1954 English 3-speed

[margo49]

I ran dead-straight into something (can't remember what - probably because I didn't get left with any scars !) .After consultation with Other Messengers (which I was at that time in London) it was decided to leave it as the bend didn't go far enough back to affect the steering/wheel movement.

I rode all thru France for a month, took the train under The Alps to Geneva and then north to the Rhine with the BF of those callow youth-ful days. We stopped in this tiny village with a little river running thru it, on the banks of which was a little run-down shed and a handpainted sigh saying "velo". Inside this real old racer (ex-TdF) had all this old stuff. We chatted in a mixture of French, English and German and told our stories then he noticed the angle of the fork and offered to fix it. Reckoned "pas de probleme" and "ca ne fait rien"

He took out this tool with like a clamp on one end and a kind of ratchet at the other end of which was a bar a bit wider than the distance between the forks. Then he clamped it to the frame and extended the ratchet so the bar was pressing the inside (side facing the fame) of the forks (both). Then he ratcheted it slowly on out thereby pushing the forks outward (ie to their original angle) till I said "when".

This was on a Raleigh Touring 14 (1980) so it was steel.
Worked like a treat and never had any trouble. Tho' I was sweating a bit that there was some invisible fracture and imminent shear-off or something for a few hundred km's. Then I forgot about it.

I see the crimp on the top 1/3 clearly and the actual fork-y part looks suspiciously straight to me (even tho' it is not attached to the bike for perspective). Have you managed to find a picture or specs for the model so you can check the angle?

I'd make a good gynecologist, don't you think?