Salsa El Mariachi Rehab

This bike came in as a lost cause… Josh had taken it to a couple other shops that said “no hope” and one that said “can do!” Until they called back and said “can’t do…”

It was very much a nasty situation, as the bike had fallen off the car at highway speeds and the non-driveside dropout was destroyed and the actual part of the frame that the dropout rocker bolted to was quite amiss.

Pictures begin halfway through exploratory surgery, where we began to see why other shops had turned this bike away and why things were way more wonky than we had hoped.

Step 1, get a rocker dropout that was straight and not stripped. Step 2, cut the bent seatstay out of the bike and fabricate an internal sleeve to reinforce a splice to join in a new lower portion of stay. Step 3, join stay after aligning the rocker mount and installing the new, straight rocker. Step 4, align rear end and face dropouts. Step 5, get super lucky on a paint match and make it look like nothing ever happened!

Result: saved a bike that is almost impossible to replace due to the world of ever-evolving brake and dropout standards. It was quite the adventure, but the outcome was well worth it.