3Rensho frame repair

I do the occasional frame repair, but since I'm always busy building frames I turn down allot of repairs or forward them on to the Yellow Jersey here in town as they are much faster. Usually I just do stuff for friends, or more often now friends of friends, or stuff that really interested in. Awile back Roberto contacted me and wanted me to replace the downtube in his 3Rensho. Usually I reccomend against such large repairs since its a fair amount of time (and thus money) to replace the tube, and then there is the whole re-paint that has to be done. In this case it was a fairly rare frame (large 58 cm 3Rensho track frame) and it had a good story to go along with it so we decided to repair it.

Aparantley while the bike was locked in NYC a thief attempted to steal it by cutting through the downtube. Fortunatley he was caught in the act, but unfortunatley he had already cut through the downtube. !?








Some photos of the repair in progress:










After fresh new paint, good as new...or maybe better than new?