seat tube had no binder bolt :shock: so it was back to FTW to get this added plus a rear canti stop which I'd originally decided against. (I was going to use a hanger off the seatpost due to the small frame size)
Frank and Spectrum both did a great job...again...with Spectrum just touching up the area around the top of the seat tube.
So I finally got the frame back. The good thing was that as it had taken so long, I'd had time to gather some parts for the build. I'm almost there, just waiting for the Grafton BB and some time to get it finished.
With Big Bro
To be continued.......
