Rust in front fork

Quoted message said:

So I recently acquired a 36-year old reynolds 531 raleigh frame and when you shake the front fork
you can hear what I presume are a few flakes of rust jostling about. There are drain holes near
the fork tips. It does not sound like a lot of rust - perhaps one or two flakes maybe 1/4" in
size. Apparently, the pieces of rust are too large to get down near the holes.

This is irritating and i was wondering if there is anything i can do to remove the rust, and/or
assess whether the fork has extensive internal rust and might be unsafe?

- Don Gillies San Diego, CA

I may not even be rust, Don. Your fork was certainly brazed together, rather than welded, and those
may be small bits of braze stuff rattling around in there.

There is no way that I know to remove them, short of drilling a big enough hole to shake them out.
Do NOT do that. You could try injecting some Framesaver or similar gunk into the fork and see if
that makes the flakes stick so that they don't rattle.

While it is possible, it's unlikely that the fork would be rusted enough to be dangerous. You could
tap the fork all over and judge by the sound if there any areas that may be much thinner than the
rest of it.

One of my bikes has an eighty-year-old (yes, 80) fork, never had any anti-rust treatment and
it's still OK.

--
Ted Bennett Portland OR

Be very, very wary of old forks. My bike has handbuilt 531 frameset which is nearly as old as I am (48). Everything else has been replaced, much of it several times, but the frame, and until last week the forks, remained original.

Until last week... On my usual commute home from central London, something felt amiss but I couldn't figure out what. I stopped to check things over, couldn't find anything wrong, so pedalled off again. After a few yards, one fork leg sheared off, the front wheel jammed in the brakes and locked solid, bending the other fork leg back by six inches and spitting me off the bike.

I fell to the left. If I'd fallen to the right I think my head have gone under the car that was passing (roadspace was restricted due to roadworks).

I was only doing a few mph. At normal speed, I'd have gone flying straight over the handlebars and ended up in casualty, or worse, rather than with just a few grazes and bruises.

The forks take a tremendous hammering and unlike the frame which is triangulated they are simply cantilevered. I'd recommend getting a magnifying glass out and inspecting yours very closely...

On 16 Aug 2003 07:43:14 +0950 andy borrows said:

Until last week... On my usual commute home from central London, something felt amiss but I
couldn't figure out what. I stopped to check things over, couldn't find anything wrong, so pedalled
off again. After a few yards, one fork leg sheared off, the front wheel jammed in the brakes and
locked solid, bending the other fork leg back by six inches and spitting me off the bike.

Where did the fork actually break, or come apart, first?

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Jim Adney [email hidden] Madison, WI 53711 USA
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Sheoot, the forks on my 87 Schwinn Voyager frameset jingled from the day I walked out of the shop!
My guess is what you're hearing is leftover material from the brazing.

Peek into the frame tubes. They traveled the same roads under the same conditions as the forks. If
thet're not rusted away, the forks are probaly just as good.

May you have the wind at your back. And a really low gear for the hills! Chris

Chris'Z Corner "The Website for the Common Bicyclist": geocities.comczcornerOpen ↗

Donald Gillies said:

So I recently acquired a 36-year old reynolds 531 raleigh frame and when you shake the front fork
you can hear what I presume are a few flakes of rust jostling about. There are drain holes near
the fork tips. It does not sound like a lot of rust - perhaps one or two flakes maybe 1/4" in
size. Apparently, the pieces of rust are too large to get down near the holes.

Why do you assume it's rust? The brazing sometimes leaves bits of metal rattling around loose in the
tubes. I have these in one old bike. No big deal.

Quoted message said:

This is irritating and i was wondering if there is anything i can do to remove the rust, and/or
assess whether the fork has extensive internal rust and might be unsafe?

I have two bikes of about the same vintage. While I was busy with young children and an old house,
and did not ride for several years, they hung in my wet basement (it is a very old house). The paint
was damaged, and there was surface rust on the frames, but nothing serious.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | When you are up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember _`\(,_ | that your initial
objective was to drain the swamp. -- LBJ (_)/ (_) |

On 14 Aug 2003 11:51:23 -0700 (Donald Gillies) said:

So I recently acquired a 36-year old reynolds 531 raleigh frame and when you shake the front fork
you can hear what I presume are a few flakes of rust jostling about. There are drain holes near the
fork tips. It does not sound like a lot of rust - perhaps one or two flakes maybe 1/4" in size.
Apparently, the pieces of rust are too large to get down near the holes.

The most common things to rattle around in there are chunks of brazing flux which were left behind
after brazing. If there were rust chunks that large in there, there would also be smaller rust bits
and you could get lots of them out the holes. There's no doubt some rust, but not likely enough to
cause alarm.

I'd spray some oil in there. LPS-3 is my personal favorite.

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Jim Adney [email hidden] Madison, WI 53711 USA
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Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Jim Adney

BOn 16 Aug 2003 07:43:14 +0950 andy borrows said:

Until last week... On my usual commute home from central London, something felt amiss but I
couldn't figure out what. I stopped to check things over, couldn't find anything wrong, so pedalled
off again. After a few yards, one fork leg sheared off, the front wheel jammed in the brakes and
locked solid, bending the other fork leg back by six inches and spitting me off the bike.

Where did the fork actually break, or come apart, first?

-
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Jim Adney [email hidden] Madison, WI 53711 USA
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Jim:
These are (or were!) "traditional" style forks, with a separate horizontal cross piece which joins the forks and the steerer tube, rather than the more modern kind where the top of the fork legs are bent inwards and join together.
One leg cracked across the very top, where the fork tube enters the cross piece (which undoubtedly has a name but I'm afraid I don't know what). Interestingly, there's no sign of rusting on the surfaces of the break, so I guess the crack remained at a microscopic level and invisible under the paint until it finally decided to give up.

Looking on the bright side, at least I could fit forks with a longer steerer tube which let me put a needle roller headset in.

Andy, Hertfordshire UK

On 18 Aug 2003 07:43:34 +0950 andy borrows said:

Jim: These are (or were!) "traditional" style forks, with a separate horizontal cross piece which
joins the forks and the steerer tube, rather than the more modern kind where the top of the fork
legs are bent inwards and join together. One leg cracked across the very top, where the fork tube
enters the cross piece (which undoubtedly has a name but I'm afraid I don't know what).
Interestingly, there's no sign of rusting on the surfaces of the break, so I guess the crack
remained at a microscopic level and invisible under the paint until it finally decided to give up.

Andy,

The word you're looking for is "crown."

To have a fork blade just crack off right under the crown is pretty unusual, except for Jobst, who
had this happen to him several times with Cinelli crowns. In your case, were the fork blades brazed
into a socket in the crown, or was there a protrusion in the crown that stuck into the top of the
blade and was then brazed in place?

Usually, in cases like this there will be visible differences in the texture of the broken metal
which will let you differentiate places that had been broken for some time and worn against each
other, as opposed to those which broke at the last moment.

If it really all broke at once, I wonder if your front hub/QR had come loose, allowing the wheel to
slip sideways and break off the fork blade.

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Jim Adney [email hidden] Madison, WI 53711 USA
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Quoted post said:

Originally posted by Jim Adney

Quoted message said:

To have a fork blade just crack off right under the crown is pretty unusual, except for Jobst, who
had this happen to him several times with Cinelli crowns. In your case, were the fork blades brazed
into a socket in the crown, or was there a protrusion in the crown that stuck into the top of the
blade and was then brazed in place?

...

If it really all broke at once, I wonder if your front hub/QR had come loose, allowing the wheel to
slip sideways and break off the fork blade.

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Jim Adney [email hidden] Madison, WI 53711 USA
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Jim (with apologies to Donald for hijacking the thread!)

The forks that broke had the blades brazed into sockets in the crown. The hub is conventional non-QR, and both blades were still attached afterwards. For the last 4 years I've been doing a fairly high mileage (4,000 miles a year) but before that nothing special. Just bad luck I guess!

Just a thought... A couple of years ago I hit a pot-hole at speed which wrote off a pair of wheels (I managed to claim the cost back from the local council though. Also went out and bought a decent twin halogen light system!). That may have weakened the forks enough to start the crack developing.

Andy

On 19 Aug 2003 05:53:37 +0950 andy borrows said:

The forks that broke had the blades brazed into sockets in the crown. The hub is conventional
non-QR, and both blades were still attached afterwards. For the last 4 years I've been doing a
fairly high mileage (4,000 miles a year) but before that nothing special. Just bad luck I guess!

It's been years since i worked in a shop and saw bikes all day every day, but I still think this is
a pretty rare event.

Quoted message said:

Just a thought... A couple of years ago I hit a pot-hole at speed which wrote off a pair of wheels
(I managed to claim the cost back from the local council though. Also went out and bought a decent
twin halogen light system!). That may have weakened the forks enough to start the crack developing.

Certainly possible, but I've straightened forks where both blades had been bent back like your other
one and which then went on to live out normal lives. OTOH, I don't think anyone wants to straighten
forks anymore, simply because of the liability issues.

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Jim Adney [email hidden] Madison, WI 53711 USA
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