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I have a early 90s Basso Ti Hardtail MTB bike (made by Litespeed I believe) which I bought from my room-mate back in the day. I've kept it going with regular maintenance and occasionally replacing various components. It's done duty as a mountain bike, city bike, commuter and child trailer hauler.

I recently decided it needs a complete rebuild and stripped everything off of it. In the process I found it has a dent in bottom surface of the downtube. The dent must have been there for years as I know I have not crashed it or smashed it into anything for at least a decade (I got older and spent more time on road bikes). I'm fairly certain the frame is OK as I've been riding it, but I'd like to verify that that it's not potentially going to fail on me.

I'm not going to be using this frame for any hard-core mountain riding with big impacts and I'm not a big guy - I weigh about 170lbs / 77 kilos.

Frame and dent

Depth of dent

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    Not a problem, so long as you check it every now and then.
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Nov 20, 2017 at 4:03
  • I would ride it. I would not downhill or jumps.
    – paparazzo
    Nov 20, 2017 at 12:30

1 Answer 1

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such dents happen from rocks flying off your front wheel and hitting the frame.The dent doesn't seem big enough to be dangerous as long, as you don't do some hard-core mountain biking, just make sure to check it from time to time, if dent gets bigger you should replace the frame.

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  • Or if you find a Ti-capable frame builder (they are few, mind, although there are some) you may even have the tube replaced.
    – Carel
    Nov 20, 2017 at 18:34
  • @Carel Seems the frame is OK, but if it was not It would become wall art. It's fast and light but I'm not spending lots of money on a 25 year old, 26" wheel, rim brake frame.
    – Argenti Apparatus
    Nov 20, 2017 at 23:07
  • @ArgentiApparatus : True, that's a valid reason.
    – Carel
    Nov 21, 2017 at 8:54

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