Originally Posted by
daka
I've seen the scary photos (but heard some were machine-forced to failure by University students studying fatigue), I've read Jobst Brandt's claim to have broken more than a dozen and I have seen one actually broken by a very strong rider (who also breaks frames) and the thirty or so stitches it took to close the wound the broken end made in his calf.
Those cranksets were made for such a long time and were the only thing to have on almost any up-market bike for decades, the population of them is likely huge compared to any other specific model of crankset, so perhaps in proportion the failure rate is no higher than anything else? Or......?
That's the thing. They were on almost every racer's bike, precisely because they are reliable. When 99% of the high mileage crowd rode campy, of course you are going to see more cracked ones. If you buy a vintage campy, it may well have crazy miles on it.
All cranks crack. I've never broken a campy, but I cracked one at the spider, and eventually retired it before it got too bad. I bought it
used from an ex Italian pro, and put probably close to another 100k miles on it before this happened. So don't worry about it. Always check cranks regularly for cracks. There's often a small crack there for months before they actually snap.
AFA Jobst Brandt, first of all he was a big guy. 2nd of all he'd ride crazy single track, and regularly chainring climb over logs and stuff -- with a road bike. He could break anything.