Carbon Road Forks for Older Bicycles

Broken Bicyclist wrote:
..
(Chicago)

Rapid Transit on North Ave. Real bike nerds, the equivalent of Harris
in Chicago. Can't recommend them enough. Bought a bike from them. It
got stolen, and their staff helped recover it through a word of mouth
network.

Urban Bikes
4653 N Broadway St

Don't know if it's still there, but I used to LOVE that place. Small
selection of bikes, but great shop for frankenbike lovers.

Even the Performance shop isn't half bad if it's still there up on
Halsted (?)

Avoid Kozy's.

With regard to the last comment... opps...

Performance is still on Halstead, they were no help and didn't even
pretend that they could be of help.

Broken Bicyclist wrote:
With regard to the last comment... opps...

Performance is still on Halstead, they were no help and didn't even
pretend that they could be of help.

With Performance and the other chain stores, it's a matter of the
quality of the employees--sounds like that's crap atm.

Do patronize Rapid Transit, and tell them Max in Nashville sent you.

Broken Bicyclist wrote:
How does one find a "good" bike shop. I do not live in Boston and
cannot use Sheldon Brown....
(Chicago)

Here's a good one not far outside the city:

Spin Doctor Cyclewerks
140 S. Hickory Ave.
Bartlett, IL 60103
(630) 289-7360

Alex Rodriguez wrote:
In article . com,
says...

I mangled the front fork of my old Lotus Challenger SX the other day.
My first local bike shop told me that it was a write off with a bent
front fork and tried to get me to buy a new road bike. At the
suggestion of this group, I went to another Bike Shop and they said
that they could, in fact, order a new Carbon Steel Front Fork. They
said it would take about a week to 10 days to have it delivered. That
was more than 2 months ago.... and they still do not have it. (Its a
Dimension Hi-ten replacement fork with a 250mm steering tube...) They
claim that they have tried many sources and they all say it is on back
order....
Does anyone have any other ideas. My broken ribs have pretty much
heeled from the accident and it is driving me crazy to have my bicycle
still on the shelf (so to speak). My "replacement" is a Ross, and
quite honestly, its pretty much a pig......


Try rec.bicycles.marketplace . I'm sure there are many folks with steel forks
sitting in the corner after an upgrade to carbon. Should be cheap too. A nice
chromoly will also weigh less than a high tensile steel fork.
------------
Alex

"chromoly" /is/ a high tensile steel.

Broken Bicyclist wrote:
I mangled the front fork of my old Lotus Challenger SX the other day.
My first local bike shop told me that it was a write off with a bent
front fork and tried to get me to buy a new road bike. At the
suggestion of this group, I went to another Bike Shop and they said
that they could, in fact, order a new Carbon Steel Front Fork. They
said it would take about a week to 10 days to have it delivered. That
was more than 2 months ago.... and they still do not have it. (Its a
Dimension Hi-ten replacement fork with a 250mm steering tube...) They
claim that they have tried many sources and they all say it is on back
order....

Does anyone have any other ideas. My broken ribs have pretty much
heeled from the accident and it is driving me crazy to have my bicycle
still on the shelf (so to speak). My "replacement" is a Ross, and
quite honestly, its pretty much a pig......

decent carbon forks are great. get one with a steel steerer, [not
kestrel], and go threadless. it's a nice ugrade.

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:42:56 -0700, Broken Bicyclist wrote:

Does anyone have any other ideas. My broken ribs have pretty much
heeled from the accident and it is driving me crazy to have my bicycle
still on the shelf (so to speak). My "replacement" is a Ross, and
quite honestly, its pretty much a pig......

No reason you can't use a decent carbon fork on an older bike. Some older
bikes have larger clearances between tire and fork crown, so new forks
would change the angles, which could affect handling. But if your bike is
newer than, say, 1980, this should not be a problem.

No reason at all this should take 2 months. These are easily available
either threadless or threaded.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a
_`\(,_ | conclusion. -- George Bernard Shaw
(_)/ (_) |