Always amazing how cruddy a frame can get, inside and out, even without extreme use
 

Over the winter, I decided to fully tear down, clean, and rebuild my gravel bike. It’s a Fairlight Secan 853 frame with carbon fork that is almost 5 years old.
It had been one year since I had fully torn down and rebuilt it. I do not intentionally ride it in the rain because gravel in the rain sucks. it sees some very tame single track maybe 10 times a year and at worst that dirt is tacky.
I sprayed it down probably six times this past year and scrubbed it probably twice.

All that to say that it is not ridden in extreme conditions and is kept in excellent mechanical order, but I also don’t tear down and rebuild it frequently or do frequent deep cleans.

Each time I tear this bike or my main road bike frame, I am always surprised at just how rough I am on the frames even though given the number of bikes I have and ride, none get an insane amount of miles.


I firmly believe my bikes are tools that are meant to be used, and even though I in part select them for appearance, I am comfortable with them getting chips and scratches from use. But when seeing the yearly changes, I definitely allow myself to think twice about not using ride wrap or helicopter tape!

I am pretty sure my frame weighs 100g more than it did when I first bought it because there is some limestone cinder dust that is permanently fused to the frame like concrete now. That isn't coming off without taking paint and possibly steel with it!
It’s funny to think that I don’t even consider that dust when riding and breathing it in though.


Some new BTLOS 35 mm carbon wheels were added along with 45 mm Continental TerraSpeed tires. Wolftooth 5 mm thick bar tape was also added, and a new chain. Oh, and my 48– 32 Praxis Zante crank that now has a 4IIII left arm power meter.
Really exited to have the carbon wheels and power meter because now I am going to be fast!** <--sarcasterisks







I would say this post is just late night drunk ramblings, but I don’t drink anymore and it's morning, so I guess it’s just some pre-caffeine morning ramblings.

Useless without pics. ;)

How does it look inside the BB and tubes?

Installing mudguards will change your perspective.

Dirty with a sludge of dust/grease and a hint of superficial rust.
But the external BB cups cleaned up fine and it still has plenty of life, and the BB shell as well as seat tube cleaned up easily with just some WD40 spray and a towel stuffed in then rotated around.

I recently had the seatpost and fork out of my almost 52 year old Bob Jackson. It looked fine down in the tubes as far as I could see. In its service life, it first was pretty much my only road bike for 30+ years, and I'm guessing that it only received some Framesaver after a couple of decades. After the last re-paint 4 years ago, I don't think I re-did the framesaver. These days it gets 4-500 miles/year and is not the wet weather bike (when it was it had fenders on). But I do live in a wet salty environment, so I wonder if I should be framesaving again.

These days my wet weather winter road bike is the titanium Habanero, running with fenders. It stays pretty clean and any build-up on the frame is easy to remove. For the rides that mix in more than a bit of singletrack with the pavement I have another titanium bike, my old Litespeed MTB. That bike has wheels with studded tires, no fenders, and it's the one that gets out when the roads are nasty and salty. I'm actually surprised how well these two bikes have held up.