Tourist in MSN

Twice I have observed a missing rack bolt that had fallen out. Once on my friends bike on the GAP/C&O, he is an ultra light fanatic and I had to loan him a bolt. The other time was on a bike in a campsite I was in last summer, a biker we met had lost a rack bolt and had not even noticed it was missing.

On my errand bike which I store outside year around, I have gone through two pairs of cheapo pedals, not good quality ones but cheap ones. I would expect some pedal bearing problems on occasion on a touring bike.

When you say cranks, is that bottom bracket? One group tour I was on had two mechanical failures other than flats. Total of 16 riders, I think about 400 miles in distance. One failure was a broken spring or spring stop on front derailleur, but I managed to do a temporary fix with some bunge cord to keep it sort of functional. The other failure was an external bottom bracket, on that I could not do anything, the owner had one express shipped to a bike shop that was later on our route.

I have read of rack breakage, but I have not had any personal experience with that. If you are getting your data from sources where they had high quality bikes, maybe that is why you did not see any rack breakages.

I have never seen a seatpost binder bolt failure, but I have heard that it is a very good way to really have a bad day until you can replace it. On my bikes, the stem cap bolt will work as a substitute, but that is not true on all bikes. On another forum within the past month someone had the bolt on top of the seatpost fail. That was the bolt that held the saddle clamps to the rails. And, a gal I used to work with had a saddle rail break last year on her commute to work one day.

I would not try to quantify rates on these additional mechanicals, I am just citing a couple other items that can go wrong.