Originally Posted by
Mtracer
The cable looks slightly rust colored at the brake. I wonder if water got in there and corroded the metal. Might be the metal cable was pretty well gone and it was the plastic holding it together, until the cold temps made that brittle.
Broken is broken, but I'm thinking it wasn't the metal that failed due to low temp. Anyway, just a thought.
This lock was manufactured -- for reasons unknown to me -- with a slit in the plastic sheathing at that location. It was like that straight out of the package. As a result, there's a little discoloration at that spot, but the cable is far from rusted-through.
What I suspect happened was that the slit in the sheath caused it to flex at the same spot, thousands of times, and eventually the cable strands literally reached their braking point.
It obviously wasn't temperature alone -- this lock has been outside all day in sub-zero Fahrenheit many times -- but a combination of age and a potential manufacturing defect, with a cold day perhaps being the camel's straw.