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Is my fork bent?

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Old 12-06-19 | 02:06 PM
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Originally Posted by 3alarmer
VAR made one, and Park made a couple of different ones. NObody makes and sells them any more because of liability issues with shops bending frames/forks back into shape. they show up on ebay pretty regularly at exorbitant prices, and whenever a really old bike shop goes out of business. They're pretty easy to figure out how to use. I have one, a VAR, and I use it all the time. Most people are not going to use it enough to warrant the purchase costs.

A decade ago, when one came up on ebay with a buy-it-now at a tolerable price, I bought it.
Very good tool. I did make a longer cross rod .

Still looking for an ancient truing stand... cast iron, forgot to be around at the end of an auction, this was before snipe programs.
Also, still looking for a a big Park repair stand, the two bike version.
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Old 12-06-19 | 03:18 PM
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Originally Posted by repechage
Still looking for an ancient truing stand... cast iron, forgot to be around at the end of an auction, this was before snipe programs.
I sold one, not cast but definitely seemed to be vintage steel, to a fellow C&V fanatic north of Atlanta a while back. Kept the no-frills wheel dishing tool that came with it because - believe it or not, despite its simplicity - the dishing tool worked really damn well!



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Old 12-06-19 | 04:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Mad Honk
I suspect the fork has some damage since the rear triangle has been damaged as well. It will be an exercise in frame alignment to check to see that all is in good place.
The accident damage will in most cases create a frame that will jump back into the frame damaged state even after straightening it. (from personal experience).
You must check all frame dimensions and alignment in a frame gauge or with a similar tool. Even then there is no guarantee that it will stay in the re-aligned position. The frame will always be suspect, and may at any time jump back into the misalignment caused by the accident. So be warned to watch for the signs that it might not always track well. JMHO, MH
One thing to know that I think is basic to frame straightening is that metal needs to be stress-relieved after cold-setting it into shape.
Basically, as when aligning fork legs or rear triangle, one must apply reverse lateral force to the dropout after bending it, to have it end up in a state of stress relief where it won't so easily bend back toward where you started.
Otherwise, after say moving your dropouts over a couple of millimeters, the dropout will always move back some after being put back into service!
Of course this adds to the time spent aligning a frame or fork, as this is somewhat of an iterative process until you have a feel for how much "memory" that the particular tubing has.
Usually the memory is just a millimeter or two, but this is enough to create an unaesthetic look at the brake caliper, and in the case of the fork it is quite enough to cause the bike's steering to "pull" away from the side toward which the tire's contact patch ends up being displaced off of the frame's centerline.

So the proper approach to cold-setting is to make the correction a bit more than needed, and then to push the dropout back toward the other direction, which takes surprisingly much less force that it took to do the initial cold-set.

One more detail of cold-setting fork legs (something that I do on more than half of my old-bike finds) is that any fork dropout filing which appears to correct an off-center condition up at the caliper will of course tilt the tire contact patch in the opposite direction, so which MUST be evaluated in terms of the fork's actual alignment first.
And, with respect to the entire alignment process (perhaps using test-riding if working in a home setting), any filing of the dropouts should always be done LAST, as metal removed cannot be put back.
So once again, "tilting" the front wheel to center the tire within the fork crown by filing a dropout will have the OPPOSITE effect on the bike's steering "pull" as will correcting the same condition by way of cold-setting the fork legs. LOL, y'all have been warned!

Last edited by dddd; 12-07-19 at 06:11 PM.
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Old 12-07-19 | 05:59 PM
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Originally Posted by francophile
I sold one, not cast but definitely seemed to be vintage steel, to a fellow C&V fanatic north of Atlanta a while back. Kept the no-frills wheel dishing tool that came with it because - believe it or not, despite its simplicity - the dishing tool worked really damn well!



As I first worked with a cast iron? or steel one, it just "feel's" right, strangely enough, the second shop I worked for also had one of the same type!
They had a Park unit too, but I pulled out the old one, and soon everyone was using it. What it did that was interesting was that the uprights had a return back toward the wheel builder, the advantage was that the zone at the bottom of the wheel was free and clear, very natural to hold and control the wheel from there when its easy to get to. Often, at the end, one is rotating the wheel slightly back and forth to target in on that one or two spokes to finish off with. really nice to do that unrestricted.
I have a cast aluminum one that is similar in basic concept, but lacks the return, I may have to have a fabricator friend add on the return arms I want, then move the tell tales a bit and call that good enough.
The cast one also had cast bronze tell tales, made a nice sound when they touched a rim too.
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Old 12-08-19 | 11:38 AM
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Originally Posted by repechage
As I first worked with a cast iron? or steel one, it just "feel's" right, strangely enough, the second shop I worked for also had one of the same type!
They had a Park unit too, but I pulled out the old one, and soon everyone was using it. What it did that was interesting was that the uprights had a return back toward the wheel builder, the advantage was that the zone at the bottom of the wheel was free and clear, very natural to hold and control the wheel from there when its easy to get to. Often, at the end, one is rotating the wheel slightly back and forth to target in on that one or two spokes to finish off with. really nice to do that unrestricted.
It was a really solid unit! But I had to make space in the shop, I already have a TS-2 (which is 30-40% larger overall) so I sold that more-vintage one off super-cheap to someone in need I knew would use it, and frequently.

I don't build often enough to really warrant having the extra features, the TS-2 works fine for my general needs (I got it for $35 more than I sold this other one off for). The thing I liked about it, other than it being American-made, is it was so logical, no-frills, yet packed with features.

It was cool enough I opted to keep the picture. 90% or more of the orange on there was surface-only and buffed right off. I suspect it cleaned up really nicely. I need to get back in touch with the guy I sold it to, he'd pinged me a while back about misc parts and I totally got sidetracked after the accident that took me out of commission for a while. Life happens!
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Old 12-08-19 | 07:19 PM
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Fork is strait. Rear is strait. Overcompensated so it wouldn’t go back. Did this over a couple weeks. It’s set strait. Thanks for the help. Looking forward to the maiden voyage
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