If I carry on riding this?

I have very little clearance for the rear tyre on my Trek 6700.
I guess this is what's caused this damage. Although there is *enough* clearance normally, riding through the sticky, muddy quagmire that is Kent in the Winter, I think (guess) it's the abrasive, gritty mud sticking to the tyre that's caused this.

Long term, I assume I'm going to need a new frame anyway but is this safe to carry on using for a while, in your opinions?







EDIT: Sorry, should add, the pictures are taken from inside the chainstays, looking out in case it's not obvious.

You opinions would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris

Firstly, statement of the obvious - change your tyres & don't let it get any worse.

To answer your question - you've almost answered it yourself TBH. You said it's probably winter sludge damage - it's July!!  It's been OK for at least 3 months......

If it were mine I'd ride it. In fact i'd ride if it was yours too
The damage is fairly superficial & is on the inside of the non drive side chainstay if I'm looking at it right.
The chain stays need to be strong both laterally & vertically, but vertically is more important for life preservation.
The only time this damage will really be to detriment of the frame will be when you are really putting the power down & then it would need to be so weak that it folds despite the wheel axle making the whole rear end nice & stiff -seriously unlikely from those piccies IMHO.

Hope that helps!

I can't give you professional opinions or guarantees, but I'd ride it & not give it a second thought.
(but change the tyres )

I think the fact that your asking suggests you think there is a possibility and i imagine there is. But if it does go i cant see it being too bad, a mate had a marin and when he was riding down spooky wood in scotland the chain stay snapped on rear of his full sus near to where yours is, all the happened is it made a horrible noise and he had to walk back, didnt cause a crash, I would avoid big drops etc but if it were me id keep riding it

Thanks guys.
So, what you're saying is that it will snap and maim me on my next ride out, so I need to rush straight out and buy the new on-one carbon XC frame? Ok, I'll go break the bad news to my Wife    




In all seriousness, thanks for the detailed replies. I need to run a large tyre on the rear, to hold my fat carcasse up so I may just ride it for the next 2-3 months as is, checking after every ride, and then look to change the frame nearer the Autumn.
I was worried about it snapping and causing me a mischief so it's nice to know that it's not that serious.
Sound like a plan?

Should add really, it's a fantastic bike but it does give a very harsh ride. I've learned to live with it but a frame change would be no bad thing anyway, assuming I can use nearly all the kit from my Trek to keep the cost to a minimum (I've spent over 4.2 Billion pounds on cycling in the last 3 months alone.)*

Cheers,

Chris


* Warning, post contains exaggeration

Your damn right that is horrifically dangerous ... It could implode at any point in the future sending shards of metal into your legs meaning you cant work !  

looks fine to me matey, as above, the damage is in the lateral and not the vertical plane and so in a position where the usual vertical forses will not exert too much pressure. It looks to me like the tyre has rubbed but not due to mud build up. Is there any sideways movement in your wheel bearings?

Give the wheel a wiggle from the top when it's tightly in the frame. If there's much play then it will allow contact under heavy acceleration / fat tyres / any stress really. If the wheels are cup and cone type this might need a bit of fettling but is easy to do with skinny spanners and a bit of patience.

Quoted from alkali

looks fine to me matey, as above, the damage is in the lateral and not the vertical plane and so in a position where the usual vertical forses will not exert too much pressure. It looks to me like the tyre has rubbed but not due to mud build up. Is there any sideways movement in your wheel bearings?

This technical information would gain considerably more credability were the author able to spell the word "forces"

I'd ride and forget.  In fact i doubt i'd have noticed it in the first place...

If ridden correctly it will be covered in mud and therefore out of sight, out of mind...

Quoted from pittgoat

This technical information would gain considerably more credability were the author able to spell the word "forces"

I'd ride and forget.  In fact i doubt i'd have noticed it in the first place...

Quite rite,dunno how that happen,my post r usually fairly well ritten.feel the forse

Thanks all  

Thinking about it, I did rebuild the back wheel a while ago, following a rough guide on t'interweb.

When I say "rebuild," it sounds a bit flash. What actually happened was that I took it to bits, dropped the bearings all over the floor, cursed a few times, killed some weird dust seal thing inside, negating a trip to Senacre cycles for a replacement, cleaned it all and then somwhow managed to stuff it all back together.
There is an outside chance that the axle isn't quite a precisely centered as it could've been   although gear shifting was fine so I thought it was Ok.
I'll have another play with it...

EDIT: And to add, the reason I stripped the rear wheel was because the play in the bearings was so bad that the wheel would rock from side to side which, on reflection, probably didn't help too much (I'm new at this, remember   )

I'm with Tinc on this, FFS change the rear tyre to something a tad slimmer.
If you keep that tyre on it'll be thru the aluminium tube wall before you know it, then it will definitely fail.

Just pump a smaller section tyre up more to avoid the pinch flat issues.

My guess is that frame's only good for a 2.1-2.2 at most, & I guess you're running a 2.35 or so?

Also, not all 2.2's are the same, I had the exact same issue on my last Scott Scale running a 2.2 'Specialized Adrenaline' tyre, as the outer treads were chuffin hooj !!
I rode that for a good year on smaller tyres with no more damage/cracks to that area though, so you just gotta swap tyres.

No sense of adventure, there's plenty of room for that 2.35 (how did you guess that???   ) in there   just needs a little more fettling...

I'm away for a week now, or as of tomorrow anyway, but when I get back I'll get a picture of the tyre in situ. I think there is sufficent clearance, the more I think about it, the more I think it's down to that wheel rebuild.
I seem to remember reading something about the number of turns of the nut on each end of the axle had to be the same as it was to start with, and to only remove the nut from one side. Or something like that anyway.
Obviously that made no sense at all to me so I just took all the nuts off, reassembled and hoped for the best