Ever since a terrorist carbon fork enlisted my once-trusty road bike in a plot to assassinate me last August I’ve looked askance at the old gal, giving her a wide berth in favor of one ’cross bike or another whenever I’m not test-driving something for Adventure Cyclist.
Naturally, I immediately subjected the terrorist fork to extraordinary rendition and, after some extended diplomacy through a third party, eventually approved the immigration of what was said to be a trustworthy replacement.
But I never trusted it. Call it profiling if you will, but I had a garage full of steel-forked bikes that had never tried to kill me. They were content to let me try to do myself in, and I could live with that.
Eventually I asked my friend Brent Steelman of Steelman Cycles to build me a manly, red-white-and-blue American steel fork for the road bike, and he came through with a brilliant piece of work. But then winter arrived, and other distractions intervened, and before you could say “stupid plastic fork” spring had arrived and I still hadn’t introduced my steel fork to its titanium bike.
Well, our long national nightmare has finally ended. Steelman fork and DBR frame at last are one, and the pairing is both lovely and lively. No longer do I feel as though I’m diving into a potholed corner hunched over a pair of flimsy, black-plastic tongue depressors. There’s a stout steel barrier between me and facial reconstruction.
And for the gram-counters among you — the bike now weighs 20.5 pounds instead of 19.5 pounds. This being allergy season, one good snot rocket and I’m back on an even keel.
Mad Blog Media 
Wise move. I remember our friend Antonio Mondonico, back when he was still making bicycles, telling a client who he’d just measured for a custom, Columbus steel frame, about fork choices. In English, he said, “my bike — tee-tahn-ee-oh (he explained to us later in Italian that one of his friends had built him a titanium frame awhile back)….my fork….STEEL!” The client decided on carbon…..but a year later contacted me about getting a “proper” steel fork — which we were luckily able to get for him. I did a simple back-to-back test on my own years ago, swapping my old LandShark’s carbon fork for a steel one I begged for later, after the dropout came out of the plastic fork. I’d glued the dropout back in while I waited and when the steel fork arrived I took the bike out for a ride, then swapped the fork and the next day did the same route. The plastic fork was sold off at a Veloswap later….it didn’t damp out any vibrations and felt less secure than the steel fork in the steering department. If I have a choice, make mine STEEL!
And yeah OG, we’re pretty close to X’ing days off the calender here in Iowa — where today it SNOWED!
We had a little rain and snow here, then the wind ramped back up. Jeebus. Give me the rain and snow any ol’ time. I hate the wind. And it hates me.
When I ordered my 60th Anniversary Paramount frame I had a carbon fork option. I couldn’t bear the idea of putting a carbon fork on such a beautiful lugged 853 bike. Steel is real, Pat !
“stupid plastic fork” I love it. Thanks for the laughs!
Who in their right mind puts a steel fork on a titanium bike? Patrick that’s who. But then again he is not really in his “right mind” is he??
I sorta remember your tales of WHOA! about said plastic utensil. Glad that Brent could outfit you proper, humble narrator. Because life would not be so grand without some humble pie, humor and snide comments about the guv-ur-ment, bi-cycles or allergies without you.
Thank you, sir. I’m actually in my right mind, but it was the wrong mind to start with. Right? Right.
Your logic left me at the first right. D’oh!
Nice, no lawyer lips.
Yeah, Brent’s never used them, to my knowledge. He shares my belief that stupidity should be painful.
Agreed, but sometimes smart people end up feeling the stupid ones induced pain.
I once did one of the newspaper tours across Georgia and met a a very attractive woman who had had a front wheel pop out on a fast downhill in the days before lawyer nipples resulting in a long slide on her chest and abdomen. The scars weren’t pretty. Having once had a slide at 30 mph on my butt and thigh as a result of a sew-up manufacturing defect, all I could say was “Ouch” and be thankful that I don’t have scarring problems.
I’ve had a couple really good get-offs myself, mostly due to my own stupidity, and have the scars to prove it.
The best one was in New Mexico, late Eighties or early Nineties. I was JRA when some other dude on a bike rolls up and, like you do, we agreed to ride together. This almost always involves some genteel simian chest-thumping to see who’s the main monkey.
Anyway, at some point we were sprinting up a short hill … and the next thing I know I’m staggering around at roadside with a busted collarbone (my first); road burn on both elbows and knees; a helmet shattered into four pieces and a pretty good divot in my head; and a really nifty contusion on my lower torso that’s already turning some very interesting colors. I think at some point I landed on my handlebars, but obviously I also had a lot of contact with the asphalt.
I was completely coldcocked in the crash and have no memory of what caused it — and briefly suspected that my new road pal had hooked me — but after thinking about it for a while I decided that I had not been paying attention to cleat wear and had let mine go unreplaced just a skosh too long for my own good. Thus, when I got out of the saddle and started sprinting up that hill, I unclipped and went ass over teakettle.
That 30-mph slide you mention is one of the reasons I don’t descend worth a damn’ anymore. Way too much imagination, and way too many trips to the ER. It’s no trick at all for me to visualize that front tire rolling off the rim and me rolling off in the ambulance.
“Way too much imagination,”
Gad is that ever the bane of being older than 20 something. No more bombing down bumpy Berkshire mountain roads at 45 with a guardrail to the right and a passing car on the left.
No, no, no just going to enjoy all that scenery I was hyperventilating too much to notice on the way up.
The victim I’ll describe here recovered fully so this is kind of funny all these years later. Guy on Italian cycling tour jumps on bike and tears off, along with his pals along Lake Como. I’m the last guy in the caravan so wait while all the riders and the other support vans take off. I get my van going 5-10 minutes later and soon see the wife driving the reverse direction – with a VERY concerned look on her face. I soon find out why…turns out this fellow, whose friends NOW tell me, “you’ve gotta look out for our friend, he’s sort of absent minded” tried to bunny-hop a sewer grate while riding in the group….only to watch as his unsecured front wheel continued on without the rest of the bike or him! Amazingly, nobody else was brought down by this forgetful fellow, who spent the night in the Como hospital after being taken there by the wife, wondering where the hell he was and how the hell did he get there?
Semi-amazingly, yours truly and the other wrench on the tour had the guy’s bike bent back into shape (another reason to have a steel fork) and ready to ride before he was released from the hospital. Reading Duncan’s comment made me think about the split-second between the time the wheel rolls away and the instant the fork tips hit the ground….did the poor guy even have time to realize what was about to happen to him? We’ll never know since he has no memory of the incident. Truly one of those “HOLY S__T!” moments!
I’ve NEVER seen a properly secured Q/R skewer simply fail and let the wheel drop out though I did once secure a wheel on my own bike only to have the alloy skewer’s “head” crumble into pieces in my hand. I was able to ride (very carefully, no bunny-hopping) home.
I had a carbon fork fail once — but it wasn’t the carbon fork, rather the CrMo steering tube! It was an old quill-stem model and the expander bolt was exactly at the weak point where the threads ended. Fortunately I was going 0 mph when it failed — I pulled up on the bars when I was starting off, and _bang_ — put my foot down, and lifted the handlebars right out of the bike.
Definitely one of those moments when you can’t believe your luck.
I think the newfangled MTB stems, for all their lack of adjustability, don’t have that particular issue.
John, have you seen the NVO stems? The Jamis Aurora Elite has one, and it gives you back some of that lost adjustability. Pretty nifty.
Ever forget to fully clamp down a brake lever or give the expansion bolt in a bar-con enough turns of the old Allen key? It’s always fun to start sliding down the bars with one hand or have that bar-con lever spin around in the bar end while you’re trying to shift.
Oops, my reply to your msg appeared below, as a mother of all non-sequiters.
I had a 1980 vintage Alan road frame back when they used an aluminum steering tube rather than stainless steel. One day, while I was riding with the Boulder Velo club, the idiot in front of me plowed into the rider in front of him. I almost stopped before I made contact with him, at which time the steering tube snapped and a did yet another slow, mostly graceful vault with the bars still clasped in my hands. I should have noticed all the keloid scars on this clowns’ body and bailed before then.
Aluminum is not always our friend. Back when I was still a man instead of whatever it is that I am now I managed to snap the right-rear aluminum dropout on a Trek 1200 road bike during a city-limit sprint.
I thought I’d flattened the rear tire or busted a spoke or two or three. Nope, it was the dropout. Snapped clean in half. Trek did the right thing, though, and more — they not only replaced the frame, they upgraded it to a 1500.
Very nifty to have an adjustable threadless!
I got a nice bike fitting from a guy who works as a physical therapist the other days of the week, and had a bike built around his “prescription”, so I’m pretty well set for now. I also don’t do much of my own work — I have a great LBS that I support with my business, having more money than time and a superabundance of thumbs — so fortunately I don’t have too many loose parts either!
We glued back together a few of those old Alans back-in-the-day, most of them sold with Nishiki stickers on ’em. I had a Trek like OG’s around that time, damn thing started making some awful creaking noises in the rear – turned out the brake bridge had “unbonded” itself from the seat stay. Trek fixed it up right away so I put the freshly repaired thing back together and up-for-sale!
Other than the previously mentioned dalliance with a plastic fork, that was the end of my glued, screwed, aluminum or plastic bike experience — it’s been steel since then. For a guy carrying around far more extra lard around the middle than the difference between a quality steel bike and the UCI’s bike weight limit, it just makes zero sense to ride anything else — especially when I’ve yet to read ANY review of these bikes that says “rides better than steel”. It was rare enough to read a claim “as good as steel” but I think they’ve given up on that since so few of the potential buyers of the newest-latest have ever ridden a quality steel frame and fork.
As I recall, the old Nishiki and most other re-branded Alans were a substantial step down in quality from the “real” Alans. I gave mine more than ten years of abuse without problems other than the previously mentioned steering tube failing. I’ve never cared for the feel of a steel frame other than some track frames but then, I have a long history of arthritis issues and riding a bike that doesn’t beat up my joints has been a big factor in what I’ve ridden. After the Alan, I road a Viner track frame modified with a road brake bridge and front brake mounting hole and plenty of handle bar padding; the Viner now resides in Colorado Springs st the home of my third son, Rush. I was also one of the owners of one of the Cannondale bone-shakers that I tried to give away for years before Rush found someone who would keep it.
All of those carbon-alloy Alans (the A logo was pantographed into the alloy bits whether the stickers said ALAN or NISHIKI) must have been glued using the same crappy epoxy — because the chainstay most often came unglued from the left side dropout or the BB shell. We simply mixed up some glue (once we found that nobody would warranty these things) and glued ’em back together, same as I did with my plastic fork’s alloy dropout years later. Fixed a few Kestrel-branded forks this way as well. Probably would NOT try this with a downtube/headtube junction as failure there would be of the catastrophic variety, but a low-risk area like the ones we did seemed to be fine — and we never had any come back to be fixed again – at least not in the same spot anyway! To me this stuff will always be little more than high-tech fiberglass — the same crap they made surfboards and dune buggies out of.
The older/cheaper all aluminum vintage Alans had threaded and mostly pinned connections so the epoxied joints coming loose wasn’t a problem. I did have one fork tip get loose after 50K miles but, with a bit of Locktite, it was fine.
Dude! Found your site when I was looking for the artist of my “Old Guys…” bike jersey (do I have the last one in existence?), and saw this post. I, too, have a steel fork on my titanium-framed bike; while I’ve never had the fork go the way you did, I have had it described, and I thought, in this case, discretion would be the better part of valor. So my Habanero frame has a Surly fork, and I love my bike. The shop mechanic thinks that the steel fork is the equivalent of a turd on a birthday cake, but I don’t think the extra weight is slowing me down (truth is, my weight can vary more from one day to the next than the weight difference between a steel and a carbon fork, nose-snarf or no nose-snarf), and the dependability of the structure is of paramount importance. There is no structural carbon on my bike (there’s some in the shifters), and that’s the way it’s gonna stay.
You may be the only person I know who’s more left-wing than me. I love reading your stuff, you make me feel less alone.
And if any other “Fat Guys…” merch shows up, I may depart from some coin. Best wishes on you.