Originally Posted by dog hair
don't see where it says what caused the failure. what did he hit, a brick wall? a carbon fork isn't simply going to snap in the center of both legs just by riding your bike.
This is the story behind that fork.
I have in my possesion a Kestral EMS fork with steel steerer from around
1994. It's in three pieces. 2 pieces each about 9-10" long with a dropout
on each end and the steerer with the remainder of the blades attached
(5-6").
The result of this failure was a broken collar bone and concussion with
several minutes of unconciousness. Cause of failure is unknown. My friend,
the unlucky rider, weighs about 125 lbs and was just cruising down a street.
No pot holes, no animal remnants, no sticks, no nothing that would be a
"smoking gun". There also was no history of abuse or crashes. There was no
history of "creaking" or anything else unusual prior to failure. I don't
know how many miles were on the fork before failure. I'd guestimate 2 years
at 3-4k miles per year.