i know it's a bad idea..
 

i got a frame i wanna give to a buddy of mine. it's an all black nishiki.

the fork is SLIGHTLY twisted. it's not bent, just slightly out of line.

is there any way to bend it back? i got a bench clamp and some other tools.

yes, i know it's a bad idea, but this is just a quick fix until he orders a new fork.

it's a threaded/quill/whatever fork.

Do you often try to kill your friends?

that poor nishiki..how did the bend happen?

I rode a bent fork for months. only thing it did was pull slightly too the left

it's like only slightly bent.

i got the frame from a garage sale for free. it was a 58 and way too big so i cant use it.

i mean it slightly veers to the left. i know re-bending it may make it brittle but i mean he's just going to ride it. it's not going to flat out snap, will it?

anyway has anyone re-bent a fork or is this something people just dont do?

Take it to a bike shop. Park makes tools for this. Shouldn't be a big deal.
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/I...inal/13237.jpg

how does that work? i work at a store that has a bike shop but we don't have that tool... we could probably send it to another location though....

what's that tool called?

fork alignment tool. One part screws on to each drop out and then you get the big black cylinders to line up with one another. So long as it's not bent back, this should work fine.

Wow. That looks nuts. I work at a bike cooperative and I have yet to even hear of that tool.

Looks like I can put something else on the list of things that we absolutely must have.

thats odd. the bike co-op i hang out at has those, i used them a bunch trying to get the fork straight on my recent build.

more like first.

This isn't as dangerous as everyone here is going to make it out to be. Don't do it yourself, find a qualified shop in the area, and if it's as slight as you say, they should be able to bend it back in less than an half an hour.

Yep, I jacked up the fork on my old Peugeot, bent it WAY back. I used one of those deals to align it again and just rode around with the fork bent back for several weeks. It made it handle like a tarck bike, toe overlap and all.

As far as a materials stand point. If it's steel, which I'm guessing it is, when you bend it back into shape, you're going to be strain hardening the material. This does embrittle the material a bit, but at the same time it increases your modulus. You'll no longer get that nice breakage curve that steel would give normally, instead you'll have a higher breaking point, but less bending before break. I bent one of my forks back on an Instron, it took about 3000lbs to correct a slight bend in the steerer tube. Thats a lot of damn force.

so judging from these posts this isn't that bad of an idea?

yea, it's hi-ten steel

now i gotta find an lbs that does **** like this. not many shops around here do special things though.

btw it's this frame
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/8379/dsc00006jn8.jpg

if you're curious. we're gonna re-paint it. any way to take those cable things on the tt off?

^^ a file/sandpaper

A file may take a while. Try to hacksaw off as much as you can, then file, then low-grit sandpaper.

if you have to ask about it, you shouldnt do it yourself. its well within the diy realm, but if you gotta ask, you probably arent qualified to do it at all.

i'd just find a thrift store bike of a similar size and buy it for the fork, save the rest of the parts for a beater or whatever.