The rise and fall of the mighty GTO

It started out as a Karakoram, made out of Reynolds tubing. A few years ago it was unearthed by Retro Guru Woz, abandonned in his dungeon. The shape was pretty bad, the only two things usable being the frame and the rear hoop. Took me a week to work the BB out and then it was ready for a re-spray. Never liked GTs that much but kinda fell in love with this one, despite it being a heavy iron gate.

After that we had a few nice years together until last summer it started making weird noises. Checked and replaced the usual stuff as the BB, pedals and so on. Repacked the headset. The creaking was still there. Especially climbing hills out of the saddle. Checked the frame a few times but couldn't see anything, so kept on riding pretty much ignoring it all. Then, one day the whole thing just cracked and went sideways under me...

Luckily I wasn't all that far frome home when it finally gave up the ghost so could get back rolling very slowly, slightly sideways...

Crikey. :shock: Didn't go at the weld. Oh well, at least you have a wall hanger with a story now.

Easy come, easy go...

Always good to join the "cracked frame club" and tell the tale of
how you road home in a headwind blizzard stuck in top gear like a hard man with just the
derailleur cable holding the frame together

I wouldn't say easy, dear Warwick... I spent a lot of time and effort sanding the rust down and sawing that damn NDS BB cup out and now I got another box full of parts no good for any other of my projects, since this one was a tad too long to start with...

Just get it welded and keep going! Not much of a problem eh?

Been playing with that idea all winter. Got an old MIG somewhere, so why not. Might give it a try some day.

Been sittin around checkin old pics missin my old GT few days ago more and more leaning towards the idea of welding that crack back together. Especially this old pic of the first build up right after respray got me goin.

Do it, all good old bikes deserve to live on and it sounds like she means something to you

The crack and the new gloves. Any job to be successful and enjoyable needs a pair of decent gloves...

Re:

The top pic clearly shows that this is a bike that gets ridden a lot. It'd be a shame to throw it away because of a crack that can be fixed.

Considering the location of the crack (right at the edge of the dropout itself), you may want to add in a little triangle to reinforce that area.