Fix a bend bicycle fork
Bend forks are hard to fix — I thought. But to get it somewhat straight is sometimes not that big of a deal!
This is the bend fork. It is also the reason that made the bike go to trash before I saved it:
To bend the fork back to shape, I build a pair wooden brackets with a groove. The brackets protect the forks shaft from getting damaged and enable a strong fixing of the fork in the vise.
Next, I measured the distance in between the forks endings (here 100 mm), and started to bend each arm back towards its original position. Checking the progress by inserting the wheel as a gauge after each iteration and also measuring the distance of the endings.
This is how it looked afterwards:
The same brackets can be used to fix a bend handlebar
From the apparent crash, the bikes handlebar also doesn’t look good. Now not a big deal anymore :)
Summary
You don’t need a big vise (even though it makes thinks easier) to fix a fork!