lostforawhile

After going over this Schwinn with a fine tooth comb, I discovered the front fork is slightly tweaked at the bottom, I'm talking about where it's thin before it attaches to the wheel hub, the upper part of the fork looks straight, I dont see any buckled paint, or cracks, is there a good trick to straightening this out? if I could match the paint I would strip the fork and possibly heat it to straighten it, I work in an aircraft plant and we have lots of experience with 4130, we build out fuselages out of it. looking for advise here, I would have noticed it when I bought it, but the guy i bought it from was busy being drunk and it was hard to look over, I only paid 100 for the complete bike with vintage accessories, so I know I still got my moneys worth, if someone has a fork I might also consider buying it.

UnsafeAlpine

You should be able to bend the fork back into alignment with something like this. You can probably make something that will work rather easily. Bend it cold so you don't have to mess with heat treating and you'll be fine. This is a standard maintenance practice.

lostforawhile

thanks, I might even be able to make one like it, both downtubes look straight, so it's just the ends, this idiot didnt even have bearings in the head tube, I have all the parts now, I just need to get busy, the fork has to come off anyway

cny-bikeman

We need to know exactly what you mean by tweaked before accurate advice can be given. is the curved part of one blade bent forward or back in relation to the other, is the dropout bent where it meets the blade, or something else?

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Airburst

That is impressive. I've only ever seen that once, and nobody was trying to sell the bike!

lostforawhile

the lowest part of the blade is slightly back further then the other one, the steer tube is fine, we make our nose gears out of 1/2 inch thick plate aluminum and have to manually straighten each one when building it, I think I can make a smaller version of the tool we use for that, it's basically doing the same thing. it's not terribly bad, you have to look at the end of the blades from the side to see it, I knew this bike was a mess as soon as I saw it, and he was lying out the ass on his craigslist ad, but it had enough potential to make it worth the 100, it's all original other then the derailleur he tried to put on, I figured it was going to take work. he was wanting 250 LOL, but I told him 100 was as high as I would go,

lostforawhile

I dont see any damage I was able to get a NOS headset off of ebay, and I'm going to make the tool to install the bearings cups, I have a soft spot for old beaten machinery, especially old American bikes, it will live again

lostforawhile

some good news, the bottom race and bearing cup was there, keeping it from chewing up the fork or the head tube, but the top bearing and retainer and cup are all MIA, luckily I have new ones

cny-bikeman

Remember that the blades need to be square to the crown (front-rear), centered on the steerer/head tube (right-left) and parallel to each other as well.