Droch Stàilinn. Attempt to save a scottie.

[M_Chavez]

I totally agree - the forks are probably a write-off or at least a job for an experienced frame builder if anything remotely dodgy comes up on closer inspection. This is a very serious amount of bending that the crown was not designed for, and the consequences of any fork failure are severe.

But here's some food for thought for the twitching sphincter crowd when it comes to other repairs:

Riding a bike is a risky activity. A sensible risk averse individual will take reasonable steps to mitigate that risk.

How many people here regularly
- Ride a bike with DT shifters that require you to take the hands off the main controls (steering and braking) to change gear. [And gear changes often happen at the time when something's happening on the road.]
- Ride bikes with retro brake caliper designs. Voluntarily increasing their stopping distance compared to more efficient modern brakes.
- Ride on chromed rims for extra retro points. Voluntarily doubling (?) stopping distance in the wet.
- Ride with canti brakes and knobblies without a cable catcher .
- Choose not to use a torque wrench when assembling a bike, completely disregarding critical manufacturers' guidance.
- Ride old frames with unknown history, potential hidden accident damage and rust.
- Ride at speeds they know they shouldn't or on dangerous trails.

Cheer up fellas.

 

[Nabeaquam]

@Nabeaquam I was OK spreading my Bojack from 120 to 130. Clamped the bridges to be safe. That was 531db.
Columbust TSX - that was tough. The stays could take almost my entire body weight leveraged on a floorboard. Unfortunately, the triangle was way off, so had to be corrected or scrapped.

Now, did somebody say "new dropouts"?

Axle in there and squeeze it in a vice. Campy-no-go drops are harder than a file so this might be hard. I’m surprised you could spread that far, I could hardly get my Columbus SL tubing to spread 4 mm.

 

[Mickeyspinn]

Chavez ...unless I've missed some pics...knowing me very possible...what makes you think the crown has taken all the bend? I'd be surprised....crown is there to essentially stop flex in the blades getting to your headset bearing aswell as obviuosly point the two blades in the right direction for holding on to an axle! Essentially the blades are there to flex...The wheel that was on it I presume is not only bent but axle must be bannanfrittered too?
Headset tight spots ?
I do have a morbid curiosity of mechanical failure...lot to be learnt

 

[M_Chavez]

Haven't checked the wheel axle yet.
The best I can do right now is to poke at it with a straight edge.
The ds dropout has shifted inwards by about 27mm at the hub; the nds has shifted out by same amount. What I can see is that:
- Steerer is perfectly straight. (Checked this as per Sheldon's advice);
- No tight spots in the cup & cone headset;
- Signs of deformation on the crown (rather severe, now that I gave it a clean - will take a couple pics). Very clear bend of the ds inwards and nds outwards; Steerer separation from the crown socket on the bottom of the nds side - failed brazing perhaps?
- Very slight bend in the blades - probably a 4mm total, if that, which would average as 2mm each blade. This is probably within cold-setting distance for a brand new beginner-made poorly jigged fork

 

[M_Chavez]

Questions about practical effects of cold-setting on steel tubes still stand - would be very good to know. I imagine, every time you bend steel, it hardens and becomes more brittle? Has anyone personally suffered any damage to, say, stays after successfully cold-setting them for a couple mm, and experiencing failure on rides that followed?

In regard to setting castings - well, lugs are castings, aren't they? And a frame builder would be expected to set them when he's building a frame, potentially correcting the sockets by several degrees to fit the bike geometry. If cold setting a casting is a straight road to hell, then we're all riding frames where critical lug integrity has been severely compromised by the builders?

@Guinessisgoodforyou I don't see how bending the tip of a long drop-out differs from straightening a hanger on a short or vertical dropout (almost weekly task for a very keen mountain biker I imagine) in terms of changing the steel structure in that area. And, with the axle placed half way through the dropout, the tip bears close to no load - it's just there to hang the mech.

@Nabeaquam - I've picked up the monkey wrench trick on some other bike forum. Much better than trying to clamp it in a vice. And I've used the dropout alignment tool in place of an axle to make the bends in the right places.

 

[torqueless]

Imo there's a distinction between bending 'fresh' steel in a production process and bending fifty+ year-old steel, not least because you have no idea how many times it might've been bent already.
You acquire an old frame with 120mm rear spacing. Twenty years back someone respaced it to 126mm. later they sold it. New owner says: "What philistine tugged these stays out?" and gets it returned to 120mm. Imagine that series of events happening three times. Unlikely? Maybe.. but not impossible or implausible for a sixty year-old frame.
Personally, I'm glad I got my frame thirty-eight years back, within ten years of it being new, and everything that's happened to it since, I know about, and I let these periodic contagious fads for 'retromod', fat tyres, 'gravel'...whatever it is that inspires getting and bending an(other) old frame.. just pass me by.

 

[M_Chavez]

Fads? Hardly.
It would be a fad if there was a solid supply of good quality, reasonably priced, easily accessible retro-compatible parts.
Has anyone seen many 114 or 120 OLD hubs + compatible cassettes & mechs recently? Good quality ones that don't make you cry in despair at the lack of QC. Enough available at competitive prices to be putting 5k all-weather all-surface miles on a bike per year (that's my expectation from Bojack, who's on commuting duty). Without adding an extra kg or two of weight for no benefit whatsoever apart from style points?
I haven't. In fact, I haven't even seen much reasonably high-end 7 or 8 speed stuff. The industry is there to screw us over. They are doing it quite well. Better stock up on them brake and shifter cables, because the future is hydraulic & wireless.

In my view the best way to celebrate retro framesets is to ride them. If that requires a degree of future proofing (like cold setting the rear stays by half a degree), so be it. Better than rusting in the back of somebody's garage, covered in old grease & dust, to be taken to the tip in digust by the next generation, a couple of decades later.

In regard to the scottie, there's several of them in Glasgow transport museum, making sure that the future generations can see how they looked like with period-correct components. Running one of these frames as a clunker in complete disrepair is bad enough, but polishing it up and hanging it on a garage wall is criminal.

 

[torqueless]

Exactly.
I don't own a hub that cannot have its OLN increased or reduced by removing or adding a spacer. If something is preventing this on whatever new-fangled hubbery has been introduced in the interim, I'm glad to have nothing to do with it. I have never bought, owned or used a 'cassette', nor any hub designed to accept one.
..but I concede that I've never done 5k all-weather all-surface miles a year. Maybe that's why my forty year-old hubs are still ok..
Btw, I admire you or anyone who takes on a basket-case like that..

 

[Woz]

Sold all of my road 11 speed off years ago, just before the world jumped on the "next extra sprocket" band wagon. Decided I don't need to be a part of this stupid racket of constant upgrades to the point where the frame becomes obsolete.

Got a healthy stock of Shimano 8/9/10 road and MTB hubs in the attic, along with a couple of 7 speed freehubs for those single speed builds.

Pretty much everything is interchangeable, can be serviced and re-spaced with a minimum of hassle.

 

[M_Chavez]

I don't own a hub that cannot have its OLN increased or reduced by removing or adding a spacer

Exactly. How would they sell you an extra doodad in a couple of years then?

I've got a Hope hub that allows you to go between 130 and 135 (or something along those lines) but I guess they quickly figured out they won't make much money selling them.
I wouldn't strip a period-correct bike to "modernise" it, but when it comes to stray framesets that would otherwise rot in a garage - my view is one should do whatever it takes to get it riding again.

Pretty much everything is interchangeable, can be serviced and re-spaced with a minimum of hassle.

Yep.
I do like STIs though and I like modern lightweight cartridge bearing hubs.

Commuting puts an incredible amount of wear on bike components, as I found out. Not just the drivetrain - I've ground through an alloy rack in less than a year. Grit would stick to the back of the panniers, then sand away at the aluminium tubing until there's a hole poking out from it. Incredible.
The replacement is steel and wrapped in heli tape.