Cannondale R500 frame with damage to seat stay -is it rideable?

[Steve T]

My friend managed to get his chain and rear mech wrapped up and around his cassette and dented the seat stay at the back. He's decided not to ride the bike and I've stripped it for parts for my CAAD 4 but I wondered if anyone has experience of damaged alu frames and have attached some pictures for some advice?

The frame is in lovely condition and I was only admiring it the day before the mishap,it hasn't altered the shape but looks quite bad on the inner side. Any thoughts please?

sha

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Yes. If you can straighten the drop-outs, then the dentin the frame is neither here nor there.

I used to destroy a lot of frames for guarantee replacement purposes and we always had to saw out the BB and show the photo to the distributor. Often I would just remove the seat stays and see if I could still sit on the bike. No problema. On steel and alu bikes we used to bounce hard and then it would bend in the chainstays. With a carbon bike you could not break it that way at all, We had one in the shop for close to a year and many customers tried to bounce it out of existence.

Ride away, provided you don't do the crab walk.

 

[Steve T]

Yes. If you can straighten the drop-outs, then the dentin the frame is neither here nor there.

I used to destroy a lot of frames for guarantee replacement purposes and we always had to saw out the aBB and show the photo to the distributor. Often I would just remove the seat stays and see if I could still sit on the bike. No problema. On steel and alu bikes we used to bounce hard and then it would bend in the chainstays. With a carbon bike you could not break it that way at all, We had one in the shop for close to a year and many customers tried to bounce it out of existence.

Ride away, provided you don't do the crab walk.

The drop outs are actually straight and obviously the rear hanger did its job and was destroyed - when I looked at it I thought it had sheared off but its just the Cannondale design. thanks

 

[Drago]

Yes, it's perfectly liveable until such time as it collapses.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

Rideable? Are you kidding? Why would you want to be seen on a bike with a dent?

 

[Steve T]

Rideable? Are you kidding? Why would you want to be seen on a bike with a dent?

that's the beauty of it from a normal view you can barely see the dent.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Perfectly acceptable battle scar.