Eh. So I got home from work and looked at the dents again. Comparing them with pics of dented frames from old threads on C&V, I've concluded they aren't that bad, may have just been the result of a poorly placed Kryptonite lock or something. But as I was looking the bike over, I did the string test, and took off the wheels and checked the bike out from more angles. The frame is ever so subtly bent, and the fork is bent less subtly. The top tube has a variation of about 2-3 mm in height (see pics, I don't know if you can see it easily, but that's me with an absolutely straight level sitting on the top tube). The two sides of the front fork are not aligned with each other, and the fork is a few degrees off vertical. So the whole frame is slightly off-kilter. It's easy to miss it unless you're looking for it, but it does affect the ride. I did Sheldon Brown's "hands-off" test and the bike pulled sharply to the right as I was riding it. I did the string test (twice) and the variation from side to side was between 1/8" - 1/4". Sighting down the frame from front to back, I could see that the front and rear wheel sit at a slight angle to one another; the chainwheels are perfectly straight but sit at a slight angle to the bottom bracket, hence the FD rubbing.
So I contacted the seller, asking for my money back, and got a somewhat sympathetic email saying, essentially, "you've had the bike for almost two weks, it wasn't that way when I sold it to you". Bulll****. I just didn't have time, with work and family, to track down these problems till now - especially since the bike spent five days out of those two weeks sitting in a shop. The guy I bought it from was not an experienced or very careful cyclist, and seems to have used the bike as a beater around town. That's pretty much what it rides like now.
Anyway, I don't know that I'll get my money back, and ther's not much I can do about it. So I have to think about getting the frame and fork straightened. Do you think that's possible? Or have I just learned a very expensive lesson about buying used bikes?
(BTW, I don't know why 2 of the pics went in upside-down - those are all pics of the top tube)
Thanks for any advice, etc.
Roy
