Yep, that’s a line from today’s coverage of the Tour in Velo News. Gianni Moscon was tangled up in a crash. He got up, his bike didn’t. Why, back in my day, a frame might have bent, but break? Not likely. Now you kids get off my lawn!

Oh goody gum drops!

Yet another dumb thread claiming one catastrophic failure is worse than another.

Snapped or bent to heck? Not important to the rider.
When I scrambled up, after getting caught at the back of a mid-pack crash, jumped back on my bike, adrenalin roaring in my blood, the fact that the frame was made of steel was totally irrelevant, compared to the front wheel overlapping the downtube by a couple of inches...

I was watching it snapped into jagged tubes lucky he was not impaled. Glad my Pinnarello is steel.

Almost every bike malfunction at the TDF is on a carbon-frame bike. The fools just don't learn.

Just like disc brakes, carbon isn't going anywhere

No but some of the poor souls who have to ride them will be and it won't be the next race.

Speaking as someone who owns and rides a number of "classic" steel bikes, including three I personally raced on in the mid-sevent... oh never mind, I don't even know what to say... Maybe this. Welcome, one and all, to the BF version of the FLAT EARTH SOCIETY.

Yes!!,..... These guys were sooooo right too when they shunned those "new fangled" steel bikes!.....

It's a race bike which by definition means the only rules/regulations are win and don't get caught cheating.

It's not about the materials used to make it, it's all about being a machine made to race and WIN, as Innes Ireland said:

'I'd always believed that Colin [builder of Lotus race cars] was close to genius in his design ability and everything, if he could just get over this failing of his of making things too bloody light. I mean, Colin's idea of a Grand Prix car was it should win the race and, as it crossed the finishing line, it should collapse in a heap of bits. If it didn't do that, it was built too strongly."


-Innes Ireland

No pics?



This is a few years old but I will never buy a carbon wheel

I think for the last several years, every last place finisher and DNF was on a carbon-frame bike too.

Carbon hates side impacts and forces it wasn't designed for more than metal does.

Now, old steel racing frames were of course made from very thin-walled tubing, whether that be in the '70s and '80s, non-heat-treated and heat-treated examples. For those of you old enough (as I am not) who watched racing or did racing, when there were heavy crashes or ones with frame damage, where were the usual points of bending or failure? Perhaps a steel tube or tubes wouldn't snap, but would still fold up spectacularly. Serious question. Just would like an objective answer, if possible.

Yes, a snap failure is how carbon does it, and it's not a pretty sight, but neither is a metal failure. If anything, the snapping helps dissipate energy and momentum. We see this all the time in racing--Formula 1, WEC (think Le Mans), etc. A carbon tub/frame is built around a driver with various chassis and suspension and engine pieces bolted to it or around it. In a crash, everything explodes upon impact, but the carbon tub is generally fine (good!) and the failing other pieces take energy out of the car-flying-off-the-track scenario, to the benefit of the driver. We don't bat an eye at the lightweight construction and use of carbon in racing, yet see its immense benefits in crashes. I'm not saying metal of some sort wouldn't do a good job, it's just that carbon does quite well for itself in auto racing.

At any rate, the Tour this year has been exciting!

Obviously hitting objects on high speed descents could completely mangle bikes, even steel bikes.

Generally: First person down Bitd... Lots of road rash, but unless they hit something head on, often the bikes and even wheels seemed to survive. Bike to bike impacts led to dents, dings and pretzeled wheels.Those who came after the early casualties...bike has abrupt deceleration,, crashing into fallen bodies. This often creasiEd and/or bent top and/or down tubes in upside down "V" with or without fork problems. In my experience, less road rash, but rider sometimes became a projectile sailing at close to 30 mph, in my case landing, on something soft like a body, and scrambling to get back on my bike. Trajectories were often similar but landing hard on pavement, often boke wrists or collarbones, getting ttangled in other bikes often resulted in cuts, sprains and bruises etc. Worst case of course, head impact.

Damage behind head tube lugs probably the most common ride altering frame damage, along with bent forks...

I was asked if I could straighten this funny bike recently. I offered to give it a try.




When I couldn't get the rear brake bridge aligned - even though the dropouts were - I inspected the seat tube for alignment in relation to the bottom bracket. That's when I found this:



I don't see any carbon fiber.

-Kurt

If those wannabe racing fools would only learn steel is real, they could finish safely off the back of the pack, far from any risk of tangling with another bike.

Which, incidentally, is my usual group ride strategy. I'm not slow on my steel bikes. I'm careful. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Counterpoint.

Races are often won by fractions of an inch. Only a fool would ride in a modern peloton without the latest and greatest super bike.

For mere mortals, the small benefit of a modern CF bike might be weighed against the toughness of a steel frame.

We all pays our money and takes our choice. That is our right.

But check this out. It started like so:



In 20 minutes it was straight.


[MENTION=22396]Wildwood[/MENTION] has posted pix of it fully kitted and ridden.

Bike problems aren't new.

Nor are new "wonder materials"

Around 1990, I had a friend with a fancy new aluminum frame bike, & a broken dropout. I don't remember the circumstances, but I think it was just from riding. However, such a failure could certainly knock a person out of a race.

Failed titanium?

And, of course, we periodically see examples of failed steel posted here.

A crash hard enough to crumple carbon fiber could easily have left a steel bike, or a bike of just about any other frame material either unrideable, or dangerous to ride.

An amateur racer might repair a frame like the one [MENTION=381793]gugie[/MENTION] has, but if it was a pro racer, that likely would have been made into scrap metal, and the racer would have gotten a new frame.

At least we will never have to argue that "THE FORK IS BENT" on a carbon fiber thread!

That hurts, Gugie!



-Kurt

Great minds.....! lol Add this to your strategy: after the others tangle and all slow down to make sure everyone is okay you ride by asking the same then 'giddyup'!

Ugh, thanks for reminding me of the one thing I hate about this subforum.

That reminds me of something the great speaker designer Bud Fried used to say when asked why his woofers failed so often. "A woofer you can't blow up is like a fender that can't be dented."

BITD domestiques would get a frame rebent. In the early 80's I worked in a bikeshop in Walnut Creek, California. One Bob Roll is originally from Pleasant Hill, an adjoining suburb. He came into our shop after a TdF with Team 7-11 (and 6 weeks living with gypsies under a freeway underpass, but that's another story) and had his team bike with him to sell on consignment. He told me it had been bent back to ship after a few crashes - paint was only touched up - and you could still see a few small creases in the tubing.

Budgets and salaries were smaller then.

here's the failure. From what I could see in the video - it literally popped "while riding along". IMHO - the quest for ever lighter frames and components inevitably will lead to (some) structural failures. Remember that racers get new bikes every season ! Maybe every race! but carbon fails catastrophically where even the cracked and bent frame posted by Cuda above was still rideable - would not have dumped it's rider on the pavement.

I'm reminded of the failure of Artemis Racing's America's cup yacht - it literally exploded. Boats and bikes have high concentrations of stress - unlike an aircraft stabilizer for example - and there are some limits in the finite element models that validate the designs.

Mark Petry
Bainbridge Island, WA USA