Broken Steel, I Guess I Was Lucky.

[Drago]

Smear of silicone sealant inside the lugs, stickmit back together, chuck it on ebay with l'eroica in the title, sit back and wait for the cash to roll in.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I can't believe I'm hearing such things from an officer of the law. Shocking!

 

[Drago]

I can't believe I'm hearing such things from an officer of the law. Shocking!

Its been almost 4 years since they let my polish my truncheon on a protesters head

 

[Chislenko]

I recently retired a 531 that I had been riding for about two years after being knocked off it. I purchased an alloy frame and swapped the components over.

Knowing it had been accident damaged did not want to pass it on to anyone so took a hacksaw to it.

What I was amazed at was how easily some of the joints just snapped apart especially the rear mudguard bridge.

Certainly glad that no-one else is riding it, wouldn't feel comfortable. On the plus side the seat, top and down tube make three good shifter bars!!

 

[Reynard]

Tubes are strongest along their length, and those lugs would also have been created with that in mind. The heavy bags of shopping would have loaded them in a way they shouldn't have been.

Who knows, it could just have been a slight irregularity in the material structure that was the root cause of the failure, but that sort of cyclical loading in a direction that wasn't intended is bound to lead to problems.

The internal corrosion won't have helped either, as it reduces the wall thickness. With inevitable consequences.

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good afternoon

You don't think that the main problem is the lug giving way due to poor construction. That would increase pressure on the gear boss area. There isn't much sign of rust there so possibly that was not the original cause of the problem. The lug on the seat tube looks more likely to be the first to give way.

Initially definitely not as I kept staring at the down tube as I carried the bits home. But I have looked at the top tube and the lug again and the lug is a quite sparse and pretty design and it wouldn't as I first thought hold the top tube in place without a solid braze. However the tope tube is very twisted and squashed around the lug area whereas the downtube has a clean break for around 300 degrees and then a twist and tear.

I can also see on a closer inspection but the photos don't show, that the top tube is slightly bent downwards, highest at the seat top and lowest at the head tube, but it is only a few mm.

There is also a small piece of top tube still brazed in place, very roughly an equilateral triangle of about 1cm so this could have caused quite a twist.

I suspect that it would need someone with more knowledge than me and possibly a bit of Finite Element Analysis to work out which came first :-)

And that's in a material where catastrophic failures are very rare, especially sudden unexpected ones. I would still trust steel over aluminium, and especially over carbon fibre, every day of the week.

Sadly all it leaves me is my CF one and there is no way that I am going to leave that outside an office or supermarket.... and the swinging shopping bags would probably keep changing the gears anyway. :-)

I have a great deal of reluctance to pay the shortage premium and cough up £1,200 for something with Sora/Claris or go down the dead end and get one of the many 7 speed machines on the market and in stock.

But the https://www.evanscycles.com/brand/pinnacle/laterite-3-2021-road-bike-934352 does seem to be available and might not be nicked immediately. :-) Although I have no idea who specced the gears, 11-32 on a 50/34 and even if the wheels aren't great I can just swap them over I think along with the chainset.

I have been playing with gear ratios a lot recently and can't find any use for anything lower than 34x19,38x21 or 42x23 which are all pretty much the same gear, the only good thing about 34x19 is that it is a almost straight chain-line.

@IanSmithCSE what make of bike was it?

I uhmmed a bit before mentioning the name, it was a Ribble from the era of these 531 stickers and as has been pointed out hasn't be mollycodelled but I have only ever ridden in on road and the broken areas aren't rusted.

I am happy to see the breakage as simple old age, I just got comfortable with it and hadn't paid enough attention to the fact that these frames were made as racing frames and maybe they should be considered as having a working life.

....The heavy bags of shopping would have loaded them in a way they shouldn't have been.

I am not convinced by this as the downward loads on the handle bars when riding out of saddle and leaning heavily forward are going to be greater than the almost static load of any "luggage".


This looks cool 3x7, shifters on the stem/bars and all for £329, and a steel frame.



Bye

Ian

 

[Darius_Jedburgh]

Don't think that is designed for carrying shopping bags either😱
Why not go down the refurb route? You can pick up a decent steel frame for well under £100 on a certain auction site. Retro components are out there if you look hard enough - I've got nearly enough 7 speed stuff to fit out a frame - and build a bike that won be a chav magnet. You get a lot of fun out of the build.
I started out with this

and finished up with this

 

[Illaveago]

You could get 2 long threaded bars and 4 nuts from B&Q and get it back rideable in a couple of hours . Steering might be awkward but you can always stop and point it in a different direction .
It's a good job it had failed before you had it painted .

 

[Illaveago]

I would have thought that the joint by the seat tube had failed and has been moving for some time and allowed flexing at the point where the gear levers attached until it finally gave up .

 

[snorri]

I lashed it together with a handy piece of discarded rope

Ah yes! The old Telecom Drawrope No 1 has saved the day in all sorts of disaster areas.

 

[Bonefish Blues]

Cheapskate - pay for S&S couplings like the rest of us

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning,

Don't think that is designed for carrying shopping bags either😱
Why not go down the refurb route? ....

That's a nice result, especially the chain ring bolts and QR adjust "nut".

I really wanted something for Tuesday, tomorrow, if I give up that idea then a rebuild does make sense...

Bye

Ian

 

[DCBassman]

can't find any use for anything lower than 34x19,38x21 or 42x23

Blimey, it must be flat around there...my lowest gear out of three bikes is 19" (28-36 on 38-559 wheels). Mind, I do need to try harder generally...

 

[T4tomo]

To be honest @IanSmithCSE, I think you've got bloody nerve,

You come on this cycling forum with your "Good Morning / Afternoon" and "Bye"s, with your qualifications in your your username, pretending to be a proper cyclist, offering advice to all and sundry, posting up idea's of over-complicated authentication websites to route out time-wasters and in this one post you give yourself away as a fraud, not once but twice at least....

• A real cyclist wouldn't be complaining of a grazed knee after such a minor inconvenience, they would be strapping the bike back together Ian H style, with shoelaces, cable ties and toe straps, or getting out their welding torch kept in a battered carradice bag "in case of emergencies"
• Secondly you revealed this is one of only two bikes? I consider myself to be a bit of an amateur only having 8 bikes and hence bought another last week, some of those lurking around the Vintage forum have at least 6 bikes from every decade since the 1940's. SkipdiverJohn would have found 3 more bikes on the way home and had them roadworthy and change from a farthing.

BTW glad you're not too badly hurt, if you lived closer, I'd have lent you one of my fleet. Pinnacle's are pretty solid and well built, I have one of their gravel bikes and I know biggs has road bike of theirs he rates.

 

[Reynard]

I am not convinced by this as the downward loads on the handle bars when riding out of saddle and leaning heavily forward are going to be greater than the almost static load of any "luggage".

Luggage is not a static load. A static load is just that. Dangling bags will be giving you a multi-axis torsional (twisting) loading, effectively applied to the end of a cantilever beam (the bars). Take that beyond what it's capable of, and *pyoingggg*

Plus the way you describe riding that bike is what the geometry is designed to do. Putting bags where you put them is not. Besides, what's wrong with a rack and panniers? At least that's a well-proven solution to the luggage-carrying problem.