What happened here? ‘Widened Forks’

[Once A Hero]

Had these Rockstar Forks knocking around for several years, bought whilst sourcing bits for my Indian Fire Trail, however they weren’t correct and I found the right fork, so they never got a proper look at.

Whilst hanging up some other forks I happened to notice that they look quite ‘wide’ at the bottom, and sure enough they appear to have been seriously opened up beyond a traditional 100mm hub spacing - in fact they are more like 125mm!

No visible signs of damage or stretching, but you’d need arms like Arnie to squeeze them together! Am I missing something? Presumably these are toast?



For clarity when introduced to a wheel, positioned on the axle one side, see how far out it is on the other!

 

[velomaniac]

Get an old rear axle and a couple of tracknuts and tighten kthe nuts to pull fork blades together. Steel is pretty robust and can survive bends that are not extreme and those have not suffered extreme bending.
Possibly best check they have been bent offline to same amount. Align a string or straight rod etc with steerer and see how much deviation each dropout has from the centreline. Might take a bit of fine tuning but I don't reckon those forks are toast.

 

[jimo746]

Bend them back!

 

[was8v]

Sometimes steel forks have some spring to them

 

[marc two tone]

I, accidentally stretched open some rockstar forks whilst freeing up the stem.
Luckily its a nutted axle at the front of a 92 muirwoods, i simply 'wrestled' them onto the axle with nuts insitue. Then slowly and evenly tightened up. Sorted.

Should you undo the nuts and it springs back, go again.

 

[Once A Hero]

Right then, looks like I’ll try and bend them back using an axle and nut arrangement. Presumably I’ll have to go some way past their correct spacing in order to undo the stretch.
I don’t have a use or need for these forks, but I’ll see if can get them back to the correct spacing