Originally Posted by
79pmooney
I'm talking frames, not parts. As I said, I ride them until they die. I have no qualms about replacing aluminum parts before they do. (No, I don't always get it right, but I haven't had many aluminum failures on the road. I have bars, stems, seatposts and cranks I won't use any more. Replaced a lot of rims. Hub failures aren't common and in my experience, rarely dangerous (in wheels with lots of spokes).
I'm less concerned about frames than the other parts. Aluminum bars have a very small diameter and are more likely to fatigue than the frame is. The newer 31.8mm diameter handlebars are better but they still have a rather small cross section compared to the frame and considering what they have to do. I agree that hub failures are rare but they could certainly be catastrophic. If a flange on the front wheel broke, it would be as bad as a frame breaking. A broken crank is a particularly bad hazard because cranks can break while the rider is out of the saddle, leading to a crash. The broken bits are dangerously close to parts of your anatomy that are can lead to some pretty severe injuries if you happen to nick the proper vein.
I'm don't ride in fear of these failures but I do consider them. They are rare but, then, so is a frame failure.
Originally Posted by
79pmooney
The place I worry most about frame breaks is the fork and the headtube to downtube joint (and that breaking and taking the headtube to top tube joint with it. So the front end is no longer attached to the bike. One of those a lifetime is plenty. That failure is rare on lugged steel frames, even cheaply built ones. Yes I do think about that on my ti bikes. Maybe I'm a fool but I trust the guy who did the welding. There's also nothing light or marginal on those frames.
I think about frames breaking at the head tube/downtube joint but I don't obsess over it. There are plenty of examples of steel bikes breaking there. Lugged frames don't do it all that often but welded ones can. Frames in general don't break all that often either. In 40+ years of riding and having owned 38 bikes, I've only broken 4. Only 3 of those were actually the fault of the manufacturer. I count only one break on a steel mountain bike but the fork cracked, the chain stay cracked on both sides and the dropout broke. I haven't had any other bike with as many frame problems.
By the way, I've owned 16 steel bikes, 19 aluminum bikes and 3 titanium bikes. Percentage wise, the steel bikes have performed very poorly compared to the others. Even mileage wise, the steel ones have performed poorly. The steel mountain bikes had 3800 miles and 3100 miles on them before they broke. One of the steel bikes...the one with 3100 miles...broke the fork long before reaching 3100 miles. The aluminum mountain bike that broke under warrantee had 6600 miles on it before it broke.
In terms of longevity, the 5 bikes with the most miles on them are an aluminum Stumpjumper that broke (6600 miles, 5 years), a steel Miyata 610 (8600, 19 years), a T800 that was mostly used for loaded touring (9600, 12 years), a steel Rockhopper (9900 miles, 8 years, stolen) and an aluminum Salsa Las Cruces (21,500 miles, 14 years). The Las Cruces has twice as much mileage as anything else I own and it's still going strong.
Originally Posted by
79pmooney
As I said, I've been there. I'm to old to need to go with anything that doesn't give me peace of mind. The ride of 531 and the like steel bikes works just fine for me. So does bullet-proof ti. I am going to get off clinches and go back to the tubulars I trust far more at high speeds as my current rims wear out.
Ride what you want. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise. But I am trying to convince you...and others...that there is nothing inherently wrong or dangerous about aluminum frames in my experience. If one of my aluminum frames failed tomorrow, I wouldn't hesitate to replace it with another aluminum bike.