voodoo-kid
Devout Dirtbag
In my 'hello this is me' post yesterday i mentioned that i'd broken a few frames and components - which seemed to raise an eyebrow. So i though it might be fun to reminiss about all teh stuff i've broken since starting mountainbiking back in the mid nineties. Not sure if this has been done before or not, but here goes... my hall of shame!
Acera level crank off a GT Arrowhead. This was actually a recalled product that i merrely ran until it snapped pulling away at a road junction.
Raleigh MTrax 450 (titanium) frame. Riding into university the front felt a little mushy (kind of like a flat tyre). On closer insepction i found a crack running from the down-tube/head-tube weld and another near the front of the top-tube! I pushed home that afternoon! What i think may have happened was that i initiated a crack doing a small drop-off with underfilled Marzocchi Z2's (i.e. no damping). That's probably not all of the story though since i'd had the head-tube reamed and sleved by Raleigh so the weld that obviously went first had been heat affected twice. Not a great idea for titanium!
Next was the warranty replacement Raleigh Ti. Lets just say "I was riding along"! Yeah, a wall! A trials move that went a little wrong and rippled the down-tube.
The quickest failure i had was a set of Rockshox Physlo's from around 2000. These lasted about 6 months before they started leaking around the damping adjustments. Sent back to the UK distributer twice who wrote them off. Not sure that this was soemthing of my doing this time.
The frame that the above forks were on didn't fare much better. This was cheap a SantaCruz Chameleon copy that failed after just 9 months - i found a crack around the seat-tube/bottom bracket weld. I think the warranty replacement is still going strong so i might have just been unlucky here.
I did some saddle rails in a crash too. That wasn't much fun. Thing is i hadn't realised until i was about 70miles into a 106 mile ride! I'd only owned the saddle for less than 24 hours! I wasn't happy. I was less happy about the great big graze on my knee, my split helmet and a couple of scuffs on my Pace RC31's.
My '04 Marin Attack Trail was the next to fail. In the same place that most Attack Trails from that year failed... around where the lowermost suspension pivot fixes on the frame.
Er, what else have i done? Oh a 1996 Marzocchi crown. That was probably in 2010 so the fork crown did well.
Obviously i've done wheels too. Loads of snapped spokes. Once i bent a rim on a pothole whist commuting into work. The worst wheel failure though was when i extracted spokes from my front wheel with my left knee whilst lairing it up on the way home. I still had 6 miles to go. A trip to A&E saw 5 stiches! Still owe RobH on here for the lift home (although i think he was secretly enjoying entertaining the kids in A&E for five hours).
Finally, my most recent episode was one of the flange on my Hope Singlespeed hub. This was a genuine "just riding along". Still to post the hub off to Hope for inspection.
Well there are my tails of woe laid out for the world. There are other oddments but nothing juicy. So what have you folks got then?
Acera level crank off a GT Arrowhead. This was actually a recalled product that i merrely ran until it snapped pulling away at a road junction.
Raleigh MTrax 450 (titanium) frame. Riding into university the front felt a little mushy (kind of like a flat tyre). On closer insepction i found a crack running from the down-tube/head-tube weld and another near the front of the top-tube! I pushed home that afternoon! What i think may have happened was that i initiated a crack doing a small drop-off with underfilled Marzocchi Z2's (i.e. no damping). That's probably not all of the story though since i'd had the head-tube reamed and sleved by Raleigh so the weld that obviously went first had been heat affected twice. Not a great idea for titanium!
Next was the warranty replacement Raleigh Ti. Lets just say "I was riding along"! Yeah, a wall! A trials move that went a little wrong and rippled the down-tube.
The quickest failure i had was a set of Rockshox Physlo's from around 2000. These lasted about 6 months before they started leaking around the damping adjustments. Sent back to the UK distributer twice who wrote them off. Not sure that this was soemthing of my doing this time.
The frame that the above forks were on didn't fare much better. This was cheap a SantaCruz Chameleon copy that failed after just 9 months - i found a crack around the seat-tube/bottom bracket weld. I think the warranty replacement is still going strong so i might have just been unlucky here.
I did some saddle rails in a crash too. That wasn't much fun. Thing is i hadn't realised until i was about 70miles into a 106 mile ride! I'd only owned the saddle for less than 24 hours! I wasn't happy. I was less happy about the great big graze on my knee, my split helmet and a couple of scuffs on my Pace RC31's.
My '04 Marin Attack Trail was the next to fail. In the same place that most Attack Trails from that year failed... around where the lowermost suspension pivot fixes on the frame.
Er, what else have i done? Oh a 1996 Marzocchi crown. That was probably in 2010 so the fork crown did well.
Obviously i've done wheels too. Loads of snapped spokes. Once i bent a rim on a pothole whist commuting into work. The worst wheel failure though was when i extracted spokes from my front wheel with my left knee whilst lairing it up on the way home. I still had 6 miles to go. A trip to A&E saw 5 stiches! Still owe RobH on here for the lift home (although i think he was secretly enjoying entertaining the kids in A&E for five hours).
Finally, my most recent episode was one of the flange on my Hope Singlespeed hub. This was a genuine "just riding along". Still to post the hub off to Hope for inspection.
Well there are my tails of woe laid out for the world. There are other oddments but nothing juicy. So what have you folks got then?
