anything i can do with this mangled Brooks B17?
 

Got knocked on the rear spokes by another rider and went flying. Bike smacked the pavement hard, ruining my two-month-old Brooks B17. Unfortunately I did not get the other rider's contact information. After dusting myself off, I thought it was just dislodged from the seatpost bracket, told him everything was a-ok and he rode off. Once I took it off I saw the mangled rails. Anyway is there anything I can do with this thing? Or am I saddled with just a hip cyclist's desk ornament?

http://i.imgur.com/RPHny.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tdZYb.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ORg0l.jpg http://i.imgur.com/d5IHH.jpg

You can buy a new frame http://www.brooksengland.com/catalog...bly+-+BYB+297/ or attempt to straighten yours out. Either way you might need a few of these http://www.brooksengland.com/catalog...ia)+-+BYB+275/.

It's a Brooks! Just bend it back into shape and ride on!

If you don't fancy the idea of buying a new frame, rivets, etc., you might contact Simon Firth, in Philly (hanfordcycles@gmail.com). He's now an appointed Brooks repair man for the US, and could, no doubt, fix it for you.

I've no idea how much he'd charge, but I don't suppose that it'd be anything like as expensive as sending it back here to UK for repair.

Great, I'll email Mr. Firth. Hope to get some resale value out of this thing (I've already ordered a new saddle, wanted a different color any way).

+1

Clamp it back into the seatpost and straighten it out. Ask someone with more muscles than you or me, if necessary (I do that unashamedly, any time I realize my wimpy build is not enough for the task).

Hope you didn't get a concussion. Those tend to accumulate, and more than 3 or 4 in a lifetime can lead, with high likelihood, to an Alzheimer's-like dementia.

It is totaled beyond repair. Send it to me for disposal. :-)

I agree. It looks like a good whack or two with a dead blow hammer on the nose will set it back into alignment.

-G

Id say contact the repair dude and then tell us what he charges just in case. Or get the new frame. Those bars are practically impossible to bend back in shape, at least my mortals like us!

That's why god created dudes like this:
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=273308

Its the standard basic model .. you can drill out the rivets, so separated
you can bend the frame back into shape, or buy a replacement frame.. .. then re rivet..

Pop-rivets will be so much easier, than hand hammered copper..

figure out what your time is worth.. vs just buying a new saddle..

Please report back what he says. I am curious on this.

And if you decided to offer it up for sale, I'd be interested.

-G

I was quoted a repair cost of $66, including $10 to ship it back to me in California. I will probably not go through with it.

So, I think I am interested in selling it as-is. The rails are very rigid (I'm scratching my head as to how the fall could have bent them that much) and I'm not too interested in the labor of pounding them back into shape…

And no concussion, wroomwroomoops, thanks for your concern. Head didn't touch the ground, I have a knack for this (same thing happened when I got hit by a car as a pedestrian in college).

I don’t know a lot about Brooks saddles, but it looks to me that the frame is racked not bent. That would explain why you feel the crash wasn’t forceful enough to bend the frame as much as it shows. I would be tempted to grab that nose block with an adjustable wrench and twist it around and see if it squared back up. It’s a little hard to see in your photos but at very least loosen up the tension screw and see if it starts going back to straight.

$66.00 certainly seems a lot for a simple job like that (including supply frame and rivets, of course). I charge only £12.50, inc. postage (usually about £2.20), here in UK, but trans-Atlantic shipping would almost certainly make this an uneconomic proposition for someone in US, I'm afraid.

At least I now know how much it'd cost 'nearer to home', for a US repair. I think Brooks charge $98.00 (inc. shipping).

God didn't create that body. Synthol did. :thumb: