Caliper brake distortion?
 

In restoring my 1972 Royce Union, I'm puzzled by the front brake which seems to be off-center in a weird way, in that it's touching the fork on one side. I'm not sure if the brake has been bent out of shape, or if it's a problem with the fork. Obviously this is all a new venture, and I'm learning as I go along but this has me totally stuck.

Any ideas? I'm the original owner of the bike but it was lent out for a few years, and I have no way of knowing how it was treated..

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Is there a lot play between the arms of the caliper and the long brake bolt? If so, tighten down the nuts in front.

The arms themselves can also be bent as those cheap calipers can be pretty flimsy. I've broken a few by hand before :X

Looks like a combination of things - bent caliper arm, coupled with a wheel that's either not seated evenly in the dropouts, or it's not correctly dished. Another less-easily-fixed possibility is that the fork may be bent.

Thanks for the responses, I showed the pics to a mechanic who also thought the caliper arm was bent and recommended replacing it. So I need to find something of that vintage that will match. I'm going to replace the cables and doing all the dirty cleanup work before I bring it in to my local bike shop to have them take a look at the frame and wheels. I really hope it's not something more serious, I really love this bike, as it has sentimental value, as well as being great to ride..

Are there any paint chips on the downtube where that brake caliper would hit if the wheel were turned too far? I might have kinda sorta wrecked an old MTB from the 90s that resulted in that same kind of damage when the wheel turned too far in the wreck and caused the brake to hit the downtube and bend it. :o

I never thought to check that, but sure enough, the paint is all chipped on the downtube right where the brake was touching. Don't know how this happened, guess when you lend a bike out you never know.. Anyway, I checked around numerous local bike shops and the one near my house was great. The mechanic spent over a half hour rummaging and finally came up with a match - same Dia Compe, same model number. It fits perfectly, and after a little steel wool polishing it should be fine.

If you don't mind my asking, which shop is that? I'm in Brooklyn, too. It's good to know which shops keep piles of stuff like this around!

Bay Ridge Bicycle World, 8916-3rd Avenue. I haven't had them do any work yet but they have lots of positive reviews on Yelp & seem pretty friendly and helpful.