Last week I noticed a surface crack on one side of my old Dawes Galaxy's forks. It could have been there a while and I wouldn't have noticed it. While taking apart the front of the bike so that I could get at the crack to repair it, the whole thing just fell off - you can see from the pics perhaps that it seems to be quite an old crack.

Now, I need to get it repaired. A couple of years ago a rear dropout snapped in half on this same frame and I just got a car mechanic to weld it for me, no problems at all. I spoke to a guy who builds bikes and does a lot of steel work and he said that he couldn't weld this kind of metal, and that it needs to be brazed on instead.

Oh and the handlebar stem is frozen, too so that makes it hard to access the fork on its own.

Here are some pictures. I've not embedded them because they're quite large so that you can see the area clearly.

The crack as I found it:
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/8...f8095large.jpg
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/6...f8096large.jpg

The separated fork arm:
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/2...f8100large.jpg

And the bike-side of the fracture:
http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/7...f8098large.jpg

Inside the cavity are a lot of crumbly deposits and so on. The fracture is clearly very jagged but no metal was lost and both halves fit together neatly.


"What shall I do?!?!"

thanks