Crash-damaged steel frame / bent steerer / dinged tube / dead forks

How far? Endos?

there is fear!
you're right, not sure about metal fatigue though if anything snaps I think it will be the weld/brazing?
I bent them back by hand, gently... and some would say somewhat lovingly!
do you think it's a death trap?

Yes. You could get new forks for 30 quid. I'd put at least that price on my front teeth.

fear has increased purchase of replacement forks imminent
ta!

Tada

http://www.lfgss.com/thread124445.html#post4153427

dbr I must say it .... " I like you're style!"

Found this on ebay, nothing special apart from the new zero trail fork and track bike clearances.

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Fool! it's a Bates! how are you such a basic bitch?

Its super rare as only the front forks are curly ;)

Bought this 531 frame recently (pretty cheap), then noticed that it has a slight ripple in the downtube. Any thoughts on its safety?

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Unless you're willing to cough up getting the top tube and down tube replaced, ditch the frame.

Luckily frame look like those cheapo kind.

Really? I didn't notice any issues with the top tube, but I guess it must have been affected if the down tube has shortened at all, I'll double check. I thought that downtubes are in tension anyway so this type of damage wouldn't be catastrophic.

It's not a bad frame, it's a Raleigh Record Ace from about 1980, so solid 531 throughout.

If got hit head-on at a rather large object or a wall, the fork doesn't look original to the frame, which the original fork is likely to be severely damaged.

May be ok as a beater, but it have suffer a bad crash.

I'm guessing this thread is being cross-hijacked anyway, so I'll just post it here.

My Monday morning started with me noticing this:

It's a old'n'cheap Peugeot Carbolite 103 frame. I'm just wondering if it's f$%£d completely or a bit of welding could help? I probably already know the answer but just need a confirmation..

It's also a bummer as I just spent £100+ in repairs on it.

I paid £40 to get a small fatigue crack welded on an alu frame so for a steel frame like that, easy to reinforce it and weld it in few minutes.

I would have to disagree I'm afraid. The fact that the tube is now sitting about 10 mm off on the two axis that I can see means that there was either a fair amount of tension in the built frame to start with, or it has been bent out by riding whilst it's been cracking/cracked. That means tubes are bent. How are you going to straighten these tubes? How are you going to tell which ones are bent and in what plains? Surface plate is best bet to find out how it's bent, but bending it is really a no no in my opinion. Low end steel, clearly full of rust, how do you know that you won't either snap the tube in the process of bending it, or worse weaken the tube whilst bending it, saving it's failure for a later date.

Also, that tube is torn, so it's a new tube, so £30 just for a tube, and the remnants of the tube will have to be removed from the Bb shell and down tube as well as top tube and seatstays.

And..... You'll need to paint afterwards. So all in, if you find someone to fix it and a non shit way for less than £200 I'd be surprised.

Mate....stop the overkill for an old frame. I welded much worse than that and i'm not a great welder. Even if your tube seat at 1mm away from the original axe.....for a run around no problem at all. Easy to add a reinforcement outside that you weld (a tube inside would be perfect if possible), not pretty but you can still use the bike for few more years.

Now if you want an excuse to justify a new bike to your girlfriend / wife or yourself...that's another story, we've all been there ;-)

There 'may' be an argument to be had about whether a repair is financially viable, or whether risking straightening the remaining tubes is a safe thing to do.

However.... Just sleeving the tube and then welding said sleeve on to the two parts of the original tube is in no way resolving the issue he finds himself in. I have no idea of the size or geometry of the bike, but 5mm "extension" (or whatever has happened in relation to the rest of the frame) of the seat tube can easily equate to ~3 degrees of seat or head angle. This appears (using the highly unscientific 'scale from the BB shell' technique) to be double that. Hypo-theoretically, using anecdotal evidence, according to my mate from the pub, that could be six degrees out. That's a big fucking disaster of a ride right there, probably completely unusable. And all the other tubes are under stress in some way, but we've covered that.

I don't do repairs anymore, as they are time consuming and often it's easier to rebuild the whole end or even whole frame (@hoops lol) which is almost always not worth doing for the sorts of frames I was brought, but I wouldnt touch this with a barge pole. Surely you can buy a new frame for £40 on the bay anyway?

5mm sound huge here as the break is rather clear so you can probably joint the 2 tubes and weld it with 1mm max move. You end up with something very close to original but i clearly agree with the argument for changing a frame worth £40 rather than bothering repairing it, make probably more sense here.

Rebuilding the bike with a new frame is probably only 1 hour work anyway.

But if that is your frame and you know how to weld, a quick and cheap welding probably get you going. Then a blow torch to straighten the tube and off you go to the pub.

Think we may be at cross purposes, this is the 10mm I was referring to.

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Just checked the top tube of the frame I posted above. Also slightly rippled. Any further opinions?

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Thank you guys! Probably all of you are right in your own way. But to be honest it's most likely not worth the hassle.. I'm now pestering my employer with signing up for Cycle2Work. If that pans out, I'm getting a new ride. Otherwise might need to scout Gumtree for similar frames. Thanks once again.

wow! I cant believe i missed this thread. Nothing i like more than pictures of broken steel frames..
Signing up...

Ah ok i see what you mean, i was thinking of just brute forcing the tube in it's original place to then do few points and finish with a weld all the way around. That way you probably only end up with a 1mm move off from the original tube axe. You clearly can't weld it like that in that position.

My employer is still hesitating with the C2W and I've been thinking of a Plan B. What would the compatibility be like between my broken (Carbolite 103) frame and, say, Reynolds 531? Or something similar. Probably the easiest thing would be to find the exact same shitty Peugeot Premiere but a) I'd probably want something bigger (60cm) b) why buy another shitty Carbolite?.. Pardon for a noob question, I just can't get my head around the difference in threads, BB sizes etc etc. Fine people at Seabass Cycles have re-dished and re-spaced my rear wheel a month ago to to accommodate the new crankset and ideally I'd want it just to magically come together nicely ;|