Originally Posted by
nurse ben
I have also talked with the guys at TRP, both in person at the Ogden werehouse and by phone. I having been using these brakes for as long or longer than anyone on this forum, so I am quite familiar with them.
The guy who ran the carbon arm SL Spyre was "living on the edge", not only was he using a product not tandem rated, he was using a lighter weight version of a brake that was untested. His failure has more to do with decision making than the product design. He has even admitted that much. Don't bag on a mfg because their product failed due to the users poor judgement, it is bad form and it harms the mfg.
TRP will not say there is a design problem when the failure was due the product being used way outside it's design envelope. If you go on the cyclocross forum you will not find another failure. It may be that the Spyre SL brake is perfectly fine on a normal cyclosross race bike, in which case there is not a design failure. You can't demand an mfg create a product to suit your needs, tandem riders are a minority, so we take what we can get and we pass off the failures as lessons learned.
Brakes are not a place to play around, a failure can be life threatening.
No bagging of TRP, just stating the facts. My response intended to point out a correction needed* to your comment:
Originally Posted by
nurse ben
I am suprrised that TRP decided to redesign all of the Spyre brakes after a single carbon arm brake failure,
* TRP has never mentioned redesigning anything concerning the carbon arm failure.
I also stand behind my earlier comment in this thread, that blaming the SLC arm failure on "tandem usage" is IMO a complete cop-out. There are 3 components in play here, brake lever, cable, caliper. Tandem does not come into the equation other than to suggest heavier load usage. Most likely the same failure could be reproduced on any single bike ridden by a clydesdale.
On a brighter note, I just received notice that my replacement Spyre (AL) has been shipped from TRP, much sooner than expected
