Yes, the casting seam is clearly visible on the under side of the seat lug if you blow up the picture.
Obviously, the work on the entire bike is shoddy. I would just give it to Goodwill, along with the equally shoddy Masi double-plate on eBay. My only question is, why would you buy such a shoddy bike in the first place?
Louis Schulman Doing a sanity check in Tampa, Florida
John Betmanis wrote:
> At 06:52 PM 07/09/2007 -0400, Bianca Pratorius wrote:
>> Here are the photos I promised of the 3Rensho.
>> Note that the seat lug is much more refined then the
>> head tube lugs.
>>
>> http://www.flickr.com/
>
> Looking at the seat lug (lug 5), I can see a bit of a gusset that could
> have been filed out if the builder had taken the trouble, making me think
> that the seat lug was not thinned either. In my opinion, that's how all the
> lugs were cast originally with little or no finish filing done. It just
> seems that the head lugs are thicker to start with. If you're going to have
> the frame refinished, examine it carefully after it's stripped to see if
> you should really do anything. This is probably something that has become a
> lot bigger in your mind than it actually is.
>
> John Betmanis
> Woodstock, Ontario
> Canada