I know a couple of accomplished bike racers who crash regularly, spectacularly, and often for no good reason other than they don't seem to pay very close attention to what they're doing all the time. That can be bad @ 30-40 mph on a bicycle.

Fortunately I have some old Bontrager Race VR bars. They are 42cm wide and a little shorter reach but basically the same bend shape. I ordered the pro ergosums for $80.

did you damage anything else? rim maybe, sounds like a big pothole. glad you make it out OK.

FSA compact bars have somewhat of a similar shape, and they're pretty cheap too:

umd - Have you inspected your fork's steerer tube? If the bars have taken enough of a hit to damage them so severely, I'd give the fork a very careful inspection as well.

So give us the full story, how'd you knack'em?

Rim was already a little bent from the race crash last weekend. Doesn't seem any worse now.

Good idea, I'm taking the bike apart now, I'll check it out.

It's in the thread

fixed

Steerer looks fine

Did you inspect the full length, or just at the top where the stem attaches? I've seen some forks break about an inch or two up from the crown, where it would normally be concealed by the head tube.

Hi,

Yes, all of them can break (aluminum or carbon), but I've seen many more carbon handlebar failures than aluminum. I don't really get the shallow ergo bend bars though. If you're in the drops you're supposed to be low.

I tried some ergo bend bars for a few years but I gave up on them. The Rotundo Pro bars are working very well for me. Here they are with Campagnolo levers:



BTW, glad that you stayed upright.

I've got two of the Pro Ergosum bars and one Team. Without a gram scale they're difficult to tell apart. Unless you're standing in front of the bike: the Team version does look quite a bit sexier.

Just remember what Wikipedia says: "...aluminium alloys have no well-defined fatigue limit, meaning that fatigue failure will eventually occur under even very small cyclic loadings." I've seen lots of aluminum motorcycle stuff fail, along with the occasional aluminum bicycle part.

Took the fork off the bike, inspected (and cleaned) the entire length of the steerer.

Well my bars are low by virtue of no spacers and a -17D stem. The Rotundo is a little deeper than the Ergosums but not a huge amount and I'm really more interested about the shape of the curve and the angle of the ramps and transitions. Bends like the Ergosum seem to be more condusive to a flat transitin, BD's notwithstanding. His seems like it would have worked like I wanted but may have put the bottom of the drops at an awkward angle. Anyway, I've been happy with how everything felt with the Ergosums so I went with the same thing, although in aluminum this time around.

Unless you are riding a steel bar it would be best to replace them every couple of years if you you are riding them hard such as racing. Both carbon and aluminum bars WILL fail this way. What is the design point for bars a couple of million cycles? Although carbon will usually fail from a notch sensitivity before fatigue from what I have seen.

I think your choice of Pro Ergosum is a good one. Very glad to hear you stayed upright. Did you pick up a lottery ticket?

PSA: If a cyclist MUST imitate the pros in anything, it should be in the aluminum bars. See, photo above.

YIKES! Glad you made it down in one piece, umd.

I really liked the red stripe

congrats on the mad skillz!!! an accident like that would probably have been the end of my ass...

as far as the bars, sounds like a good decision. if you like the shape and they fit you, get the same ones. if it ain't broke, dont fix it.

Wait, that doesn't really fit in a broken bar thread.... well, you know what I mean....




RD

The term is catastrophically. Aluminum usually gives you some indication that something is amiss, a black residue, a crack, creaking, something. Everything I have seen and or read about carbon failure reads the same, it was fine, then it wasn't.
Aluminum received this label as a result of it being relatively new technology for frames. AT that time there is a learning curve that goes along with new materials/ technology. The problem was that people treated an aluminum frame much the same as a steel frame. Then when they failed, they blamed the material, not the use, or misuse, of the material.
Both materials are very notch sensitive/failure prone. Although with aluminum it takes time to make a notch into a crack, with carbon n ot nearly as much. Aluminum can be polished out ,carbon.... nope its junk, no matter what you do to repair it the notch is still there. ( some say carbon can be repaired, personally I don't, but thats my opinion) You can reinforce the damaged area but then you are just creating stress elsewhere in the structure, I wouldn't trust it.
Every building material has its own strengths and weaknesses, or parameters. stay inside the boundary's and you will be fine.
We all know that aluminum shouldn't be cold set. Cold setting causes the material to work harden at the point of yield. The more it is flexed at this point the more it work hardens until it finally cracks, fails. This is not catastrophic, it just went unnoticed until failure.
The same or similar argument can be made for carbon,with one exception. Carbon fiber will not yield it fails. If a carbon part is subjected to an impact, large enough to compromise the binding matrix, and is flexed it will fail. Carbon fiber is not designed to absorb impact. Again, stay within the boundary's of use for the material and everything is fine.
One final thought on carbon fiber. When carbon fiber came on the scene it was touted,"to be as strong as steel lbs. for lbs. The problem is that carbon is so much lighter than steel. It takes a lot of carbon to equally the same weight in steel. I think its on the order of 9 - 1, but I could be mistaken. Yet we only use the same size tube thicknesses as we did with steel, yet now of carbon. Shouldn't those tube walls be 9 times as thick? Just something to consider on those 50 mph descents.

Anybody remember BF member SirLanceI'm not? He crashed on Deer Creek and broke his frame. He transferred all the parts to a new frame and the bars broke while descending Mount Baldy a couple weeks later. He did not crash, but the bars snapped on both sides near the stem. He was probably going 35mph when he hit a concrete swale across the road. Mad skillz, indeed.

umd, glad to hear you're still with us.

Sure beats an ambulance, though. Mad skilz, indeed.

My aluminum cranks were fine, then they weren't. Mad skillz kept me upright then too, as I was standing & accelerating out of a corner.

Try riding 100+miles on chip seal and get back to me.

The bars I used today were definitely less comfortable on rough roads, but such is life. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

When I first moved to Austin I had a Cinelli Starlight with Deda Newtons...my first long ride I felt like I'd done Paris/Roubaix...the roads here are very very rough, it's the only reason I use the Ergosum Teams on my training bike.

k, I rode over 100 miles of chipseal in Austin for the Livestrong Challenge on my Pedal Force with aluminum bars. I'm getting back to you, but don't know what good it'll do since I really have no other data points for a comparison.

probably had both hands on the bars, as those snapped off, the other hand took control.