Doing a little down tube repair on factory racer Larry Yancey's 'cross machine. A couple of weeks ago Yancey had a pretty knarly crash and jacked up the down tube on his S3 race frame, not to mention ripping apart one of those sweet Campy Record shifters, and a couple of other small parts. But in true Yancey race-style, he remounted the mangled mess and rode the last half of the race to finish, mind you, only one place out of the money. This frame started out as our experiment to see if S3 superlite tubing would stand up to the rigors of cyclocross and after more than 2 years of beating the molasses out of this thing I would say the S3 is capable but if you plan on racing it hard you may want just a little more meat, or if you don't mind replacing an occasional tube, roll with it. Any tube can get dented up when it takes the right hit so I'm not sure it matters what tube you choose, this is what carbon frame racers live with everyday and it doesn't stop them. Anyway, this is my first down tube replacement and I'm gonna replace the S3 tube with an OX Platinum tube. The S3 butting is 6/4/6 whereas the OX Platinum is a 7/4/7. Not really any heavier, actually the OX Plat. tube is a hair lighter just because its not as large a diameter, after all, this is a factory race bike, not gonna use water pipes on it, besides I love the lightweight stuff. In the meantime Yancey is riding his backup machine that I built for him a while back. I actually saw this day coming, only I figured it would've happened a lot sooner, you just have to ride with Yancey to understand. After getting the frame back to the shop, while cutting out the down tube, filing down the brazing, sanding everything as it sits, I found myself saying to myself on numerous occasions, "Man, he has just ridden the hell outta this thing." And thats all there is to say about that. Check back for the finished repair.
Doing a little down tube repair on factory racer Larry Yancey's 'cross machine. A couple of weeks ago Yancey had a pretty knarly crash and jacked up the down tube on his S3 race frame, not to mention ripping apart one of those sweet Campy Record shifters, and a couple of other small parts. But in true Yancey race-style, he remounted the mangled mess and rode the last half of the race to finish, mind you, only one place out of the money. This frame started out as our experiment to see if S3 superlite tubing would stand up to the rigors of cyclocross and after more than 2 years of beating the molasses out of this thing I would say the S3 is capable but if you plan on racing it hard you may want just a little more meat, or if you don't mind replacing an occasional tube, roll with it. Any tube can get dented up when it takes the right hit so I'm not sure it matters what tube you choose, this is what carbon frame racers live with everyday and it doesn't stop them. Anyway, this is my first down tube replacement and I'm gonna replace the S3 tube with an OX Platinum tube. The S3 butting is 6/4/6 whereas the OX Platinum is a 7/4/7. Not really any heavier, actually the OX Plat. tube is a hair lighter just because its not as large a diameter, after all, this is a factory race bike, not gonna use water pipes on it, besides I love the lightweight stuff. In the meantime Yancey is riding his backup machine that I built for him a while back. I actually saw this day coming, only I figured it would've happened a lot sooner, you just have to ride with Yancey to understand. After getting the frame back to the shop, while cutting out the down tube, filing down the brazing, sanding everything as it sits, I found myself saying to myself on numerous occasions, "Man, he has just ridden the hell outta this thing." And thats all there is to say about that. Check back for the finished repair.
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