Bent Forks, NO PROBLEM

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I love having the right tool for the job, Bought this handy tool recently and had these forks straightened faster than you can read this entire post. The only problem without having a similar bike on hand is knowing just how far to go, are there any specs for wheelbases on Bicycles. I want to thank Scott from The CABE for setting me up with this Cool Tool

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My LBS has one of those.

I think they charge $18 to straighten a fork with it.
 
I just had milk shoot out my nose from laughing at your comment, I can see you driving into something or someone for that matter! :shock:

Joe

KOTA said:
The "before" pic looks like one I did after a few beers.
 
KZ1000 said:
I love having the right tool for the job, Bought this handy tool recently and had these forks straightened faster than you can read this entire post. The only problem without having a similar bike on hand is knowing just how far to go, are there any specs for wheelbases on Bicycles. I want to thank Scott from The CABE for setting me up with this Cool Tool

I'd be measuring the trail as the wheel base is flexible from chain adjustment. It's an opportunity to set it the way you want. 1.5" if you plan on going slow and 3" if you scream down hills.
From what I see in the photo it looks right,however.
I certainly wouldn't mind crossing paths with one of those tools. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
 
I always wonder how much you can stress a piece of metal and not have it break later. I know aluminum will bend once and when you bend it back it always cracks. I guess mild steel is a little more forgiving.
 
steel is forgiving and these tools are great. we have a really nice one park tools makes at the shop. if it is a solid leg fork you can really bend back some that were really bad. but if it is a tubular fork i would worry if it is a really bad bend
 
i got one of those exact tools, "little brute" i believe. whole lot better than pulling the fork off to straighten it. :)
 
For saving parts of "display" bikes it would be great--but I don't know I'd have a lot of confidence in vintage forks that got bent way back and then re-straightened by bending them again with that jack-thing.
I never repaired many bicycles though--so if you thought differently, you could claim I don't know what I'm talking about and you'd be mostly right in this case.

Uncle Stretch said:
I always wonder how much you can stress a piece of metal and not have it break later. I know aluminum will bend once and when you bend it back it always cracks. I guess mild steel is a little more forgiving.
Steel can often be straightened safely, if it is not bent much.
Any aluminum parts that get seriously bent are gone, they're DOA and can't be saved. Cut them in half and then take them to the recycling center.

The CPSC has a requirement for fork durability. The forks need to survive getting bent backwards, but they don't test re-straightening them again at all. (-in the USA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is the federal agency that regulates safety requirements of bicycles-)

A summary of the bicycle requirements can be found here:
http://www.cpsc.gov/BUSINFO/regsumbicycles.pdf
The part on forks starts at the bottom-left of page four (there's only five pages of this outline).

I don't know if the full regulations are available online or not; I've never been able to find them collected as such, and it's not ever been so important that I'd email and bother them.

Also we note: the C.P.S.C. was only begin in 1972. If there were any (US) federal safety requirements for bicycles before that I don't know.
~
 
There is no danger in the type of bends we are talking about, There are no kinks, the bend is usually so gradual and most of it being in the headtube area
 
You should have seen Rick and I on a set of forks that were bent... We actually attached two chains to the bike. One at the bottom of the fork and the other attached to the seat tube. Those chains were attached to two cars. At that point we proceeded to put the cars in drive and floored it. Not only did we straighten the forks out but we also came up with a new method of "stretching" a bike :mrgreen:
 
I just wounder, how do you bend forks like that? Maybe from hitting a wall or a car and does it give the bike bad mojo? Somebody had loose some skin if ya hit something that hard. Pretty cool tool though.
 
:) :) Maybe that is the reason Bike helmets are used these days.

I remember as a kid driving our bikes into the wall at Cumberland Farms, just hard enough to raise the rear wheel, but not hard enough to crack your head open, always wondered if others did it. Looking at all the bent forks these days, I see others had just as much fun also.
 


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