You are reading a single comment by @Lolo and its replies. Click here to read the full conversation.
  • Nearly all these pictures show fatigue failures. They had to have occurred over some time, and will have begun with a crack, invariably at a stress raiser - some sharp point in the crank, or a casting/forging error.

    Looking at the broken surfaces, you can see where the face is dirty, is where the crack has been developing over weeks/months/years. The two halves fit back together neatly, also. The bright surface is a ductile failure, and shows how little material the component was still hanging on by. It’s surprising the story that these things tell.

    The cause of these failures is virtually never rider error, or overload. If you tried to overload a new crank to destruction- by clamping it in a large vise and levering it with a breaker bar, say - it would bend, rather than crack. This persistent line from manufacturers that ‘you did something wrong’ is erroneous and unfair.

  • This persistent line from manufacturers that ‘you did something wrong’ is erroneous and unfair.

    In this case, probably, but in the bike industry user error is never owned up by the customer, so much so that there's an actual term for it.

About

Avatar for Lolo @Lolo started