PSA: Cheap fenders killed my bike.

[brendonoid]

Hey guys, I just wanted to let everyone know the obviously stupid thing that I did even though I knew it was stupid has ruined my bike. Maybe this will help others as a warning or something... ?

I've been running some cheap plastic fenders SOMA somethingorothers that did not have those plastic easy break stay connecters that most common sense fenders have. I knew this was a hazard but had ridden many 1000s of kilometres on them and had just sort of forgotten about it. 

It gets worse; I attached my Nitto Big Front rack (34f)? to do an overnighter on a nice trail while i was on holiday squeezing the adventure inbetween some bad weather and storms. On the second day, 80kms from the next town as I crested the hill...through a lot of debris and broken branches... doing ~15kmh (not exceeding 20kmh) my bike suddenly came to a stop. Just a firm enough stop to lift the back end up a little bit and make me have to put my feet down suddenly.

The fender stays had lodged themselves into the fork along with the thick piece of bark that had caused the accident.

"No worries! these cheap fenders finally failed!" I thought, "my stupid fault. Oh well, lucky I was going slow!' 

As I disentangled the mess, removing the front wheel, "Oh no, the fork is bent" I realised. "It's okay, the wheel isn't hitting the downtube I can still ride out of here... why has the head badged popped out funny though?"

Oh, the headtube is shaped like a banana...

Welp.

I could have been doing 40km/h down hill and i could have died as well as killing my bike. This is what I am trying to commisserate myself with. It barely helps.

I live in Western Australia. There are no local frame builders I know of or would trust to try and repair this frame. Shipping the bike back to Rivendell is going to be an expensive excercise and in these COVID times I'm not sure they can do anything anyway. I really just don't know what I am going to do.

The accident was so minor and I have bent forks before. The problem here and the reason it has been so catastrophic is because the Big Strong Nitto rack reinforced the fork removing tis failure mode of being able to bend, that force was translated into the headtube as the fork actually bent where the steerer is welded into the crown lug translating that force into the headtube.

I can post pictures if anyone is interested. The frame is weirdly straight and I cannot find any distortion in the maintubes despite the obvious bend in the head tube. The headset cups are only out of alignment to the point that a sealed bearing headset can absorb the variance and seemingly work ok. 

The bend has to have gone somewhere though and I'm not sure that if I got a new fork that I could feel safe riding the frame as is...

I really just needed to vent,

Thanks for listening, (reading I guess)

Brendon M.

[Steven Sweedler]

Brendon, very sorry to hear this, would like to see pictures. Steve

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Steven Sweedler
Plymouth, New Hampshire

[Patrick Moore]

Sorry to hear about you Rivendell, but glad you were not injured.

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

[Robert Tilley]

Sorry to hear that! I'm surprised that there was that much damage at what seems like relatively low speeds. I'm another vote for having pictures posted.

Robert Tilley

San Diego, CA

Sent from my BlackBerry - the most secure mobile device

From: bre...@areyoualert.com Sent: June 30, 2020 2:23 AM To: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com Reply-to: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com Subject: [RBW] PSA: Cheap fenders killed my bike.

[Justin Wyne]

Sorry to hear about the bike. If you do decide to have it fixed I've recently seen work done by @killenbike Killenbike.com (Newtown?) on a bent up Crust Bombora that came out really nice.

Best luck

[Max S]

Big bummer. Glad you’re ok!

Couple of BOBs down-under might help sort out rebuild possibilities, but maybe give Darrell a call?.. Even if location doesn’t work, he could suggest alternatives?..

http://llewellynbikes.com/

- Max “keep it rubber side centripetally oriented” in A2

[George Millwood]

Sorry to hear about your accident, but so happy that you weren't injured.  The framebuilder I was going to recommend is Ewen Gellie but he no longer does frame repairs.  However for lugged frames and brazing repairs, he does recommend: -

Gordon Hill in Croydon, Victoria

https://www.gordonhillbikeframes.com/

or

Geoff Duke in Northcote, Victoria

https://gdukehandmadebicycles.com.au/

I know they're both on the other side but that has to be cheaper than overseas.

George Millwood

Wollongong, NSW where the last local builder now makes bespoke expresso machines!

www.gelliecustombikeframes.com.au

[brendonoid]

Thanks so much for everyones kind responses. It was really hard to take clear pictures. I do not like take photos and try not to do it too much.

I hope these work;

headtube variance:

Doesn't look much in the picture but the bend in the middle was actually enough to lift the headbadge loose. seemed to have fulcrumed a bend around the second TT.

Downtube bend was lower in the tube and a lot longer than I was looking for so my initial inspection missed it:

Yes that is an old bent Homer fork from an accident in 2013, its steerer was not distorted so was a test bed for headset alignment,

Headset misalignment is 0.45mm according to my feeler gauge:

And finally you can see that the fork has bent where the steerer enters the lug and it actually seems the crown lug has twisted slightly also. Frustratingly the fork blades seem almost perfectly straight.

I will look into the Eastern States options as far as frame repair is concerned but at this point I might just try to get a new fork from Riv and ride it as is. The frame isn't twisted at all and the double top tube gives me confidence that if the downtube does fail it wont be catastrophic. The chamfer on the FSA headset cups/bearings seem to absorb the misalignment and function very smoothly. I suspect an old loose ball headset would not function at all.

Would probably had grief purchased an orange 57cm if they had still been available...I do love orange.

[Jeffrey Arita]

Dear Brendon,

First and foremost, so glad you are ok!  I think we all appreciate you sharing your unfortunate experience and as a warning to others of what could happen.  This critical information will definitely guide me should I ever look into installing mudguards.

Again, thank you for taking the time and effort to post the photos.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  The forces those high quality steel tubes underwent must have been amazing.  And you weren't going that fast!

Stay Safe!

Jeff

Claremont, CA USA

[Robert Tilley]

I think I'd try riding it with a replacement fork. I wouldn't worry about catastrophic frame failure since it looks like it would give plenty warning before anything happened. A frame alignment would likely be necessary.

I do wonder if the headset would work without binding. I also wonder what the damage would have been like without the additional top tube. Better or worse?

Thanks for taking the time to post pictures!

Robert Tilley

San Diego, CA

Sent from my BlackBerry - the most secure mobile device

From: bre...@areyoualert.com Sent: June 30, 2020 8:18 PM To: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com Reply-to: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com Subject: [RBW] Re: PSA: Cheap fenders killed my bike.

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[James Valiensi]

Hi,

I’ve built and repaired many steel frames. 

I wouldn’t be concerned about the frame. It will not suddenly fail. The down tube may not have been perfectly straight to begin with. Generally, when down tubes fail from a head on crash, they buckle right below the lug. That tiny amount of distortion is nothing to worry about. 

The fork bend looks mild. I’b bend it back straight and ride away. Clamp it down to a very heavy bench and use a piece of pipe over the steerer tube to tweak it back to straight. 

One of the best properties of steel that makes it ideal for bicycle frames is its durability. It can be bent many times and will not fail. Think of your fork blades - before they were round tubes, they where flat sheet, then rolled in to tubes and then swedged to a taper and then bent to a curve. They will bend back, no problem. I just fixed a fork that was bent severely to the side because the bike fell off a carrier. The owner was freaking out. He thought the fork was junk, yet 20-minutes later he happily road away on the same fork. 

Your bike is not dead. 

If you fly me to Oz, I’ll fix it no cost!

James Valiensi

On Jun 30, 2020, at 9:14 PM, Robert Tilley <rlti...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think I'd try riding it with a replacement fork. I wouldn't worry about catastrophic frame failure since it looks like it would give plenty warning before anything happened. A frame alignment would likely be necessary.

I do wonder if the headset would work without binding. I also wonder what the damage would have been like without the additional top tube. Better or worse?

Thanks for taking the time to post pictures!

Robert Tilley

San Diego, CA

Sent from my BlackBerry - the most secure mobile device

From: bre...@areyoualert.com Sent: June 30, 2020 8:18 PM To: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com Reply-to: rbw-owne...@googlegroups.com Subject: [RBW] Re: PSA: Cheap fenders killed my bike.

Thanks so much for everyones kind responses. It was really hard to take clear pictures. I do not like take photos and try not to do it too much.

I hope these work;

headtube variance:

<APPAheadtubebend.jpg>

Doesn't look much in the picture but the bend in the middle was actually enough to lift the headbadge loose. seemed to have fulcrumed a bend around the second TT.

Downtube bend was lower in the tube and a lot longer than I was looking for so my initial inspection missed it:

<APPAdowntubedistortion.jpg>

Yes that is an old bent Homer fork from an accident in 2013, its steerer was not distorted so was a test bed for headset alignment,

Headset misalignment is 0.45mm according to my feeler gauge:

<APPAheadsetmisalignment0.45mm.jpg>

And finally you can see that the fork has bent where the steerer enters the lug and it actually seems the crown lug has twisted slightly also. Frustratingly the fork blades seem almost perfectly straight.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/55pc64tdj7se17gj3padkvqg.1593576861282%40gmail.com.
<APPAheadsetmisalignment0.45mm.jpg><APPAheadtubebend.jpg><APPAforkcrowntwist.jpg><APPAdowntubedistortion.jpg>

[Craig Montgomery]

I go along with Tilley. Been riding a bike with down tube deformation like yours for over 10 years. I think you'll be OK. Just look for, now and then, crazing/crackling of paint on the bottom of the down tube just behind the lower head lug. My Bates has an itty hairline crack in the paint at that spot and hasn't given me any problems yet. On the other hand, here is an extreme example of what happens when you crash properly. In this case the forks survived unharmed, as did the head tube. Frame buckled at top tube and down tube. That's officially a total. If you can get out of this with just a fork replacement you'll be alright. It just takes time. Hope you have other bikes. 

Craig in Tucson

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[Bill Lindsay]

While I think the side conversations about how great steel is for being safe to ride even after it's bent and bent back, I'd like to drag it back to the Original Poster's original point:

"Hey guys, I just wanted to let everyone know the obviously stupid thing that I did even though I knew it was stupid has ruined my bike. Maybe this will help others as a warning or something... ?"

If you run a front fender, and if you ride anywhere where a tree-part (branch, twig, chunk of bark) may get dragged up into your fender by the tire or the spokes, then it is smart to use some kind of quick release stay.  It is not crazy to employ a QR of some kind in the back as well.  If you only ride on pavement and dust and sand then the risk is really small, but if you ride over woodchips or bark or fallen branches the risk is not so small.  Plowing over branches with one's fat-tired woolly mammoth is decidedly more rad than avoiding them, but part of one's line-picking plan should probably consider the stuff that's getting sucked up into the fenders and the spokes.  Even if you don't run fenders, spokes are still an exposure to risk.  Be careful out there with those tree-parts!

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA

[Ash]

Hey Brendon,

I'm so glad you are ok.  Really sorry to hear about the bike damage. 

Thanks for sharing the story.  The fact that you were riding a high quality bike and it also happens to be LWB might have played in your favor.

I have those safety clips on front mudguards.  After reading this story and Bill's comments on this thread, I want to see if something similar possible for the rear one.

Last year there were two serious bike crashes in my circles.  A cousin, who shattered both wrists going over the handlebar.  A coworker who shattered on wrist, also going over the handlebar.  (they also had face injuries)

Ever since I've been thinking long wheel base and upright riding positions increase safety in such accidents.   Today I sketched a diagram to capture my gut feeling.  The triangle on the left can be flipped over with relatively less force.   (The diagram might look dramatized, not-to-scale, not geometrically accurate, the center of gravity might not comply with physics equations etc 🙂.  It is just my gut feeling.  My riding experience with various bikes tell me that there might be some truth to it!)

[Patrick Moore]

This reminds me to ask: Are there QR clips, or ways to adapt SKS-type QR clips, to Honjo-type fender struts? (I currently use metal "R" clips).

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[brendonoid]

I agree that steel is the best frame material and I will most likely be riding this bike again with a new fork. I tend to get emotional about my bikes and overreact especially about my rivendells but just wanted to reiterate a few bullet points:

- My fenders did not have safety clip thingos

- I had the nitto Big Front Rack equipped which was basically a tubular space frame reinforcement preventing the fork from bending as designed.

- The trail I was on was absolutely littered with sticks branches and bark and I had ridden the entirety of the the previous day on the same terrain with no issues. There was no line to pick that would avoid this stuff. Wish I had a photo. Karri trees drop a LOT of litter.

Thanks again folks for the advice, encouragement and commiserations, I'm much more or a lurker than a poster and have enjoyed reading the content on this forum for many years.

Cheers to all,

Brendon M.

PS oh I actually have a bad photo of my bike the day before I crashed it. Can't make out much of the bike from this angle but the bags 'backwards' on the front to clear the Neo Retro Cantis. The Smart Sams, whilst perfect for the pea gravel, would also have been a contributing factor as the tread can be very grabby. The bags are very lightly packed with hiking gear and I don't think the weight was a significant contributor.

On Tuesday, 30 June 2020 at 17:23:00 UTC+8 brendonoid wrote:

[Deacon Patrick]

Hey Brendon! I reiterate the joy of others that you are fine and your bike may be too. A few thoughts:

1. How in the world did you see that in the field? I'd have totally missed it. Of course I'm not the most observant person and have missed really obvious things for days being a knucklehead.

2. Australian fauna and flora are on a whole different level when it comes to both passive and active dangers they present. Makes my territory positively wimpy. Even our tree branches don't try hard to kill or maim, just breaking easily. Wimps.

Keep riding with abandon!

With abandon

Patrick  

[Nick Lindsey]

Hello Brendon,

Your report is so interesting.  Glad to know and see that you are well.

Of particular interest is the trailer hitch on your car.  Having never seen this type in the States, could you shed some light?   Is the hitch also meant to support a bike rack?

Nick in Pleasant Hill, CA

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 1, 2020, at 6:31 PM, brendonoid <bre...@areyoualert.com> wrote:

I agree that steel is the best frame material and I will most likely be riding this bike again with a new fork. I tend to get emotional about my bikes and overreact especially about my rivendells but just wanted to reiterate a few bullet points:

- My fenders did not have safety clip thingos

- I had the nitto Big Front Rack equipped which was basically a tubular space frame reinforcement preventing the fork from bending as designed.

- The trail I was on was absolutely littered with sticks branches and bark and I had ridden the entirety of the the previous day on the same terrain with no issues. There was no line to pick that would avoid this stuff. Wish I had a photo. Karri trees drop a LOT of litter.

Thanks again folks for the advice, encouragement and commiserations, I'm much more or a lurker than a poster and have enjoyed reading the content on this forum for many years.

Cheers to all,

Brendon M.

PS oh I actually have a bad photo of my bike the day before I crashed it. Can't make out much of the bike from this angle but the bags 'backwards' on the front to clear the Neo Retro Cantis. The <Appaloosadaybefore.jpg>Smart Sams, whilst perfect for the pea gravel, would also have been a contributing factor as the tread can be very grabby. The bags are very lightly packed with hiking gear and I don't think the weight was a significant contributor.

On Tuesday, 30 June 2020 at 17:23:00 UTC+8 brendonoid wrote:

Hey guys, I just wanted to let everyone know the obviously stupid thing that I did even though I knew it was stupid has ruined my bike. Maybe this will help others as a warning or something... ?

I've been running some cheap plastic fenders SOMA somethingorothers that did not have those plastic easy break stay connecters that most common sense fenders have. I knew this was a hazard but had ridden many 1000s of kilometres on them and had just sort of forgotten about it. 

It gets worse; I attached my Nitto Big Front rack (34f)? to do an overnighter on a nice trail while i was on holiday squeezing the adventure inbetween some bad weather and storms. On the second day, 80kms from the next town as I crested the hill...through a lot of debris and broken branches... doing ~15kmh (not exceeding 20kmh) my bike suddenly came to a stop. Just a firm enough stop to lift the back end up a little bit and make me have to put my feet down suddenly.

The fender stays had lodged themselves into the fork along with the thick piece of bark that had caused the accident.

"No worries! these cheap fenders finally failed!" I thought, "my stupid fault. Oh well, lucky I was going slow!' 

As I disentangled the mess, removing the front wheel, "Oh no, the fork is bent" I realised. "It's okay, the wheel isn't hitting the downtube I can still ride out of here... why has the head badged popped out funny though?"

Oh, the headtube is shaped like a banana...

Welp.

I could have been doing 40km/h down hill and i could have died as well as killing my bike. This is what I am trying to commisserate myself with. It barely helps.

I live in Western Australia. There are no local frame builders I know of or would trust to try and repair this frame. Shipping the bike back to Rivendell is going to be an expensive excercise and in these COVID times I'm not sure they can do anything anyway. I really just don't know what I am going to do.

The accident was so minor and I have bent forks before. The problem here and the reason it has been so catastrophic is because the Big Strong Nitto rack reinforced the fork removing tis failure mode of being able to bend, that force was translated into the headtube as the fork actually bent where the steerer is welded into the crown lug translating that force into the headtube.

I can post pictures if anyone is interested. The frame is weirdly straight and I cannot find any distortion in the maintubes despite the obvious bend in the head tube. The headset cups are only out of alignment to the point that a sealed bearing headset can absorb the variance and seemingly work ok. 

The bend has to have gone somewhere though and I'm not sure that if I got a new fork that I could feel safe riding the frame as is...

I really just needed to vent,

Thanks for listening, (reading I guess)

Brendon M.

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<Appaloosadaybefore.jpg>

[Julian Westerhout]

Patrick, 

Portland Design Works Safety Tabs will work. 

https://tinyurl.com/y7hkesbv

Julian Westerhout

Bloomington, IL 

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[Patrick Moore]

Thanks, Julian. Others have pointed to this. 

I should have noted that my stays (Kelpie) are 6.5mm thick versus the standard (IIRC) 5 mm, which in practice is quite a bit fatter. Any idea if the PDW devices will work with those?

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:17 AM Julian Westerhout <weste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Patrick, 

Portland Design Works Safety Tabs will work. 

https://tinyurl.com/y7hkesbv

--

[Julian Westerhout]

Patrick, 

I have a set of the PDW safety tabs -- 6.5mm stays will not fit. that's pretty stout! Presuming they're not hollow if you "really" wanted safety tabs you could get busy reducing the diameter of the bottom few inches of your fender stays with some sandpaper...      ;) 

Julian Westerhout

Bloomington, IL 

[Patrick Moore]

Thanks again, Julian. For the Kelpies, I plan (God willing) to have Chauncey braze on aftermarket strut bosses some-way up the fork legs, both so that the trailing part of the fender moves away from the tire if it should be caught and dragged up toward the crown, and also so that the trailing part of the fender might be more laterally rigid -- this because, with 3" of toe overlap, I occasionally kick the rear end of the fender quite hard. With the considerable rake, attaching the struts above the curve will require shorter struts than for the present attachments at the dropouts.

But I may well buy a pair for the VO fenders on the new Matthews pavement bike.

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 12:00 PM Julian Westerhout <weste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Patrick, 

I have a set of the PDW safety tabs -- 6.5mm stays will not fit. that's pretty stout! Presuming they're not hollow if you "really" wanted safety tabs you could get busy reducing the diameter of the bottom few inches of your fender stays with some sandpaper...      ;) 

Julian Westerhout

Bloomington, IL 

On Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 11:21:34 AM UTC-5, Patrick Moore wrote:

Thanks, Julian. Others have pointed to this. 

I should have noted that my stays (Kelpie) are 6.5mm thick versus the standard (IIRC) 5 mm, which in practice is quite a bit fatter. Any idea if the PDW devices will work with those?

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 9:17 AM Julian Westerhout <weste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Patrick, 

Portland Design Works Safety Tabs will work. 

https://tinyurl.com/y7hkesbv

--

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

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[brendonoid]

So I put the bike back together.

I spent a long time considering options about straightening the frame and the headtube. I learned a lot about straightening steel and measuring alignments and all sorts of stuff. Quite a fun journey. In the end the risk of causing further damage to fix something that might not really need fixing became a bit of a debilitating pros versus cons stand off. So I did nothing.

Then Rivendell went and listed those No Frame Prep specials and yeah there was a single top tube 57cm orange Appaloosa so whoops the perfect bike and I bought it.

ANYWAY, I slapped some quality black enamel on the replacement fork and bing bang boom The Silver Stallion is back on the road.

You can see the headset variance is still there at the top but crucially the fork crown race is perfectly perpendicular so my suspicion is that this will work fine for many years. I will check the bearing wear after 500kms or so to see how things are going but I suspect it will be fine. The bike still rides great and straight. Thanks again for everyones help and calming words in my hour of distress.

PS. Someone asked in a post I previously missed about the Volvo's period correct bicycle carrier for that is indeed what those tubes are on the trailer hitch are, well spotted!

[Ash]

Steel is real!!!

Come to think of it, the head tube is the only part of the bike frame that has inherent fail-safe feature - ie the steerer rube.   Is a very, very, very, very, very, very unlikely scenario the head tube breaks or something, the steerer tube will hold things together.  The bike may feel wobbly but it won't crash.

Congrats on your new bike!

[Joe Grandia]

Hey Brendon, and everyone else,

Do you still have this bike? I am curious to know how it is riding these day. Did you ever run into any issues with the headset binding since the steer tube is still bent? Turns out I am in the same predicament, and I am trying to figure out what to do. My head tube is banana-ed just like yours, and the down tube is bowed by just about the same amount.

Here's the story: 

I bought a used mustard double top tube Appaloosa from a guy in Sacramento, 62cm. It has a lot of top of the line parts, some some chips, and the price was right. The guy assured me that the frame was good to go. Apparently he was even a bike mechanic for a while. He was a really nice guy. I didn't notice anything weird when I did a few laps on it in the parking lot, but I think I was just giddy about getting the bike. I took it on a real ride the next day, and realized the ride characteristics were odd - the bike seemed to lean to and favor the left side. It would hardly lean into right turns at all, and I really had to leverage the bars to get it to go that way. It seemed to wonder a bit below me as I rode and would not track properly. On sharp right hand turns in loose dirt or sand, the wheel would turn right, but the bike would try to keep going straight creating a very sketchy sensation. I am not convinced the guy withheld info about the damage, but I have a hard time believing he was ignorant to it. I always try to assume positive intent - I am still trying to do that - but man...

Soon after, I notice the the rear hub is 130mm, and the frame is spaced to 135mm. It also appeared that the front wheel was a few mm off center in the fork. Wishfully, I convinced myself that the wheels needed to be spaced properly and dished. Rich Lesnik of Hands on Wheels is in the neighborhood, and he had the White Industries spacer that I needed for the rear wheel. I brought them to him and he spaced and dished the rear wheel for me for $50 bucks. Thanks Rich! He took a look at the front wheel and said it was straight. That ruled that out. 

After a few rides of thinking that I might be crazy, I decided to take the fork off the bike and give it a good once over. I put it on the kitchen table and sure enough, it was outta wack. It is pretty obvious now that the bike had been in a front end collision at one point. The headset bearing race on the fork is gouged, too, in a way that I can only imagine would happen in an impact.

Today I stripped all of the parts off of the frame. I held a straight edge up to the head tube and down tube, and sure enough, they are both bowed. The damage to my frame looks identical to the damage on Brendons, which is bizarre. It seems like it is pretty rare to bend a head tube. What is even weirder is I don't think the steer tube on my fork is bent at all. All of the bend is at the blades, both laterally and fore and aft. I am like 94% sure of that. The headset doesn't seem to be binding at all, which I understand can happen when things there get misaligned. 

Anyways, I am pretty bummed. This is the most $$ I have ever spent on a bike, and most of the research I have done says that a bent head tube means game over. Your story makes me hopeful that It can be salvaged. I am obviously pretty eager for a solution. Or at least a hug. Eric Billings in Oakland is going to take a look at it tomorrow, but he isn't sure yet if the bent head tube is repairable. I have reached out to Bernie Mikkelsen and Ed Litton as well, but have not hear back yet. 

Any advice out there? and Miraculous solutions? Olly olly oxen free!

TLDR: Frame real broke in same way as above. Need help. 

Thanks,

Joe in SF

[brendonoid]

I ended up finding a local frame builder who simply faced the headtube again so that the headset cups sat well enough and did not bind. They still aren't visually perfect, but the braking judder has gone away and the bearings lasted more than a week without getting crunchy. The rest of the frame was still true however, so it still rides really well.

A comment that I found interesting was that he said "double top tubes are too strong". In context he was suggesting that a similar impact on a single top tube would have sprung and not bent the headtube. If damage had occurred it would have been more easily repaired. So this is something to think about. He was an old school Italian race bike sort of fellow and certainly had many decades of experience.

I still ride the bike pretty hard and it hasn't complained.

Best of luck and I hope everything works out. I am deeply suspicious of the seller, however.

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[George Schick]

Sorry this accident happened and am glad you're OK.  However, the long years of experience that frame builder has certainly revealed an interesting fact about these double top tube frames.  Wonder if Grant was aware of this when he began introducing those frame styles.

[Mackenzy Albright]

Joe - I had purchased a large 80's touring bike with similar ride characteristics to what you  described. I think my bike may have been smashed in storage or transport misaligning the forks and rear tri. It may not have been something that the owner was aware of.  I took it to my favorite, competent bike shop, after riding it for months being bummed how much it wandered. It took them an hour or so get cold set everything back into place cost me like $50 of labor. Rides like a dream now. Been riding it for thousands of kilometers. 

Also, side thought. Bending a head tube does seem odd. I could imagine small warping during the welding process. I don't know the extent of quality control on rivs.  As long as they are faced to be parallel it should ride true. Anyways - a good mechanic or builder will be able to help work things out. 

[Rick Urbanowski]

FYI Ride in Peace, Ewen Gellie, Australian Framebuilder
MARCH 21, 2022  https://theradavist.com/rip-ewen-gellie-death/

[CJ]

Joe,

Sorry to hear that you got a damaged frame. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but I can envision the forces in a front-end collision bending the headtube around the lower top tube, resulting in the "banana" effect. Just an anecdote, but I was in a local bike shop last summer, and they had an old Schwinn LeTour (I think?) on a repair stand, and the fork was bent so badly the front wheel was almost touching the down tube. I was curious if they were going to try to straighten the fork or source a replacement, so I struck up a conversation with one of the shop employees about it, and he replied something like "oh, no it just needs a new front wheel". I told him to look at the fork, it was clearly bent below the crown. He gathered some other mechanics to look at it, and they agreed. Somehow, they missed that when taking the repair job on. Long story to say, even a shop mechanic can miss something that is as seemingly obvious as a bent frame or fork.

Good luck with your bike, I hope you can get it on the road again!

Chris