Saved from the grave? - Scapin EOS Pro Team (Weld up jobby)

i had a composite wheel i stripped, they put the wrong kind of lacquer on, only months later did i notice the surface starting to leech when i took it out of a wheel bag to find it had started to stick to the fabric and in general had gone sticky again. Its for that reason that i only strip carbon frames with rather laborious hand sanding and no chemicals. :(

I’ve welded up a crack similar to this, where it ran in to the braze.

Just removed everything to see the whole crack and tig welded as much as I could, starting a weld pool before the crack and running it in to the crack with a filler rod. Ran it as close to the braze as possible then filled the rest up with bronze rod.

This was on a Brompton but a similar situation.

I’d forget mig on that unless you’ve done thin sheet work with a mig, it would probably just blow a hole in the tube and you would still have the braze to contend with.

An interesting project! Just keep any eye on those forks, I had a similar pair of Time forks on my Donohue and one day they just came apart.

Edit: that was after being used on my work bike every day with no mudguards so took a bit of a battering so possibly not normal.

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The tubing on Brompton frames is not heat-treated and stays more within its properties due to the not ductile material to begin with, and less manipulated.
But those Scapin frames, IIRC, used a type of Dedacciai tubing that with some bad luck, would crack selling the tubing. You can see that is a failure along the moment of torsion, unlikely caused by the welding alone.
Brazing over that crack may slow down its run, but there's a good chance it will carry on from nearby.

It’s columbus foco tubing

That was nice tubing :-)

Not too common? Haven’t seen many

Anyway, fingers crossed this gets back on the road, it’s an awesome frame

I know I’m sorry! it felt like such sacrilege to do..

I’d love a Ck Devolution (£168) - but for now I’m going to try this, Wheels mfg headtube reducer (£23). Hopefully the tiny lip shouldn’t be too obvious when a black headset is fitted. If all goes to plan and I fall in love with it then a CK will definitely be on the cards :)

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Bit of local heat might actually do it good. It’ll take out the temper which will lower its ultimate strength, but at the same time it’ll improve its fatigue resistance.

I didn’t realise this had a fine braze. I think MIG is going to get a bit messy near that braze line, plus to my eye it does look a bit like the crack runs over the braze over the bottom bracket, which is probably where it initiated. I’d normally get stuck in with the MIG but I think because it’s a nice frame you can probably save it if you can find a skilled welder to do what @Dogtemple said. Basically vee the crack out, TIG close up to the braze line, drill another small hole at the end of the weld, then brass on the last bit, over the hole and melt along the crack in the braze line.

Update... tried MIG on some test scraps of metal naturally before going straight to the frame. Varying in thickness from 1.5mm down to 0.8mm. Blew straight threw the 1mm on the first pulse!!! My vernier calliper is saying that the seattube is 1mm - so I’ve held off for now and gotten in touch with a good friend who has kindly accepted to tig and fill with brass in any spare time he has. Should hopefully be by the second/third week of Jan I reckon

Since that has been put on hold for a bit I thought I’d crack on with trying to bring back the paint as best as I can. You can see here that the lacquer is peeling so it will never be what it once was but can try to make it a bit more respectable

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An hour or so of polishing later... considering 95% of it was matte I’m fairly happy. A few more hours work then a buff and I think it could almost be there

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That looks really good! The polish makes the spots where the lacquer is gone look like abstract designs in the paint.

Hello,
I'm an italian Scapin passionate (only real steel Scapin frame)
About your problem the best solution contact the craftsman that build you frame
The steel Scapin frames were built by http://www.ciclibarco.it in Padua - Italy
Regards
Vittorio

Nice to have you on here. Is there a group of Scapin passionate people?
I never found much info out there.

No info in models or catalogues for example.

Got a lovely Scapin myself, in SLX but no idea of exact year or model name.

Update! After giving my mate a couple of fancy pale ales at the local over crimbo he pulled through and Tig’ged the crack. I am back in London now though and the frame is not. But we can get the ball rolling :)

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Very neat

Should clean up nicely!

I thought for a second that the black bit was a big hole... But it actually looks good!

Oh yes. I have two (one in the UK, one here in Italy, both Columbus Genius).

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Dont wanna fuck around in your (beautiful) thread too much, but since there seems to be a lot of appreciation on those wonderfull scan Frames: Im selling one on Ebay Kleinanzeigen (Germany) since its a little too big for me...
580mm. c-c.

FRAMESET:
https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/scapin-rennradrahmen-rahmenset-race-vintage-carbon-58/1021433537-217-9340

It`s a lovely thing in quite nice cosmetical condition.

Hit me up if you`re interested.

I hope this is not completely out of place... Thanks

@getoutofbed Any progress update on this? Keen to see the result.

Thanks! I still haven’t been to pick up the frame from my home town yet but I’ve so far gotten a headset and that’s about it. The fork on the other hand I’ve managed to polish up and it looks amazing. I want to get some yellow Time decals to put back on!

Fork update

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Holy shit - great finish!

Could you detail that process?

Sweet baby Jesus!