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Old 11-30-10 | 10:55 AM
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noglider
aka Tom Reingold
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Joined: Jan 2009
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From: New York, NY, and High Falls, NY, USA

Bikes: 1962 Rudge Sports, 1971 Raleigh Super Course, 1971 Raleigh Pro Track, 1974 Raleigh International, 1975 Viscount Fixie, 1982 McLean, 1996 Lemond (Ti), 2002 Burley Zydeco tandem

My mother saw a wheel-less UO-8 on the ground under a highway. She picked it up and gave it to me. The front end was bent in the classic front-end collision way, i.e. the downtube and seattube were bent so that the headtube was too vertical.

I straightened it in the way my bosses at the bike shop taught me. This bike shop had a tendency to buy a minimum of tools.

- We took a long stiff solid (i.e. not hollow) bar and stuck it between two brick buildings. (This was in Manhattan, NYC.)
- Stick the head tube through the bar. Keep the headset cups in the head tube, to prevent distortion at the ends.
- Using the frame itself as a lever, bend the frame.

It worked, though I didn't bend it quite enough, resulting in a slightly too steep head angle, which was OK. Unfortunately, the head tube was also twisted, so the bike had a slight tendency to pull to one side. I was able to ride it no-hands, so the tendency was very slight.

I rode this bike as my commuter for years.
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Tom Reingold, tom@noglider.com
New York City and High Falls, NY
Blogs: The Experienced Cyclist; noglider's ride blog

“When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments.” — Elizabeth West, US author

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