How hard is it to fix a bent-in seat stay on one side?
Hello!
I just made my first bike purchase. I've ridden bikes a lot and worked on them but never bought my own, and I messed up. It is a 1978 Schwinn Le Tour III and I paid $60 because bike prices are insane where I am. The seller warned me of a flat spot on the rear wheel, but I found a replacement wheel for $15 so I didn't really care too much. ANYWAY, I was dumb and didn't inspect the bike well enough because I didn't notice that the frame is bent (even after riding it).
I believe it is called the "seat stay" and it is bent in on one side (maybe one centimeter?) but NOT CRUMPLED. I rode it a while after I bought it and I attributed the wobble to the messed up wheel, but clearly that is not the case. How hard is it to fix a bent-in seat stay on one side? What kind of tools does it require? Will a bike shop do it, and if so, would it be expensive? I bought this bike on a budget and am disappointed in myself for making a mistake like this, and I'm not eager to dump too much money into the thing.
Thank you in advance,
Jor

P.S. Sorry I can't upload a picture of it.

This guy shows probably what will work for you and fairly inexpensive to do the job. Check out some other YouTube videos for more ideas.

"I rode it a while after I bought it and I attributed the wobble to the messed up wheel, but clearly that is not the case" Jor3

I think the wobble and the bent stay are not interlocked (excepting they both might have happened by the same incident).

Bent frames and forks tend to have constant types of problems, maybe proportional to speed. The bike pulls to one side or you have to really work the bars to make the bike go straight.

Wheel issues often have a cyclic nature (with each revolution...) to their influence. Often independent of pedaling. (There are a few really odd wheel problem possibilities like way too low spoke tensions on a front wheel that makes the bike wobble under braking only)

Can you better describe the "wobble" you feel? Pedaling or not? Speed? Have you looked over the rest of the frame/fork for incident damage? One of the marks of a pro is when they decide to not do something. Andy

You can upload pics to your gallery, you just can't post pics in a thread or link until you get 10 posts.
If you upload pics, a regular member can link to them for you.

You also can just put your pics on imgur.com or some other similar site and just type the URL into the text of your message. If the spam filters block it, then remove the https:// and also put a space on both side of any dot "." in the URL. Use the sharing link to the pic.

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...the only thing essential to the quality of your bicycle's ride, related to the seatstay (and whether it is bent or straight), is where the rear dropout ends up in position to the rest of the bike. I have had a couple of frames that had some issues with the seat stays, and one of them even had the seat stays on each side of slightly different lengths. But they were eventually adjusted to ride fine, with no "wobble".

So as stated above, you might have a different thing going on. And your stay problem might not be much of a problem at all.

Hey Andy,
There is a "wobble" once per revolution that I'm guessing is caused by the rim, but I think it is exaggerated by the bend in the seat stay because the whole wheel is unaligned. It also looks like that is the only damage to the frame.
I think you might be right about "deciding not to do something" about the stay but I will probably replace the rim.
Thank you for the advice

I think you are right about the stay problem. After a long ride today I adjusted the angle of the wheel and it helped the stay problem. The "wobble" is from the rim but it was being increased by the angle of the wheel.
Thank you for the tip

...I know you said you are strapped for cash, but the way I would work on figuring this out would be to start with a pair of wheels that are true and dished correctly in the rear, so they run true in the center of the fork and rear dropouts of a bike you're certain of. Put them in your new frame, and eyeball what they look like, in terms of running centered and vertical. Then I would go from there.

It's usually not a big job to cold bend a frame with some minor misalignments, but unless you've done it before, you should get someone who has and knows more of less what he is doing to kind of show you. Otherwise, don't just start randomly bending something, from assumptions made by watching Youtube. There's a relatively logical procedure to follow.

I wouldn't presume this bicycle is a write off this early in the process. And you can learn a lot from it.

I found a used rim for $15 that seems to be straight and true. It fits fine as long as I adjust the position in the dropout on one side (it seems a little sketchy but I don't mind). Maybe at some point I will get the frame bent back, but I think for now this has solved my problem.
Thank you again for the advice