165lbs and I didn't keep any of the groupset.

Some crude forensics. Let's say the down tube separated from the head tube. (The initial "pop" you heard.) Some steerage is lost. The top tube is levered up by fork which is now rotating forward. Top tube starts to peel off the seat tube. (You can see it lifting the entire weld off at the bottom.) Front wheel hits the curb. Fork is immediately yanked back, hard. Top tube bends, back portion comes up more and snaps off at the remaining metal along the top, just forward of the weld. Front wheel, now completely detached and stopped by the curb, comes back along the down tube, now just an unsupported strut sticking forward and forces it up and to the left, breaking it off at the bottom bracket.

I think this was one break and a lot of collateral damage. I think a large part of the collateral damage is the use to joints that have ultimate failure loads very close to the yield loads. In other words, joints that break instead of bend when they are deflected. This also means the energy that is not absorbed by bending is passed on to the next joint which in turn does the same to the next.

As backwards and heavy as the technology is, there is something to be said for the time honored lugged steel construction. Odds are good that this bike, built that way, could have been ridden to a standstill with the same complete failure of the that joint.

I wonder how my two welded ti bikes would fair. Now, neither one of those bikes was built with especially thin tubing. They are not light. I do consider everything forward of mid top and down tube to be "critical". In other words, failure there being very destructive and quite likely causing major injury or worse. On a welded bike, I want to know who did those welds.

Ben

That kind of sh... I mean STUFF can happen to almost any bike brand -- occasionally. That's why you want a frame warranty and a company that will stand behind it, and the company offering the warranted frame doesn't want it happening very often. I hope they take care of you.

I don't have a garage and my rack is hitch mounted platform style.


I did swerve into the curb but the impact point is pretty close to straight on. The type of curbs were like the parking lot ones they use for each parking spot, lined end to end with a 10" gap between ends.





I swerved, tried to make it through the gap but end of hitting the corner and went down. Hope that paints a better picture...

Front tire is busted which I assume is from the impact on the curb and not the pop I heard. There's a tear in the sidewall.

BlazingPedals, when considering bicycles and especially the construction of said bicycles, I think hard about the failure modes. Not just the likelihood of failure and how well the company behind the bike is reimburse me. I think about what the failure is going to look like and is it going to cause a crash, How will I fare?

This is from both my engineering training and curiosity and the fact that I rode a bike years ago, didn't do this analysis and suffered life altering consequences. That was in my twenties. Since then I have known that any bike I genuinely loved was likely going to be ridden to failure. (5 so far.)

For that reason I will never own carbon fiber forks. They will be brazed steel with scalloped (old fashioned) crowns. (I could go on about a steel fork that didn't have that feature but won't. Scary.) CF frames share the same failure characteristics that the OP saw here. Brittle failure. (See my post above.)

Ben

What is the hole in the tube like? Or is it too late?

Large hole, ragged edges (blowout)?
Two small holes (pinch flat)?

It still might be difficult to tell exactly how it occurred, but that might give some indication of what happened.

I recently hit a deep crack in the pavement. I ended up with a pinch flat, a sidewall puncture, two scrapes on the sidewall, and it let the air out rapidly (within a few feet of the impact). But no blowout. I don't think I've ever had a blowout from a pinch flat.

Note, none of the carbon parts (fork or seatstays) appear to have any visible damage in this accident.

All the damage is isolated to the aluminum parts and welds.

That is an odd curb arrangement.

I'd have to see the actual layout, but it sounds like in your case it was rather dangerous.

Car jersey barriers are generally designed so that a car will tend to ride up onto the barrier (flip?) (or decelerate before it) rather than a direct impact.

Is the curb needed at all? Are the gaps needed? An angled end to the barriers might have thrown you around a bit, but at least avoided the sudden stop.

We motorcyclists have a tradition of drinking a toast whenever one of us walks away from a totalled bike. I'd say you deserve a few toasts.
Well done. I'd hang that on the mancave wall next to the Steve McQueen poster and the military decorations.

This was exactly my analysis.

I was referring to the insinuations that the bike was damaged in a non-riding scenario...

"Steel Is Real"!

One picture too many. Sorry but the top tube being so buckled is the result of a front impact and not of a heat treatment defect which could have caused the main frame joint failures.
You should be ashamed of yourself for posting this and blaming a manufacturer defect.
The damage is most likely a result of driving into a garage or similar low hanging barrier with the bike on a roof rack as someone else mentioned.
Whatever the true cause the top tube bucking is only from impact and not metal fatigue, metal failure or a welding or heat treating process error.

Did you join just to resurrect this necro post?

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