Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Edward's Waterford MTB


Edward contacted me this past summer wondering if there was a way to add a disk tab to his 1995 lugged, silver brazed Waterford frame. I know we used to get this question from time to time while I was at Waterford, and I think even Edward contacted them before he got in touch with me. I know Richard has no interest in doing these types of modifications, and if you're talking about just brazing or welding on a tab, for good reason. These bikes and the tubing weren't designed for the stresses that a disk brake is going to exert on the frame, and secondly, the tab would have to be silver brazed onto the stainless Henry James dropouts, not the strongest setup.
I proposed that I replace the dropouts and seat stays to better handle the new parts, and it should give this old bike quite a few more years of service.

After I got the paint off the old frame, I could see that there was some cracking starting in the seat stay braze joint. The old seat lug was also having trouble keeping the seat post tight, as you can see the tabs were pretty severely bent inwards and essentially bending the seat post bolt before it could tighten properly. This was another area that needed fixing.

Nice old school Henry James dropouts. Nothing wrong with them, just not gonna work with a disk tab.

Here you can see the new Paragon chain stay mount disk dropouts after all the modifications. I reused the chain stays, they're pretty unique, with asymmetrical bends and a round oval profile.

This picture should probably be after the next one, but here goes. The new seat stays with tons of clearance for big tires.
The old seat stays had no bend and clearance for maybe a skinny 2.1 tire? I noticed when I got the painted bike back from Edward that the paint was rubbed off on the insides of the seat stays.

Here's the new seat lug and top tube derailleur routing.

The old Waterford bottom bracket and the new braze ons for the rear disk brake. If you look closely, you can see the "bumps" I added on the inside of the chain stays for tire clearance.

Another shot of the tire clearance "bumps".

When I reused the chain stays, I needed to take some material off the minor end of the stays to account for the extra length of the new dropouts.

The completed project, along with the old bits and an extra set of Paragon dropouts that I'll be using on my 29'er at some point!
Cheers,
Dave

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