Originally Posted by noglider

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.