Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Too much power!

I had dropped my bag off at the embroidery place on after work and was sitting at a light... the light turns green and I jump up to take off - I like to give it a little hoof off lights to clear cars and show them who's boss. Anyway, there's this terrific *bang* and my foot slams into the floor, I stumble a little, hit the curb, fall and bounce/skid about 10 feet down the pavement. I didn't get hurt (thankfully) and hop up to see my ****ing broken crank laying in the middle of the road.

****ing POS Campagnolo garbage :D

http://marcneedham.com/photo/Yet+more+pics+from+my+s710a/image/512/185.jpg

http://marcneedham.com/photo/Yet+more+pics+from+my+s710a/image/512/186.jpg

Thank **** it wasn't the left one - that would have meant falling headfirst into the relatively heavy traffic at Belmont & Broadway.

Some ******* laughed (quite loudly) at me while I was still on the ground too.

Damn. Glad to hear you are okay. I've heard of those cranks breaking along the grove, but it doesn't look like that was the case here. How old are they?

On the bright side, maybe you can find some replacement cranks with eagles or golf balls on them.

if i ever break a crank, i'm hanging that **** up on the wall.

I've got a pair I saved. Happened to me almost exactly as Markle described, except I fell immediately on my back. A woman stopped and asked if I needed help in the way of tools. "Unless you have a tig welder in your purse," I replied, "I'm well ****ed."

Hey, gimme a break, I was still on the ground.

"Unless you have a tig welder in your purse," I replied, "I'm well ****ed."

Bit of Superglue and these'll be right as rain!

i do not want to sound like a jerk but probably will...here i go. i do feel bad for what happened to you mr. sparkle but since you were okay i cant help but giggle a little. im sure you'll look back at it and laugh out loud yourself. sometimes **** just happens. i realize that the cat laughing at you was a prick and should have first made sure everything was okay but it still is kind of funny, except for the fact that know you have to purchase a new part. to anarchocyclist i say please forgive the lady. i understand how it is to be on the ground and being pissed off at anyone but the lady probably does not know much about cycling and was just trying to be nice. i think it was nice of her to offer some assistance its just that she caught you at the wrong time. anyway, i guess what im trying to get at is that we have to go through alot out there and sometimes its just best to laugh it off. peace.

you weren't carrying liquid nitrogen around, were you?

Oh, I'm already laughing about it :)

I'm kind of glad it happened on some level - first spill I've taken in years and I was nervous waiting for the inevitable. Now it has happened, I can go back to living my life.

The new parts won't cost me too much (fingers crossed) and the only sore point is that I've got to spend a couple of weeks riding my Winter bike... which has a smaller frame and is kind of uncomfortable.

my LBS decorates their bathroom with parts that have broken like that.

why are you posting here when your bike obviously has gears? better responses?

We're obviously the coolest kids on the forum.

why are you posting here when your bike obviously has gears? better responses?

it's one of those super rare fixed gear bikes that has derailleurs and a freewheel.

Better responses and the people that I *know* IRL only read this forum. And what hyperRevue said ;)

Obviously.

Torque baby! :)

i wanna see pics of that bike pls

I'm confused. Shouldn't this never happen under normal circumstances? (assuming you're not hulk hogan?)

I've heard that being an issue with some model of campy crank where there's too much material where the arm meets the spider and it creates too much pressure or something.

fatigue life had been reached.....

if i ever break a crank, i'm hanging that **** up on the wall.

i've broken a crank before, but i dropped into a flat from 6 feet
...but mine was a crappy shimano ...and i threw it away.

Am I seeing a dark coloration in one corner of the broken surface? (bottom right in the first pic). If yes, then the arm had cracked quite a while ago and the material corroded until the crack got too big... Pretty damn nasty. I just hope to God my $15 cranks (and that's MSRP!!!) won't do that to me. I'm glad you got out of it unharmed, and now you have a cool paperweight you can show off.

NOS?

I try to limit riding anything on the work bike or 12 months, then only for sunday use.

Everything breaks. Especially hearts.

ride on.

Didn't this happen to somebody's campy cranks at monstertrack too? And I know transplant broke a crank with his power as well.

quite sucks. [and i sure as hell wouldn't want that to happen to me]

http://pardo.net/pardo/bike/pic/fail/FAIL-001.html
but there's lots more here^

fsnl
sparky

Everything breaks. Especially hearts.
Indeed. Our resident Lovefilosofer speaks truths like no other. And if your heart is NOS Campy - best swap it out.

The NOS thing never really made a lot of sense to me. When I realized I wasn't going to use some "desirable" hubs I had for a while, people thought I was nuts for selling them.
Dude...they are suntours!
No, they were. Now they are $400 in my pocket. Disposable income has a new friend, and its first name is NOS.


Materialism is the new bohemian.

Campy and Shimano both have a history of broken cranks.
A few years ago Shimano had a huge recall and was replacing cranks for free.
The failure is never from torque as the thread would suggest but from material / manufacturing flaws that develop into cracks and then propagate until the crank is weak enough to fail. Eventually your little sister could have broken the crank too.

Eventually your little sister could have broken the crank too.
shh.

don't piss on his ego like that.

fsnl
sparky

Seriously - I'm just going to go ahead and ignore that post... and the other one about the crack having already existed.

*runs off to tell co-workers about LEGS OF POWER

same exact thing just happened to my friend kevin's cannondale; he went off the bike and had a pretty bad spill because of it. of course he weighs over 200lbs and i've never seen anyone beat a bike up like he does, but still. that's f'in crazy.

I weigh 210lbs.

Campy Super Record cranks tend to develop cracks on the "web" between the crank arm and the trailing spider arm. They should be checked often for cracks there, and also around the pedal threads. This probably does you no good now, but a common "fix" is to lightly take a round file to the sharp edge of said web where these cracks occur. I have had the same cracks appear in Campy Pista arms of this era as well. I've read that these web cracks rarely lead to crank failure, but apparently they do. My understanding is that crank failure around the pedal threads is more of an issue, but in any case if you ride on a pair of these cranks, you should inspect them from time to time.