How to Fix a Bent Seat Stay

I am now officially hard-core. Or at least medium-core. The Mundo's right seat stay was bent when I bought it, the result of a rear rack being affixed to it, and evidently getting whacked at some point while the thing was in the previous owner's shed. It was almost a deal-breaker for me, but I figured I'd see what I could do. In researching how to fix such a problem, I happened upon Dave Moulton's Bike Blog. Former frame builder and interwebs bike guru, Moulton has all kinds of helpful articles on all kinds of topics. Just so happens, he had one on this.

Mind you, this only works with *steel frame* bicycles (see how I emphasized that?), which are more flexible than carbon fiber, aluminum, etc. and can be bent back into shape (within reason) without loss of structural integrity. So anyway, go read the article, then come back here and check out the pictures below. Go ahead, I'll wait.

So here's my setup:

Instead of wood blocks, which I didn't have in the right size, I used a couple of landscaping bricks with (very dirty) towels over them for padding. I also put supports under the head tube and bottom bracket so the frame wouldn't wobble around. I used a piece of 1" wooden dowel, cut to size, as the spacer between the dropouts. You can see that the bent stay is on the bottom, ready for my foot.

Then, as Moulton says, I stood on the stay where it was bent. But either I'm too light, or this frame is too strong, because it did not bend as easily as Moulton suggested it would. In fact, after several tries, and some adjustments to the spacing of blocks, I ended up having to stand on it with 230 lbs. of force (my own 180, holding 50 lbs. worth of weights). After several attempts, during each of which the stay straightened a wee little bit, it came out straight enough to my satisfaction.

Actually, it still seems a tiny bit skewed to me, and I'm not sure if this is just my mind playing tricks, or if it needs a little more. Looking at the photo below, what do you think? (it's the right one). The alignment checks out with the string test, which Moulton also recommends.

Now I just need to get the seat post unstuck. Any suggestions on that? Besides heating it with a torch? I'm not averse to that, it's just that that seems to be the main suggestion for various stuck things, so I'm saying it now to get it out of the way. Oh, and penetrating oil, I know about that, too. Anything else?

Sunday Work Log

I managed to put in a good amount of bike work today for the first time in a while. Here's what I did:

• first three coats of paint on Huffeigh front fender
• finished dismantling the fixie project bike
• a bit of frame cleaning on the fixie project
• clear coated silver chrome touch-up on miscellaneous Huffeigh bits

Other things I've been doing whenever I've had the chance include sanding the parts of the Huffeigh frame and rear fender that will be painted, and trying to figure out how to get the stuck crank cotter and stuck seat post out of the fixie project. Tonight I'm hoping to rebuild the rear wheel on the Huffeigh, except for one spoke, which needs to be replaced and hasn't been obtained yet. Sorry about the lack of photos, I was more intent on getting the work done than taking photos of it. I'll try to get some up this week.

Just What I Need

Another way to waste time online. This looks like it's been around for a while, but I'm usually behind the curve on these sorts of things, so I just found out about it. It's a fun little tool you can use to create a mockup of your perfect bike. There aren't as many options for configuration as I would ideally like, and the color on the fork in the mockup above doesn't match the frame, but you can at least get an idea of how a project might turn out. I tried to get close to what I hope the Mundo fixed-gear project will look like when finished (still a long way off--the stuck seat post is still posing problems, but I'll get it). It's less useful for old bike restorations than for all-custom projects, but it's still fun to play around with.

Pedal ID from Pedalmafia

The Mundo: Fixie Mock-Up

I spent a couple hours this afternoon removing all of the crusty bits from "The Mundo." As long as I had everything off, I thought I'd throw a couple of things on it to see what it might look like as a fixed gear. The bars and seat are from the Huffy/Raleigh. I'm seriously thinking about using the bars, but they'll need a shim to fit the stem because they're not thick enough. The saddle, of course, is not a keeper, but just to see what a saddle would look like on it, and to rest on when flipped over.

I think it's going to look pretty sexy if I can pull it off. Even just mocked-up, I like it a lot. Thinking of redoing the baby? sky? blue paint with the head tube between the lugs painted white with some sort of custom head badge/decal. Although, as my grandmother used to say, I might be putting the cart before the horse.

The photo below is all of the stuff I took off, except the ape-hanger handlebars, which I'm going to try to clean up and resell. Quite a pile! And yes, that is the front axle still attached to the basket support. The nut on that side is frozen. In the photo above, a hex wrench is doing duty as a temporary axle.

1965 Mundo Cycles Caloi Racer

This hot mess is (or was) a 1965 Mundo Cycles "Caloi Racer," made in Brazil (not West Germany and not Japan, which apparently also had brands called Mundo, and not the modern cargo bikes). It's my latest, and perhaps most foolhardy purchase, although it was just a few bucks (some might argue that free would have been too much).

It's definitely in the worst shape of any of the bikes I've undertaken, but I'll give it a try. A much nicer bike of the same model is seen here. Suntour and Dia Compe components, but obviously not original handlebars, and the saddle seems to be missing. My main concern is a slightly bent right seat stay, which may or may not be a deal-breaker. The wheels may be goners, and I'm not so sure about either of the derailers. It's more of a "let's just see if I can" project than a really serious one. And a long-term one, certainly. Something to keep me off the streets, anyway. Here are a few more photos: