Originally Posted by
KiwiDallas
I lay it carefully on its side in the back of my SUV and drive it over to my local lake loop. Same treatment as I've done for my 2005 CF Roubaix. Same for the 2008 Tarmac. I don't ride them on city streets - that's suicidal.
I park it and store in my garage on two hooks under the top bar. Always. Same as the other two Spec CF bikes. For the last 17 years.
LBS has shipped the broken frame back to Spec at their request, but also as a condition for Spec sending out a new one.
I'd suggest that "OK Boomer" frames should not be expected to meet anywhere near the same stresses as racing frames. My hero days are long gone.
=K
My guess is it didn't happen when you were riding it, if you didn't notice it. Maybe something happened when it was on its side in the SUV or it got bumped when hanging on the hooks. As others have mentioned, the seat stay is probably the weakest part of the frame, and something shifting around in your SUV or garage could have impacted the seat stay.
Specialized was probably reluctant to honor the warranty because they see enough frame failures to know whether the mode of failure is a design flaw or because of some externally applied insult.
When my kid's Canyon chain stay cracked, they knew exactly what was happening and issued a recall several days later. When another part of the bike was becoming problematic, they knew it was a crack propagating from a known problematic area (where the rear shock attached to the main frame). All of the frames of the same production run are essentially created equal, so if yours was a manufacturing defect, it probably would have shown up in other bikes at the same place as well. If it was the result of damage from an external source, the location would be approximately random.