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Things that break
There are two categories of problems - the expected and the unexpected.
Any bike that's in use will suffer failures - transmission wear, punctures, broken spokes and
mudguards - the list of expected problems is long.What falls into the unexpected class? It's things that don't often break like cranks and frames and which will probably cause you to call out the breakdown service (or an ambulance!)
I'm fairly lightweight and never was particularly strong, so personally I haven't suffered a great many breakages. Even so I've had two serious frame failures in the past few years: one broken down tube (see my Silver Sunbeam thread) and, more dangerously, a broken steering tube, an occasion when I was very lucky not to suffer serious injury.
For readers of this thread these failures are a serious difficulty. Apart from the main issue of personal safety, there is the problem that even if you only suffer minor injuries, people will point at you and say 'Well, I told him using that old stuff was dangerous'. Also it's only too possible that you may buy something for a high price only to have it break.
That's enough for tonight, I'll continue tomorrow with some examples.
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clubman
@clubman @jeff80 or anyone else ... all that talk of snapping cranks has kept turning over in my mind. Have you had any other components break?
The only one I've had so far is a 70s alloy stem (a good quality JPR), no injury luckily I had the saddle tightly clenched in my butt. It just sheered off at the top of the seattube, I guess maybe slightly the wrong size.
Anyone ever had any issue using period alloy bars? I few years ago I looked in to it more and found a lot of scare stories on the interweb but no first hand accounts of failures. I remember some post or another saying they would fail slowly and bend, but my seatpost snapping doesn't back that up.