In a message dated 1/25/2001 5:35:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, monkey37@bluemarble.net writes:
<< After sandblasting the frame I was inspecting it and found 3 different paces with incomplete brazing, one the upper headtube lug, one at the seattube to BB juncture, and the last one on rear brake bridge. I was kinda shocked since I had just finished reading an interview with Joe Stark in the Riv Reader and he talked all about Trek's quality control. >>
Yes, let's not romanticize Treks too much. They were a relatively high production product and had as many glitches and goobers as other mass produced bikes.
I was the first representative for Trek in the Southeastern USA, when I started with them in the late 1970s my territory was from Wash, DC to the tip of Florida!
I remember a trip to Waterloo in which we were touring the factory and in one huge room, I saw stacks & rows of frames in high high racks. I noticed they were all heavily rusted to a uniform, all-over bright reddish brown! The fellow giving the tour (Maybe Tim Isaac, ex-Match guy & now at Litespeed!) said that didn't matter as they dipped them in nearby cauldrons of striper right before they were painted.. It seemed too much to believe. Where are you when we need you, JP Weigle? (Frame Saver)
The main factory housed the frame making operations and I was interested in the bottom bracket /frame tubing assembly technique... They clamped a bottom bracket shell in a fixture, slathered everything in sight with paste flux, then had a kind of clamping gizmo that the seat or down tube were clamped into in.. the operator would grab a lever and the tube was ram rodded into the female socket of the bb shell with some heavy force! It damned well was made to fit!
But despite these seemingly crude techniques, the bikes in general did very well and I am sure a very small percentage gave trouble (Unlike the snap and pop OCLVs of later years!)
Dale Brown