PhilDAS learns to glue (mostly) metal

Well done, looks great!

Very nice! Would ride.

And for something a little different, today I became the proud owner of the cursed Exploro

NDS fail

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For those that didn’t see it posted, this has a cracked top tube where the internal seat clamp is. Poor design really but I plan to repair it. Or at least give it a go.

I straight away sanded back the paint and the top couple of layers of cracked and frayed carbon.
Tbh I’m unpleasantly surprised at the quality of the lay up. There was holes all over the place under the white, filled with body filler or paint

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pls dont die

Paging @Jonny69

No experts in here telling me what I’m doing wrong thank you

In that case you’ll appreciate my opinion. I’d sand it back a bit further towards the headtube so you can reinforce it with long strips. And ideally you’d want to vacuum bag it, to ensure the new layers bond properly to the existing stuff, maybe look into household alternatives for that. And do some practice runs, my preferred method for wet layups was pre-impregnating the dry fibers on a flat table and then putting those wet layers on the workpiece.

I see. I was going for something like this

Ideally you’d get a bit of peel ply, some release film (could also be Glad wrap tbh), some breather cloth, a roll of vacuum bagging tape (the gummy stuff) and one of those vacuum bags for people who can’t pack their bags properly. I think it’d make a pretty decent vacuum bag which you can depressurise with a vacuum cleaner, won’t be as good as a serious bag depressurised with a pump but that would be prohibitively expensive. You are likely to be able to buy all of these things at the shop you’re getting your fibers and epoxy, but maybe not in the tiny quantities you need.

Too late for that. I’ve bought a pathetic little kit and I’ll be using the very little bit of stuff that it comes with and nothing more.

If you want peel ply, release film or breather cloth I've got some you could have. To be honest though, I'd just wrap it really tightly with vinyl tape (sticky side out) and then poke holes in the tape with a pin. With shrink tape on top if you're really keen.

This is the kind of advice I like. Done, let’s see what it looks like in 24 hours

I’ve used 3 layers of 3K twill, no idea if that will be sufficient but I’m not too concerned given that the crack is from the seatpost clamp mechanism and the whole of the rest of the top tube to seat tube intersection is undamaged and pretty beefy. As long as the post clamps OK, I think it’ll be perfectly fine to ride.

Worth noting as a disclaimer for anyone else considering similar, as such an amateur, I would never consider this on a repair mid tube, or anywhere where a fail would be catastrophic and possibly cause an accident. And I suggest you don’t try it either.
My possibly wrong assumption is that if this fails, the seatpost slips or drops

Stay safe folks

Love it, maybe ride down some stairs seated to test it? Double chamois should see you right.

The fuck, who just woke me up from my Sunday nap? Tijmen! Damnit.

-goes back to sleep-

I always double chamois.

Done

Wtf, no pics? Having done a number of repairs to glass fiber boats this piques my interest.

It piques mine too, as I'm in the very protracted course of doing some CF repairs to Cycliste's BMC Streetracer, which cracked along the back of the seat tube.

I couldn’t really take many whilst wearing latex gloves covered in epoxy resin

This is all I got really. I’ll remove the tape at the end of tomorrow and if it looks acceptable, I’ll put it away to harden for a week before test riding.

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you have a kickr?!

Busted.
Do you want to Zwift together?

When did this happen? This is like when your mates all got the new PlayStation and you were still on the old one :(

A few weeks ago. I got it to do some secret training just so I can actually enjoy riding with the guys from work rather than being absolutely put in a grave on the regular “nah it’ll be chill” aka smash fest 140ks

just change the job