Got a Trek 510 in my size (yay!) for cheap (yay!) with full Nuovo Gran Sport (yay?).

What's the catch?





I found the downtube damage, but not the top tube.

I sold all the components and made more than my money, back, so the frame is less than free.

I know the answer here, but I have to ask it anyway: ride, dump or repair (couplers project?)?

At least part of the way to the recycling center. Probably.

You've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

0.00mm
Wind Chimes.

Duct tape comes in red now...or a
pipe clamp...

I would strip the paint, inspect and make a decision then. It better be rare or a special frame for me to care that much.

"How far would you ride this frame?"

All the way to the crash site.

Hang it up someplace where you wont bonk your head. For later.

The fork would be interesting to look at. Is it still the original fork? And if so, can you see if it was bent, and also bent back?

Is the fork bent?

I think the most surprising thing is the fork looks pristine. I have checked it up and down. It has the reinforcement tangs in the inside of the blade; not sure how much they helped.

Original bars and levers looked good too. Replaced front wheel and obvious front end crash damage on the frame.

Nice steel frames are very cheap and abundant. Recycle that one or make a shop stool from it.

In my bike store days, the frontal-impact damage I saw sometimes included frame, fork, and wheel, but often it consisted of any two or one of those. Small frames are probably a bit more prone to having the fork bend rather than the frame.

FWIW, Cino Cinelli said that he came up with the fully sloping crown design because riders have a better chance of being able to get back on and ride a bike with an undamaged fork and a bent frame than the other way around.

I crashed my Trek 412, which I purchased new in Dec 1982, head on into another cyclist on a college campus. Overbuilt fork was fine, top tube and downtube were bent. I wrote to Trek to complain, arguing that they should have designed the fork to take the brunt of the blow. They didn’t write back.

Not that surprising. you see that big long lug point? It works like a can opener on that thin tube. Several manufacturers had the same issue with them long pointy ends.

In my younger, poorer, dumber days, I front ended my Motobecane. Fork was fine. Top tube looked worse than the OP's. Down tube looked better than the Op's. I rode it for another 10k miles. Then the down tube cracked right at the lug. I rode it until the crack made it half way around the tube. Like I said, younger, poorer, dumber.

Been there ... done that. My story, for what its worth: My first (dearly departed) Capo, a 1960 Modell Campagnolo, S/N 45211, was involved in my only bike-car crash (classic left hook while I was on a descent) in November 1976. Head tube was pushed back a bit, and top and down tubes bent just behind the butting (531 tubing). The after-market fork I had added survived just fine. (I think the friend who gave me the frame sans fork might have weakened the frame by being in a similar crash in which the fork acted as the sacrificial element.) Anyway, I had it straightened at the local bike shop and rode it another 6 years, until I was climbing a local 12% grade and started to hear it creaking with every pedal stroke. I looked down to see a crack gradually propagating around the downtube, starting from the bottom. I gingerly rode it about 4 miles home, stripped off all of the parts, and gave the frame to a friend who was teaching bicycle repair and metal shop at a local night school.

Yup. I don't know a lot about frame building, but I do know that using a lug for the head/top tube or head/down tube joint than has a pointy underside is frame building malpractice.

I think shop stool it is.

I don't know the full process for doing bike couplers, but I figured it's as good a frame as any to do that conversion for a travel bike. But I definitely don't have the money sitting around for that.

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Don't be a tooth donor.

If the metal is cracked under the paint (requires sanding off the paint around the tube deformations) then either fix it or scrap it. If it is not cracked, ride it until it does. I did the later, and rode for another 5000 miles, then turned it into a shop stool. FWIW, the frame still has not cracked and that was over 30 years ago that I turned it into a shop stool.

I wouldn't ride this

You have many great framebuilders in Portland and if you can find one like we have in Tucson they would look over the frame and I have no doubt confirm all said here and check the fork on his fork table and tell if it is straight or what it might take to get it usable.

I don't doubt you could ride it for many more miles, but there are so many nice straight frames out there, for such low prices, that why bother.