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Old 09-28-20, 03:39 PM
  #13  
spank226
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Thank you for the education. I'm not surprised at the head tube failure at that location. Aluminum does have a finite life and can only take so many cycles before failure. I recall going through a bunch of 1" ball and cage headsets back in the 1980s because they would loosen and then dimple the lower races with hammering of the road surface. The "fix" back then was to remove the balls from the cage and add an extra ball so they all wouldn't index in the divots at the same time. But I digress...

There's an aluminum Bianchi for sale near me and it is NOT lugged and it has a crack in the same spot. So I'm not convinced it is a specific failing of lugged aluminum construction. But I concede it is a characteristic to look out for with Alan (and rebadged Alan) frames.




When I raced a Trek 2300 in Italy in the early / mid 1990s when most of my competition was still riding steel bikes, many would actually go out of their way to come over and tell me "There's no way that bike is going to stay together" or "No way I'd ride a bike that is glued together on these cobbles". When I started to get some positive results, a few actually went out of their way to give me COMPLIMENTS on the bike.
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