Cycling UK Forum

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I feel like a complete idiot for not realizing this when we met on Xmass 2023 and I paid for the bicycle, thinking I had made a deal.
A real idiot! if I had disassembled the fork and noticed that the grease was brown in color, or disassembled the BB and noticed that the rust reaches the caps, and all around there are crusts, or even just turned the bike upside down and seen the rivet ...

well ... I would have had a lot more doubts and I definitely wouldn't have bought it
)

... today I really got depressed and I decided to throw away the frame.
I don't like throwing money away, but here we are really faced with something that doesn't even make sense to repair.

What I saw when I also disassembled the BB is at least two orders of magnitude worse than what I saw in the head tube: very deep rust crusts, so much so that they started to corrode even the threads of the BB.

Indeed, I had to use a 2 meter lever to unscrew them, and inside it's all rust, even the pin is rusted!

And, another thing that I had not noticed before, but only by disassembling things, the cable guide mask has been riveted instead of a threaded hole for M4 screw, as is usually done on all racing bikes, and if this is ... strange but acceptable, well ... in reality the rivet is "fake", because first the did a mess with an hole that could be fixed with an M6!!! (which, seriously, is idiotic), then they glued it with resin on the frame putting the rivet only to save appearances

That Moser Forma was a bicycle that I bought second hand, and that apparently "seemed" to be in excellent condition ... but the more I dismantle it the more shitty crap and rust I find

* * *
So, that's why I decided that it's not worth spending any more time, it's not even a top of the range frame but a top entry-level, that is, something that is worth more or less just a frame, 200 euros

I mean, ... I can do some treatments to somehow repair the rust I saw before, but the BB is in such bad condition that it needs to be replaced and that's just too much! It should be unsoldered and replaced, something that is not easy to do, I don't know how to do it, and maybe it can't even be done anymore.

So I'll throw away the frame and recover some components and the wheels.

R.I.P.

Interesting topic here

when I ask questions like this, and it's already been understood in other topics... no answer

Brucey wrote: ↑30 Sep 2024, 1:37pm rust nearly always looks worse than it is. A surprisingly small amount of iron can create a surprisingly large amount of rust. This is possible because rust is (by volume) mostly oxygen and water.

You can remove loose rust within frames by putting a few ball-bearings inside and then vibrating the frame. This process normally turns loose rust to a powder, easily removed along with the ball bearings. The frame can then be treated internally eg using a little waxoyl. If you are curious about how much metal you have really lost, you can dry what comes out eg. by roasting it with a naked flame. What remains is iron and oxygen; the colour being a good guide to the exact oxidation state of the iron.

I can do this in the head tube, but what about the rust inside the horizontal tube?

How do I know there is a lot of rust? well ...

• fact#1 - the junction between the horizontal tube and the head tube has a hole and by pointing a LED light I see rust
• fact#2 - the rear brake wire sheath passes inside the horizontal tube, extracting the sheath, which is plastic, it is all rust colored, a sign that there is a lot of rust inside the tube

I don't understand what the hell they did to this frame ...

Today, I found an old (1992) steel frame in a warehouse.

Apparently it seemed to be in excellent NOS condition, however, when I dismantled the fork and steering group I first found brown grease ... then a large part of the rusty fork steerer tube and finally rust inside the steering tube

Then, looking with a flashlight I saw rust inside the horizontal tube too, and, even worse, dismantling the bottom bracket cups, there is rust there too

Rust inside the tubes: how do you remove it?

Interesting video on YouTube

• "Are Expensive Bike Lights a Rip Off?!", see here
• "10 New Bike Lights for 2023, NEWBOLER, XOSS, SoRider, Magicshine, X-TIGER, NATFIRE Front Lights", see here

Brucey wrote: ↑28 Sep 2024, 12:56pm

PH wrote: ↑27 Sep 2024, 4:18pm what purpose does the bend serve other than aesthetics?

in far off days everybody used steel forks and only those made in the strongest steels could be made thin-walled enough to be flexible and therefore comfortable. Because they so often went hand-in-hand, folk soon learned to associate the longitudinal movement they could see with increased comfort, even though this was arguably the bailiwick of much smaller, largely unseen, vertical movements. The curved part of forks doesn't move much but it does move; 'be grateful for small mercies' was perhaps never truer. Steel disc brake forks need to be much stiffer at the tip so they are often a lot less comfortable.

could it be a criterion of choice, start looking at the weight of the fork if you don't have the faintest idea of ​​what alloy is used?

I mean, if I take an obscenely cheap fork in steel-tungsten (brrr), this is very rigid, but this is because it is made with steel tubes that need more thickness to withstand the various stresses without giving in, and therefore ... more thickness, more material, more weight.

That's the idea -> without a datasheet, I would immediately discard any steel fork (on e.g. eBay) that exceeds 800g because it is a sign that it does NOT use NivaCrMo or similar, and of course it is not an exact criterion because there are also forks for disc brakes that are made of light alloy but ... they are intentionally stiffened due to the reinforcements, however if I look for rim-brake forks automatically, I discard forks for disc brakes

* * *

The other thing you say leads me to think that I would do well to turn to a craftsman, "just to cut the bull" (local idiom to say "solve the problem") to this very difficult matter where nothing is understood.

I asked two craftsmen with 30 years of experience in the racing bicycles field, how much it would cost to have a handmade fork made by them

Both asked me no less than 300 euros, the estimate varies between 310 and 350 euros

we are talking about

• handmade fork
• NivaCrMo steel
• total weight of 630g
• nickel-plated chrome-plated
• ready for rim-brake

you can choose what offset you want, the type of thread { Campy/ITA, Campy/BC1, ISO, ... }, the length of the fork steerer tube
you can also ask for the locking ring of the reaction arm of a Sturmey Archer drum brake hub to be welded, with possible reinforcement of the blade.

another detail that I didn't quite understand...

• cheap forks without brand that are sold for 50 euro are already chrome plated and polished, on one of the ones I photographed, the hole for the rim brake locking nut needs to be milled because it hasn't been done correctly, the other two are perfect, and I also note the care taken to sand the inside to eliminate the burr from the drilling, something that... on the Coppi and Bianchi fork it wasn't done and I had to think about it myself
• some forks from famous brand have only undergone nickel plating, which is the process before the final chrome plating, so in this case, if I spend 250 euros for a fork that has only undergone nickel plating, I then have to spend another 30 euros for chrome plating and polishing, which means that it costs 280 euros, which is simply crazy for a NOS fork like that!

fork without brand, #1
fork without brand, #2
fork without brand, #3

fork coppi 96
fork moser 96
fork bianchi 94

Brucey wrote: ↑28 Sep 2024, 12:56pm in far off days everybody used steel forks and only those made in the strongest steels could be made thin-walled enough to be flexible and therefore comfortable. Because they so often went hand-in-hand, folk soon learned to associate the longitudinal movement they could see with increased comfort, even though this was arguably the bailiwick of much smaller, largely unseen, vertical movements. The curved part of forks doesn't move much but it does move; 'be grateful for small mercies' was perhaps never truer. Steel disc brake forks need to be much stiffer at the tip so they are often a lot less comfortable.

does "strongest steels" mean NivaCrMo?

I think I'll take some pictures of some forks used by famous brands { Bianchi, Coppi, Moser, ... } on their mid-range bikes, so you can see what I think.

Brucey wrote: ↑28 Sep 2024, 1:31pm I would say that the difference a good steel fork can make to comfort is about the same as is caused by an extra layer of bar tape. If you can feel the difference, it is probably worth having.

so you're telling me two things

• cheap forks built with mass production process, typically made in Taiwan or China, are made to satisfy the average needs of anyone who doesn't buy the top of the range but only entry level and mid range, and that's likely also why you find them on almost all training bicycles, a bit like you find Vittoria Rubino Pro tires (30 euros each) on training bikes, rather than Vittoria Control (55 euros each) on racing bicycles
• in any case the difference in cost is not justified, unless there are competition needs