apples to oranges compadre.

I'm not saying that a steel frame cannot break, I am merely pointing out that using a video of kids dirtjumping on alu. bikes with 6" travel suspension forks (lots of torque) to demonstrate what will happen to a loaded touring bike, made of a different material, ridden in an entirely differnet manner, is spurious at best. :lol:

Furthermore, citing a failing bridge as an anectdote that steel can fail has nothing to do with anything regarding cycling. :rolleyes:

Additionally, look at where the crumple is. its far back from the spot that headtubes ususally shear off, when they shear off.

I'd ride the bike to end of the tour assuming your fork isn't damaged seriously...something I'd think was likely if you managed to damage the TT so badly. If the fork is compromised I'd stop riding the bike until I could get something to replace it. Having the fork fail is beyond ugly.

When you get home buy a new LHT frame...swap the parts and be happy.

Personally I wouldn't contact Surly for a warranty frame unless you suspect the TT has a manufacturing defect. Hitting stuff and crashing is not a warranty situation.

BTW - I'm really glad you are okay!...:thumb:

Warranty repair and crash replacement are two different things. You're not entitled to the former, but you should definitely contact Surly about the latter.

I say describe how it happened honestly and ask if they can do anything for you. There is probably no chance they would replace it, but I would not be at all surprised if they gave you a price break on the replacement.

Edit:
Then again depending on what it costs to ship it home, it might be better to leave it there.

Some companies like Santa Cruz have a no fault crash replacement program. AFAIK Surly does not, but here is their warranty info. You can always ask.

Didn't somebody else on here mess up their LHT frame from a pot hole?


Might as well ask if they're either replace for free or at cost.

The dude is in China.

He has these options:

1) Do nothing (and ride it as it is) ==> probably not smart.
2) Walk (or take the bus) the rest of the way (500 miles) or cancel his trip.
3) Get some sort of repair made.
4) Buy a replacement bicycle in country.
5) Get a LHT frame shipped from the US ==> seems this would take too long.

I kind of doubt he's in a good position to discuss warranty issues with a company in the US.

It seems pretty clear that it's not a warranty issue.

I'd say getting a ugly/robust repair and riding it carefully is the option that makes the most sense.

Then, write the trashed frame off as part of the cost of doing the trip.

ride it.

if you can get it repaired, go for it. as a previous poster mentioned, there are a lot of people in china with bikes more beat up than yours.

The snide comment wasn't aimed at you. There have been a number of people here who have made the comment that steel bikes won't fail catastrophically. Mistreated as the bikes in the videos obviously have been, even a titanium frame could suffer the same failure at the same junction.

While I agree that jumping bikes with long forks can lead to trouble, touring bikes see a while different kind of stress based upon what we ask them to carry. They can, and do, break. Maybe not at the head tube but that's not the only failure mode a bike can go through. It just happens to be the most photogenic:rolleyes:

A steel bridge failure is certainly illustrative of steel failing catastrophically. Greater overall consequences but still... If you want bicycle related catastrophic steel failure, i.e. sudden complete unexpected failure of a steel part, try pedal spindles shearing off, bottom bracket axles shearing off, hub axles breaking, frame breakage, fork breakage, weld failures and spoke failures. All of these have have happened to me. Each one was without warning of any kind. Each one went 'ping' and was broken in two pieces.

Again, failure isn't just shear. A crumple of that magnitude could easily lead to folding of the tube. Most likely the failure will be to perpendicular to the current damage since the bent tube will keep it from folding downward. That will mean the bike folding in half probably during a curve or rapid maneuver away from the line of travel, like a panic swerve. If the bike fold in half, the crash will be as catastrophic as the head tube assembly shearing off with similar injuries. The bend in the tube is very close (if not in the middle) of the thinnest, weakest part of a double butted tube set. That makes failure even more likely.

Laterally unsupported members in compression have a tendency to buckle due to instability. In this case the process has already begun and the resulting geometry converts part of the axial load into a bending load. Circular cross section members are not designed to resist bending forces (for that you want an I-beam with high moment of inertia in the vertical axis). The top tube is now much weaker. Additional stresses inducing strain in excess of the elastic range may cause failure. The mode of failure depends on the nature of the load (sudden vs slowly increasing). Here's a stress/strain graph for steel. Stress is the force (per unit area) on the member, strain is the amount of deformation. As you can see, strain hardening provides some warning, but it is relatively small and another pothole can easily cause stress far beyond the ultimate strength, leading to catastrophic failure.

I hope this offers some clarification on the mechanism of steel failure.
http://www.civil.umaine.edu/cie111/images/steel.gif

http://bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=528902&page=2 I posted additional pics on the bike mechanics thread. Chinese internet cafe won't let me access this site so I'm using opera mini demo. Damn troublesome. Thanks guys!

Awesome, but i dont think that angle iron weld-job will complement your hammered fenders and brooks saddle. ;)

nice fix. :)

You are expecting his top tube to experience a uniform ductile failure. Really what you will see is a sudden crack propagation. But the mangled bend in the tube would probably mean that a crack wouldn't grow through the whole tube all at once. It would stop temporarily when it hits one of those folds in the metal. Inspecting for early cracks can give good clues as to whether the frame is ripe to go soon.

If you haven't yet, take a look at BF123 link to the mechanics page. He's got someone to do a real kluge job:roflmao2: on the frame but cracks have developed in the folds of the tubes.

Sorry BF123 but that is one uggggglllllllyyyyyy repair job:rolleyes:;) It really is hard to see you having so much trouble. I'm sorry for making fun of your situation but...damn.

Sorry but................... I would not ride that thing. It is toast and not safe. I would sure think that your headset is pretty cooked as well. Why the headset was left in while welding is a head scratch moment for me.

That repair job is horrible.

I am reposting a few of the pictures just so everyone can see:
That is an ugly ugly weld. It looks like they didn't even clean the surface first.

http://i42.tinypic.com/27wufwl.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/2dmgk9e.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/xgco6u.jpg

It is hard to weld metal of such dissimilar thicknesses, but those are some ugly welds. Still the crack that was missed is scarier that the buckled tube.

I hope he is able to limp along and finish the trip.

Yeah, that's one ugly welding job. If it was me, I would've thrown the bike in to the back of someone's truck and spend an extra week getting drunk in Shanghai. ;) Gan bei....

you should definitely take pictures and send them to surly. I think they would like to see this...

I'd remove the paint from around the cracks to make sure the cracks aren't just in the paint.

http://i41.tinypic.com/2db77ys.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/2dan0up.jpg
http://i39.tinypic.com/qp03yx.jpg

Well, pics of the welded cracks. I think I overencouraged the repairman--he managed to cook a HOLE into my top tube. It was around 3cm in circumference. He filled it up and proclaimed it "okay". My top tube feels wobbly/loose/springy now. And I just did 150km yesterday and 100km today. 4 more days to go, 430 km to ride.


And yeah...it's really ugly. Hahaha..


oh, and thanks Dan, for reposting the pics.

Getting close now! Good luck. I hope it holds up for the remaining miles.

ditch it & finish the tour on a real bike. you should be able to scoop up a flying pigeon for $100. keep an eye out for the double top tube model. you know you want to. :)