This is the fork from a beautiful but neglected 1982 Peugot Course, a dumpster find I’m working on restoring. For the life of me I can’t figure out what could have caused this damage. Maybe a seized bearing that wore through the fork over the years? The headset felt very stiff when I took it apart, but no more than the usual old bike with dried up grease. Hard to see it in the pictures but there is actually a small hole in the center of the indentation and I can feel inside the tube that the metal is slightly raised around it. Is there any way to save this fork?
by uncommoncriminal
2 Comments
Hard to say. A single ball that got jammed between head tube and steerer?
It’d be easiest if you found a suitable replacement. I suppose it could be filled by a welder, the affected threads look to be below where your head cup and locknut would thread. Obviously you’d need to file it relatively smoothly. Then make sure you have plenty of overlap with the quill part of your stem.
Headset bearing ball popped out of the retainer and got jammed between the threads and the ID of the headset cup where it was forced back and forth until it created a hole and fell out through the fork crown. If that’s not it, aliens is all I got.
I’m assuming the damaged area/hole is between the upper and lower bearing races because threaded headsets in the 80s didn’t commonly have 1/2″ of spacers between race and locknut. That means there’d be nothing trapping the fork in the frame if it were to break all the way around (and you can’t really monitor it becasue it’s inside the head tube). Not a place to take chances. If it was above the upper race, maybe…depends on how far down the stem quill reaches.