View Single Post
Old 04-26-07, 03:42 PM
  #23  
me thinkst
mofo
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 152
Mentioned: 0 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 0 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 0 Times in 0 Posts
step 1, strip bike... wheels, cranks and forks aren't really going to help you in this process, chainrings are sharp & could hurt you, wheels may be untrue & not good to align to, and anything else could get damaged by a 2x4, missle or whatever. that's my .02.

tip 1, is to close a large sized crescent wrench on the flat part if the track end. slide a pipe over the wrench as a lever and you can tweak the ends back into place.
listen to the frame. if it starts sounding like you're overstressing a particular joint, stop.
tip 2, is to use a seamstress tape to measure the frame distances. hold it at the end of the track end and measure to the headtube, both sides. This is easy with the seamstress tape since it's cloth and can wrap around the frame's angles. measure the frame from various points and adjust it till its' smurphy.
tip 3, you can make tube blocks with scraps of lumber to protect the tubing. take 2 pcs of wood, screw them together. drill a hole through the wood where they meet (the hole sized to the diameter of the seatstay for instance), unscrew. now you can use those blocks around the frame member to protect it from the sledgehammer mentioned above.
Also, if you can find a really big flat surface (like momma's granite countertop), lay the frame on it's side and measure various points of the frame off the surface, and compare right to left. don't use the sledgehammer here though...

now someone's gonna tell me i'm full of $hit, but i've used these techniques in the past with varying degrees of success.
me thinkst is offline