Ben Sanford wrote:
<snip> the round vs. oval blades apparently didn\u2019t matter in this case.
The fork bent in the area of the crown itself \u2013 between the section where the steerer tube is brazed into the top of the crown and the section where the fork blades come up into the crown. The fork blades are not bent, and the hole for the brake wasn\u2019t near where the fork crown bent, so it wasn\u2019t weakened by the drilling \u2013 although this one was factory drilled. The flat sections at the top of the crown are no longer completely perpendicular to the steerer tube. Harvey Sachs helped me remove the crown race, and his opinion was that there just wasn\u2019t enough steel in the crown to make it strong enough. The fork was bent so that the wheel hit the downtube, resulting in my crash \u2013 and yes it\u2019s still bent. It wasn\u2019t just a momentary deflection due to very hard braking. I had used this bike for commuting for several years, so it had somewhat in excess of 15000 miles on it \u2013 but no rust. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ As Ben suggests, I did help pull the crown race, and we cuffed the fork various straight edges and squares to see what had failed - and I use "failed" in the sense of suffering a lasting change in shape, i.e., what got strained beyond its elastic limit. It was weird to put a square on the fork crown flats, which seem to have been perpendicular to the steerer before the accident. No longer; the steerer lies behind now. In addition, there steerer itself is warped into a slight curve (as best as I could tell), with the rear side a bit concave.
Ben did not choose to detail his injuries, and I'll honor that, but he was off the bike much longer than I'd want to be (2 months and counting?), with painful injuries. I'll also note that Ben (and brother Ken) did RAGBRAI this year on fixed gears...don't know if Ben rode this bike, but he takes fixed gear right serious, eh, and he's a pretty fine chap, too.
harvey sachs
mcLean VA.