IcySwan1 

PeterHski, it was a direct drive Wahoo Kickr. First time using it and I, in hindsight, didn’t seat the thru axle properly. As I said, operator error. Yep, pretty dumb. But no problems at all since.

Mike

georges1

My Daccordi Fly Frame due to a faulty chris king headset was cracked at the head tube, it is being repaired and repainted and I already decided to use campy chorus headset for it.

theblackbullet

2001 Lemond Nevada City - This was my first real road bike. Chainstay popped at the dropout on the drive side. It was a LONG hour ride home limping it along.



1988 Nishiki Altron 7000 - NDS chainstay completely failed. DS was not far behind. Made it home from the ride thinking I had a weird shifting problem before flipping the bike over and noticing the actual problem.



2006 Santa Cruz Chameleon - A crack formed almost completely around the chainstay yoke. Wish I had a picture of that. The rear triangle on this one was so stiff I never would have noticed if I hadn't looked! Last known ride was a SSCX race my brother borrowed it for.


Snyder Cycles track bike - may or may not have been riding home from an establishment that sells adult beverages when I ran it into a curb. Did not crash and did not flat. Didn't notice until the next day that I creased the top and downtube pretty severely. My good friend Seth Snyder welded on a new front triangle (added 1cm to top tube length while he was at it) and coated it with what was available so I could do an alleycat the following weekend.


Snyder Cycles road frameset - The bike originally required a FD clamp, but I convinced Seth to give me a braze on FD hanger so I could clear 28c in the short rear end! I think we determined this failure was likely from using too much heat while adding that braze on.

theblackbullet

2002 Cannondale CAAD5. After a good wash following a couple of weekends of racing, I found a crack that went almost all of the way around the NDS and had formed on the DS also some weird cracks in the paint on the fork that concerned me. It was retired before complete failure.


1984 Trek 850 - Following a 120 mile gravel race I had some klunking in the front end that felt like a loose headset. I didn't notice the crack until it completely severed on a casual Friday ride with some friends. This one was worth the effort to save! And it is currently 2500 miles post repair and going strong.

Trakhak

Same here, except with a Saris Hammer 3 direct-drive trainer. I didn't particularly like the bike, anyway---101-cm wheelbase, way too sluggish for my taste.

sweeks

My aluminum 2006 Dahon Mu XL developed a crack that originated in the "stress breaker" hole at the bottom of the seat tube slot. Unfortunately, I did not detect it until it was almost all the way around the tube. Eventually the tube separated from the rest of the frame at the junction with the main frame tube. This didn't make the bike unrideable, but if I lifted the bike by the saddle, the seatpost would come out along with the clamp. I fixed this by making a couple of "stays" from the frame's rack attachment points to the seatpost clamp. The bike was my "winter" bike for several more years.
Also at some point the frame cracked at the junction between the main frame tube and the head tube. My brother-in-law heliarc welded it; this repair lasted the rest of the bike's life.
My next bike was a Tern Verge S11i. The same thing started at the seat tube slot stress-breaker. This time I noticed at an early point in the crack's evolution. I increased the radius of curvature of the hole and several years and a few thousands of miles later, there's no recurrence of the crack.


The separated seat tube is pretty obvious. Less so is the repair at the head tube. Note the stays holding the seatpost clamp to the bike.

frdfandc

I've personally never cracked a frame, but did have around 10-12 bikes come in broken. Most were covered by warranty. Compared to the amount of bicycles sold, cracked frames only made up a very small percentage.

PeteHski

Thanks for replying. I’m a little surprised that could ever happen with a thru axle. Are you saying the axle was not screwed through into the dropout on the other side?

IcySwan1 

PeteHski, I don’t know. I have been using a QR bike on it now so I haven’t revisited it.

Mike

rosefarts

To the OP

If I remember, you are a bigger guy who also seems to have the time to get out and ride hard, frequently. I think with that combo, bikes are going to be somewhat consumable. Maybe that crazy Mixte will hold up but the lighter and more legit serious bikes will eventually reach a retirement age.

I’m 140lbs and never been over 150. I’ve only cracked 2.

A Cannondale Killer V that I noticed the crack on inspection. Could’ve been like that for a long time. This was the mid 90’s in that weird era where there was a new experimental version of the same frame geometry every week. So stuff tended to break.

The other was a Felt B2 from the Answer days. Again, a small crack I noticed on inspection. They actually re-welded the frame and sent it back to me. It was fine for many Tri’s after that.

PeteHski

That's all good then. I used a thru' axle bike on my Elite Direto trainer for a couple of years with no issues. The axle fitted just the same as it does with a wheel and alignment is foolproof. I can see more potential to mess it up with a QR if not correctly aligned. Anyway, sorry for the thread drift, I was just curious how it could go wrong with a thru' axle.

JohnDThompson 

Yeah, the one-piece head tube was a poor choice for an off-road bike. How did you fix it? Ream out the "lugs" and use a real head tube?

theblackbullet

Draper Cycles in Seattle performed the repair for me, and that is exactly the route he went. I am 2500 miles post repair without any issues!

bikingshearer 

I've cracked one frame and one fork. BTW, I weigh about 255lbs. I'm pretty gentle on my bikes for my size - I'm always on the lookout to avoid rocks, potholes, etc. I don't race and I almost never make hard accelerations.

The frame was a 1992 Bridgestone RB-1. A crack went through the BB hanger and up both the seat tube and the down tube an inch or two. I don't know if it started at one end or somewhere in the middle. I had crashed that bike pretty hard, and that may have started a small crack that grew. I found it on a ride with friends when I realized my chainwheels were swaying back and forth way too much. They laughed, but they at least got a car to give me ride home.

The fork was a c.1960 Cinelli fork that I had on a 1965ish Cinelli frame. I wrote this one up in C&V earlier this year. I was riding through town and the front end felt wrong. The photos show what I found upon examination. The scary part is that a half hour earlier I was bombing down a twisty two mile descent at speed. Thank God steel fails slowly. Ed Litton built me a nice new clone of a fork, and the bike rides as wonderfully as always,

dedhed

Trek 400 531 tubing. Rust was the real issue that caused the crack.

dedhed

Lotus Tange 2? Seat tube cracked out of rear of BB shell lug. This was after a really good welder repaired and added gusset.

base2 

I'm really diggin' the pictures. It's really interesting all the different causes and different ways things have gone haywire. Clearly, some of us here have gotten very lucky.

Some of the fixes have been pretty cool, too. 🧐

Rick

I had a StumpJumper and I heard a loud popping noise as I rolled out of a sharp dip. The BB cracked and Specialized replaced the frame under warranty. Schwinn replaced a Sierra MTB frame Four times for the seat stays peeling off.

noimagination

Not really a frame, a drive side dropout sheared all the way through at the junction with the chainstay, Mondonico Futura Leggero (custom geo - I was measured by Antonio Mondonico himself!! His son Mauro was there too.).

I believe that this was the result of an almost-crash several years before the dropout cracked. I was riding in the early morning before work, therefore dark. Descending a hill where I regularly go over 40 mph. There was an unmarked construction trench dug across the road and not completely filled in, so there was a trench about 4 inches wide and an inch and a half deep stretching completely across the road that I hit in excess of 30 mph. No problem for cars, I guess, but it blew both my tires and dented both of my rims. I managed to stop without crashing, fortunately, and made the call of shame. I suppose that this started a small crack in the part of the dropout that goes inside the chainstay tube, or perhaps it was just a stress point that later developed into a crack - at any rate, I never noticed anything with the dropout until it cracked (fortunately less than a mile into my ride, so I was able to nurse it home).

I need to get that fixed some day, the frame is still in my basement.

big john

Sounds terrifying. Glad you didn't fall. I think about this sort of thing when descending with shaded areas on the road when I can't see the surface. Bent a rear im earlier this year when I was following a group and there was an area of bad potholes. The other riders scattered and my special pothole was right there waiting for me.

noimagination

Another one that almost got me on a descent was one of those "snakes" of tar that they use to patch cracks in the road. It wasn't even wet out, but on a curve my rear tire twitched (I'm not saying "slid", it was so fast it was a twitch) to the side an inch or two. No time to react, I just registered it and continued on. Actually, maybe it's better that I didn't have time to react - it's likely that anything I could have done would have resulted in a worse outcome.

Sometimes quick reactions can save you, other times it's best to just stay balanced and ride it out.

IcySwan1 

[QUOTE=noimagination;23085469]Not really a frame, a drive side dropout sheared all the way through at the junction with the chainstay, Mondonico Futura Leggero (custom geo - I was measured by Antonio Mondonico himself!! His son Mauro was there too.

Man, I am gutted to hear about the Mondonico particularly when Antonio measured you on what must have been his farewell tour. I just have had the same bike built from NOS, but without the Antonio touch.

Might I suggest South Salem Cycleworks as a source for repair? Michael is knowledgeable about all things Mondonico.

Glad you walked away intact.

Mike

Eric F 

Recently, I discovered a crack in the seat tube of my Trek Procaliber MTB, starting at the Isospeed pivot point. It looked similar on the opposite side.


Bringing this issue up in the Procaliber owners Facebook group, a handful of others commented that they had the same crack develop in their frames. For owners who bought new, Trek's lifetime warranty coverage provides them with a new replacement frame for this issue. Unfortunately, my circumstances are a bit different in a couple of ways, and I replaced my frame on my own dime.

Trek has changed the fundamental way their Isospeed operates in frames like the Checkpoint, and it should eliminate this same issue. I'm curious to see what Trek does with the Procaliber lineup the next time they revamp it.

Jughed

Not to keep on with the drift...

When I pushed the axle thru the trainer it pushed the freehub ratchet out of the hub just a bit - that only allowed the threads to engage about 1/2 into the frame on the drive side.

I didn't notice this, wasn't even something I was looking for, I simply torqued up the axle. One pedal stroke and freehub parts spun all over the place.

If the freehub didn't explode, and the bike was only partially engaged - I could see something bad happening to the frame.