Being tight I like to kid myself into thinking that everything should last forever - well, certainly large, non-wear parts like frames, bars etc.
My next bike will be steel as I don't like ally's predisposition to fatigue failure and get anxious about CFRP's ability to slowly degrade without visible symptoms and catastrophically fail essentially without warning.
On this subject I'm interested to hear / see examples of frame failures you've experienced; preferably those that have crept up on you (rather than resulting from accidents) but anything's welcome - ideally with a bit of info as to the bike's type / brand / age / mileage / history etc.
Here's my (thankfully) only one: 2004 Giant OCR3 road bike, aluminium, two horizontal-ish cracks in the top tube to seatpost weld; propagating forwards into the top tube and backwards into the seatpost tube. They also run through the entirety of the seatpost tube's circumfrence inside the frame that's bounded by the top tube.
They probably started at about 4-5k miles and grew slowly to how they are in the pics over maybe another 1000-1500 miles. I didn't notice them for a long time but they did cause the frame to creak on the pedal strokes (which I did notice when it started although initially wrongly diagnosed as a seatpost movement / fit issue):
I guess the failure is the result of cyclic, bending loading across the bike as my weight shifted from side to side with each pedal stroke.. starting at the weld due to internal stress concentrations from the welding process.
The seatpost wasn't excessively extended out of the frame, but I do think the problem was potentially exacerbated / even allowed to happen by Giant's stupid use of a short (90mm) plastic insert to allow the use a a 27.2mm OD seatpost inside the (IIRC, and stupidly non-standard) 31.8mm ID frame. IMO if the bike had been fitted with a long seatpost (or insert) that matched the ID of the frame and extended well down inside it would have reduced the loading on the frame and potentially avoided the failure all together.
Drilling the ends of the cracks out arrested their growth for a while (the bike's only been used a shopper / pub bike since and I've kept a close eye on the cracks), but one's cracked again from the leading edge of the hole and is already 6-7mm long after not a lot of riding, so I suspect the end is nigh. I was of half a mind to epoxy in a piece of ally tube down the length of the seatpost tube, but think I'll probably just let the bike die gracefully, strip it and scrap the frame.
So there's mine - let's see / hear your horror stories, please!
My next bike will be steel as I don't like ally's predisposition to fatigue failure and get anxious about CFRP's ability to slowly degrade without visible symptoms and catastrophically fail essentially without warning.
On this subject I'm interested to hear / see examples of frame failures you've experienced; preferably those that have crept up on you (rather than resulting from accidents) but anything's welcome - ideally with a bit of info as to the bike's type / brand / age / mileage / history etc.
Here's my (thankfully) only one: 2004 Giant OCR3 road bike, aluminium, two horizontal-ish cracks in the top tube to seatpost weld; propagating forwards into the top tube and backwards into the seatpost tube. They also run through the entirety of the seatpost tube's circumfrence inside the frame that's bounded by the top tube.
They probably started at about 4-5k miles and grew slowly to how they are in the pics over maybe another 1000-1500 miles. I didn't notice them for a long time but they did cause the frame to creak on the pedal strokes (which I did notice when it started although initially wrongly diagnosed as a seatpost movement / fit issue):
I guess the failure is the result of cyclic, bending loading across the bike as my weight shifted from side to side with each pedal stroke.. starting at the weld due to internal stress concentrations from the welding process.
The seatpost wasn't excessively extended out of the frame, but I do think the problem was potentially exacerbated / even allowed to happen by Giant's stupid use of a short (90mm) plastic insert to allow the use a a 27.2mm OD seatpost inside the (IIRC, and stupidly non-standard) 31.8mm ID frame. IMO if the bike had been fitted with a long seatpost (or insert) that matched the ID of the frame and extended well down inside it would have reduced the loading on the frame and potentially avoided the failure all together.
Drilling the ends of the cracks out arrested their growth for a while (the bike's only been used a shopper / pub bike since and I've kept a close eye on the cracks), but one's cracked again from the leading edge of the hole and is already 6-7mm long after not a lot of riding, so I suspect the end is nigh. I was of half a mind to epoxy in a piece of ally tube down the length of the seatpost tube, but think I'll probably just let the bike die gracefully, strip it and scrap the frame.
So there's mine - let's see / hear your horror stories, please!
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Unfortunately it was just out of its three year warranty; Kinesis did give me 25% off a new frame which allowed me to afford a Ti Gran Fondo (I loved the Gran Fondo geometry but had doubts over another scandium).
