Well folks, I sanded away the paint from around the bottom of crown and here's what I found (see pics). Yep those look like cracks in the fork crown metal to me. Damn. Here's the thing, it will be difficult / expensive to replace this fork. First of all it's a nice light lugged steel fork - designed to go with the Reparto Corse frame of course. Regardless I'm not sure anybody makes anything that would replace it. It's got a 1 inch threaded steerer tube. That is hard enough to find these days, I went to couple of places with used stuff (BikeWorks and Recycled Cycles in Seattle) and they had a few 1 inch threaded forks with canti bosses, but the Crown to Axle distances were way too high. They probably came off cheap hybrids is why. They were easily 1 to 2 cms longer than my fork. My fork has a Crown to Axle distance of 380mm. I don't want to upset the geometry of my racing cyclocross bike by throwing in a fork thats 1 to 2 cms too tall. Even if I'm willing to go 1 inch threadless and replace my headset and stem, I looked around online seems like any new fork I could get has a crown to axle of ~400mm. Why? Are we all supposed to be running 2.1 inch knobbies on our cross bikes?

If any body has or knows of a source for a fork that would work for me I'm all ears. Otherwise I'll have to look at having Rodriguez make me a new fork for $$. I'm trying to stay low budget on this rebuild!