I'm looking to buy this bike and I was wondering if the fork looked bent in a little. I'm not usually great at telling damage like this, but something about the fork just looks a little odd in the first picture.

Maybe... take it out of the bike and see ..

I haven't bought it yet, those are the pictures the seller has up. He says he's trued the rims, added new cables, and disassembled and cleaned the bike. Obviously he knows bikes, so I'm sure he would've noticed a bent fork.

It's impossible to render any meaningful, opinion from a photo like either of yours. It might be possible with a straight broadside angle, but even then not assured.

You have two choices. You can test ride the bike and see how it tracks riding no hands, or you can put a straight edge on line with the head tube and see if the upper straight sections of the fork blades are in line. Best bet would be to do both.

The brake cables look kind of sloppy, I'm not sure how good a mechanic he is. The front cantilever brake yoke cable seems to have slack. But that's all fixable.

I wonder if he's done anything to it. The bars are angled oddly, and still have old foam "tape". He supposedly trued the wheels, and serviced the bearings, but didn't fix the downward angle on the saddle or level the bars? The chain is half on and half off the big chainring, and the front shift lever angle is odd--is it halfway between the big and small chainrings?

The fork looks okay, but it's hard to tell from the angle.

Those photos are quite wide angle, with the camera quite close to the bike. Have him stand the bike up, zoom all the way out and stand back at least 15 or 20 feet. He should stand straight out from the front fork to take the picture. Then there won't be as much distortion in the picture.

More photos
from the photobucket album. The seller didn't even bother to get the chain onto the chainring. The small ring seems to have all the recent usage. Does it even shift to the big ring? !
The front brake photo in the album seems to show an old yoke cable, with a shiny new brake cable. But the cable is kind of mangled below the clamp, like he clamped it way too low, then adjusted it later. (It's probably still too low.)

I thought the brake pads looked old fashioned, with four sections instead of one big pad with slits in it. But a google image search found these for 99 cents. The nuts holding the pads don't look new either. You'll likely want to replace the pads with better ones.

The rear derailleur cable looks old, but it'll work okay.



With no tires, you can't test ride. How convenient.

Thanks, I didn't even notice those things. The seller has tons of other bikes for sale on Craigslist right now and they all say "Disassembled & cleaned. New brake cables. Brakes & shifting adjusted. Wheels trued. Chain & other moving parts(derailleurs etc.) cleaned & lubed". So unless he does all those things himself, he's losing a ton of money especially since he's selling it for $30 and all the others for less than $100. And yeah, I did think about not being able to to test ride with no tires. I guess I should just keep looking.

Fork looks fine to me. 2nd pic shows upper legs to be parallel with headtube.

Hard to tell from those crappy pics but it does look straight to me too. I agree with rm-rf too, the bike looks like a 'before' pic when nothing has been adjusted. All fixable of course. So he's asking $30 for the bike? Seems like a decent enough deal to me if everything works reasonable well.

Probably the least of your concerns!

Yeah, $30. I mean it's at least worth that in parts and if I brought another person with me I could test the front derailleur even without tires. I guess since the fork seems to be straight I'll at least check it out.

The rear derailleur is going for more than the bike itself: Vintage Suntour V T Luxe Rear Derailleur Short Cage Classic Road Touring | eBay

If you have a knowledgeable friend that can come along and look at the bike that would be good, because if it needs some major stuff done and you cant do your own work it could end up getting expensive. But if it's all in pretty good order and all it really needs are minor adjustments and tires/tubes it could be a decent deal.

The fork looks bent to me. I have to agree it also looks unfixed and derelict.

If it is bent, it doesn't appear to be much. How does it ride? If it rides acceptably well, you should be able to get several more decades of use from it.

I won't make a guess about the fork, but the seller obviously doesn't know much about bikes or just doesn't give a flip. Of course for $30 you can't expect much....

30 dollars! A good deal for someone that likes working on bikes. Maybe you can ride it as-is, with just some cable adjustments, oil the chain, adjust the saddle and bars, and new tires (maybe new rim tape if any spoke holes are showing at the tape edge)

An overhaul on a bike like this is pretty straightforward. I've used Park Tool's repair web site to find out how to do stuff. But it'll require tools -- cable cutters, bottom bracket tool, cone wrenches, pedal wrench, etc. The costs add up for a one-time overhaul. You have to like doing stuff like that.

Yes, worth more than $30. If nothing else, that's at least $30 worth of cleaning.

Thank you everyone

I'm gonna check it out Thursday. I realize he hasn't done what he says he has but I can do most things myself and I need a project anyway.

What does "W/O HP." on the rims mean?

I think it means it's a high pressure clincher rim

At least that's what I got from this thread: https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-me...raya-rims.html

Craig's list = go over and look , in person ..

I can't do that right now because the roads are covered in ice, that's why I said I'm going thursday

Its the advice of The Craig, Himself , I'm just restating it.

W/O -- Wired-on which is the more proper term for what we call clinchers. BITD, clincher referred to a different design, that used overlapping and interlocking flaps to stay on.

Here's a link to a page of a 1938 tire and rim catalog where you'll see the W/O, or wired on terminology.
HP -- high pressure. I continued to use wired-on for non-tubular tires but 2-3 generations out nobody knows what I man, so I've signed up for the clincher club.

Same here.

It will be an interesting ride though without tires! The OP has allow for tire and tube expense as well which easily could exceed the cost of the bike.