Originally Posted by
Sculptor7
Checked again to see if wheels where properly in the forks and I believe the front wheel may not have been fully in. Read somewhere that it is a good idea to install wheels with bike on ground to avoid that happening and I had done it while the bike was in the rackstand. Not sure if that has solved the problem as I work in the basement and did not have time to lug the bike outside yet.
In regard to the shifting problem I notice that the chain does have a degree of wear but it is slight. I bent the guard away from the chainring a bit and I also re-seated the rear axle in the dropouts. With the chain on the middle cog I was able to consistently shift back and forth between the large and small chainrings without any derail to the outside or inside. However, when I put the chain on the smallest cog and tried shifting the front derailleur it ran off the large ring again to the outside after a few tries. I am wondering about the seating of the rear axle in the dropouts. Because of the way the derailleur butts up against the hanger bolt in order to have the wheel centered between the chainstays the left side of the axle is very near the limit of the drop out slot instead of seated back to the rear.
In regard to the checks for straightness I am sorry now that I did not perform them more thoroughly when I had everything stripped down to the frame. All I can say is that things looked straight visually. As an artist I have a pretty good eye for such things but perhaps that is not enough.
There are other possibilities for steering issues other then a bent frame, for example, if you didn't remove the bars, the bars themselves could be bent, the bars may not be perfectly parallel to the fork crown, some idiot could have messed up the headset trying to save $10 at the bike shop, you have no idea....
String test the frame, a bent frame doesn't mean that the bike is toast, it means it needs a frame shop with an alignment table to align it, probably no more then about $50 or so. If the frame is straight, then take a drywall square put it so that the one side is at the stem and the other end at the bars, and see if the bars are the same on both sides, it's possible that someone crashed into something and bent the bar, rather then the frame. With the same square, run it along from the wheel to the bars, to make sure the bars are square to the wheel.
If the bars are okay and aligned, get a shop to replace the headset, because someone probably did a home headset repair and goofed it up....
As for the chain issue, a frame out of alignment could do that, so could a bent ring, and improperly installed BB, the wrong BB spindle, the wrong cotters, improperly installed cotters, improperly installed rings.