whats going on with my frame?

i took it apart to clean it and noticed this…..
http://photo.pinkbike.com/photo/690/pbpic690429.jpg

it looks like its bent, but it bolted together fine. whats going on?
if it matters its a kona stinky, sitting upside down. your looking at a pic of the dropouts and seatstay.

Hmm. You seem to be very concerned. I'd clamp it down to a very very solid and level table and plum bomb it. You'll be able to tell how much its off by.

I'm not sure what you are showing us. Are you saying the drop out section of the swing arm is off relative to the seat stay section? Something like that might cause the pivots to wear faster but I think it is pretty common with some aluminum bikes. And there's not much you could do short of replacing it. You can't cold set aluminum.

Bikes are better now but I recall in the mid 80's a courier came in with a Cannondale which had been nailed by a car. We replaced the bent steel fork and the frame jig tools told us that the seat tube was off by a fair bit, maybe 1cm if I remember correctly relative to the dropouts. The tool for those unfamiliar with it is rested on the headtube and seat tube and an adjustable feeler is set to touch the drop out. Then you reverse it and check the oposite side. A straight frame will of course be symetrical and the tool will align the same on the other side. This one did not and we assumed it had been bent. Well four fit men with l o n g l o n g pipes and hunks of wood attempted to cold set it. Nothing doing. We built it up and test rode it. We could ride no hands without any pulling to one side at all so we surmised that the drops were perfectly square but the seat tube was off.

would that by any chance be the side that your casette is on so that way your tire is dead center?…i dont know if that effects it at all but….

Knowles may be right, some bikes have thier rear end offset for the cassette, so thatthe wheel does not have to be crazily dished.

^what i was trying to say in much better words

i took it to my LBS…..they're going to take a look at it next year and ill get it figured out.

i think its probobly the offset so you can have a zero dish wheel
measure and see if its 6mm