I recently joined the forums here looking for a safe place to hang out and maybe find like minded people, too.

I thought I would relay what happened to my bike after I had put a homemade rack on the front.

I guess going over bumps without me being able to relieve weight on the front fork caused it to bend back some.

That caused the steering to be affected in a bad way. The caster, I think was lost and the bike was hard to steer. Normally the steering wants to slightly settle straight ahead. But mine wanted to settle to either side.

Fortunately, I had an old car on hand along with a concrete building block and some dimensional lumber. I was able to jam the forks both together at the same time under the bumper and push hard on the rear homemade wooden rack to undo the bend.