i have some generic "hsinglung" alum bars that came on my fuji

about a week ago, i noticed that it emitted small "crackling" sounds when i apply some force to the left side of the bar... even a slight depress or pull on the bar would generate this sound. i dont think the stem or cyclo-x lever is clamped onto it too tightly...

i saw no stress or crack lines. is this indicative of the bar on its last hours of life? doesnt aluminum 'fail catastrophically' without warning like these?

I had a set of cut and flipped bullhorns start making that noise. I promptly removed them. I've heard too many horror stories of bars breaking.

Kudos for being cautious about your bars, but the 'crackling' sound you hear may be in the stem. Did you grease the bolt(s) that secure the bar clamp? Does it have a removable faceplate, and if so, are there cracks in the faceplate? Are all bolts sufficiently tight? If it's a quill stem, is it secured into the fork?

Check over the stem/bar and stem/frame interfaces, greasing and tightening where appropriate. If it doesn't go away immediately, start looking for the crack, it's there somewhere.

I had a Cinelli stem start to fail on me. I couldn't find the crack for the longest time until I popped out the plastic badge on the front. Sure enough it had started cracking from the button hole on out.

sounds like you know well enough that this is a question you know the answer to.

anyway, yes - i've had bars (and stems and forks and saddles and seatposts and frames and all sorts of other stuff) fail on me.

most every failure has been preceeded by some kind of warning (which has generally allowed me to correct the problem before it caused an accident), the only exception being a selle flite saddle which had a rail snap and caused a minor crash.

i'd bet that if i had regularly pulled the saddle off to grease the rails, i'd have caught the problem, though.

i'm not saying it can't happen, but the only real catastrophic failures i've witnessed with my own eyes were caused by people who ignored problems or shirked maintenance responisibilites. for instance, if you crashed on a carbon fork or bars and they were all torn up, or some other lightweight aluminum component was bent severely, replace it asap.

anyway. the answer is that yes, bike parts and every other lightweight metal sports dohickey in the world do wear out with use and need to be maintained and checked regularly.

and though every time i'm flying down a hill at 45mph i can't help but imagine a fork blade snapping, i tune up my bike regularly and i try not to sweat it.

My stock fuji track stem made that type of noise the day before it snapped. Luckily it broke from the bottom of the welds and not top.

I recently searched somewhere - I guess here but I could be wrong - for creaking HBs because my new Nitto set up was making lots of noise. Anyway, I gathered that it might be a case of not having all the bolts tightened down enough. I lubed it up and cranked down on my stem and the creaking went away. You might want to try that. Bear in mind that my stuff was brand new but bolts do have a nasty habit of losening up on you.

There was this guy who always abused his bikes like crazy when I was working at Gotham Bikes, one day he bought these aerobars and said he'd install them himself onto his carbon handlebar.

Later in the day he came back with his bike and his handlebar was in 2 pieces! It cracked in half as he was riding up a hill in Washington Heights.

He didn't get hurt though because I guess he was going slow enough to stop before he fell.

He overtightened the aerobars and cracked his handlebar. How 'bout that?

Another reason to be leery of carbon, it's way too sensitive to proper torquing of various clamps. That's too much thinking for this guy to shave a few grams.

Pretty much all carbon handlebars make it very clear that they are incompatible with clip on aero bars... and for good reason.

I've dumped my Chucks bikes bars because they flex so much (2 - 3 inches on normal riding) that it scared me.

Sound is normal on some bars.


S/F<
CEYA!

I think i had the bars fail on me in 1980 on an old huffy ,but it was so long ago that i am a bit fuzzy on it.