Marcus- The story I was told is that Raleigh had suffered from too many failures at the stay/cap seam and they finally decided to fix the issue. Perhaps going overboard is some people's eyes. I can personally attest to the stay cap plates cracking at the brazed seam. When I worked in the late 1970s at the Raleigh LBS I saw many and my first International had one side crack. My take on the reasons the finished style was problematic are two fold. First Raleigh's brazing QC was lacking consistency and used very aggressive "cleaning" solutions to treat the frame prior to painting. I have been told that caustic stuff left behind in tubes was a problem. Second that the finishers were a bit heavy handed with the files (or grinders) and sometimes thinned the stay's wall so much that not much braze (or steel) was left. I saw flat spots on the stay from files drawn poorly more then a few times. The caps left oversized eliminated one of these problems.
> Dale Brown sent a link to a Raleigh Pro with oversized seat stay caps. I
> have always thought the oversized caps looked sloppy, like the builder
> could not be bothered to do the work necessary to get the caps flush with
> the stays. Is this just another esthetic approach to ending the seat
> stays? Is there more to it than that?
>
> http://cyclesdeoro.com/
>
> Best regards,
> Marcus Helman
> Detroit, MI
>
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Andrew R Stewart
Rochester, NY