Monday, March 15, 2010

Reconstructing Lambert: Death Fork Replacement

Here is a picture of fork that has cost people their lives. It's a die case aluminum fork, that according to Sheldon Brown, had a tendancy to snap off at the streering tube. No way, I am going to take that chance, especially since I am going to ride this bike fixed.

I am going to use as much of the existing components as possible. In order to get the brake cable guide on, I had to grind the insides because the Death Fork had a beveled section in the back of the steering tube. More modern one inch forks have just a groove. I grabbed a washer from another one inch headset. Since I don't have a pipe cutter I am taking it back to the shop to have the steering tube cut and capped.

Like all my fixed gear builds, there will be one brake in the front and I will be using the original stem. Cranks and the large chain wheel I never took off, so that's it for the OEM components. Soon you will see mustache bars, an orange rimmed, tracked wheel set, a nice seat tube, and brooks saddle. Gearing will be 52:17, which is the closest I can get to 42:15.

7 comments:

Greg Heil said...

Woa, death fork! That sounds intense. Good call on the replacement there...

Anonymous said...

Always fun to see what you're up to. I like the part in this story when you discovered the previous owner's SSN carved underneath the bottom bracket! Good stuff.

Mark said...

That's what we used to do back in the day because there was no interwebs and information wasn't that readily accessible. It's like when I tell my kids when I was growing up, we didn't have cable tv or nintendo, we played out side and built tree houses.

Anonymous said...

You guys were deprived! No internet!? ;)

Greg Heil said...

Yeh, these kids nowadays don't know how to have real fun!

Actually, I've got a blog post which will be live tomorrow that's sort of on this topic.

mcinsand said...

Thank you for your posting. I also have a Lambert with the Death Fork. On my mountain bike, I've so far just done stuff like build a wheel and rebuild the hubs, so I don't think replacing the fork would be anything drastic, as long as I can be sure to get a fork that'll work. So I just ask for a fork with a 1" tube?

Thank you.

Mark said...

mcinsand, yes, any chrome fork with a 1" threaded steering tube will work.