Bought this frame for $20 (need to start paying closer attention to things in the moment). After I brought it home I realized this. Dude said he didn’t know and offered to reimburse me so at least I got that.
Watched an ‘RJ The bike guy’ video where he used 2×4’s using the seat tube as the pivot point and a string tied to the Head tube to judge the distance then bend the rear triangle in place. But feel like that is more for a minor correction and this might be too far out of wack.
I always wanted to make one of those shop chairs though so this might the winner of that.
by bruski
6 Comments
looks pretty f’ing crooked but you’ll lose nothing with a good effort, right? is this bent from the drive side bottom bracket area to the dropouts? hard to tell but that would be a bit hard to align…it could still become a top beater bike if you have the other bits laying around.
Find a local bike maker who has a jig.
I don’t actually see where the issue is…
How did you determine it’s not aligned?
It can be done, there’s a risk of the tubes cracking where they’ve been bent back. Is it worth it, probably not.
Plenty more hardrocks in the sea…
Hardrocks are made of the bottom of the barrel steel, so it should have plenty of flex in it before it breaks. I had mine straightened before (local frame builder did it when he welded on canti bosses) but, there isn’t a shortage of less damaged frames available. That said, give it a go and if it doesn’t work, the worst part is you leveled up your skills. Good luck and hope it works out.
It’s steel, for sure it can be bent back. I’ve straightened out a few frames in the shop over the years, funny enough all of them were car vs bike scenarios.
I would call around and see who has experience with this. Park tool makes a few tools to do this work. There are tools to bend the rear triangle back to true and also to realign the rear dropouts. This is all checked with a frame alignment gauge. These are pretty specialized tools, and there’s always a risk of a weld cracking but in my experience very effective on steel frames.