Bent chainstay - trashed bike- uncommon?

bit of advice please all. I've two ss bikes. one old dawes galaxy conversion for pootling around and a condor pista (bout 3 years old), both running fixed.

I trashed the condor yesterday, did a pretty stiff hill climb for about 10 mins and about 15 minutes later doing about 25mph the chain came off, wrapped round the sprocket and came to a skidding halt with the right chainstay pulled about 1.5" to the right and big crimp in chainstay. Condor say it's unrepairable.

Have i just been bloody unlucky, as i've done similar climbs on the galaxy and have not had any probs, or is over stressing the bike on hill climbs a surefire route to a similar problem.

Upside is, it's time to buy a new bike!

Upside is, it's time to buy a new bike!

you obviously like condors

You need to ask why the chain came off not why hill climbs might be stressing the bike - the chain is obviously what screwed the stay, not vice-versa. Possibly the hill climb caused the rear wheel to slip and the chain was then running loose and waiting to climb off, but I wouldn't see this as a failure caused by "over stressing the bike"... mega slack chain fail?

cheers r-d-c, that could be a point and makes good sense. I guess i'll never know, but helps to avoid something similar happening in the future.

check chainline and tightness
if the frame is a bit flexy some mega efforts up hill might have flexed the bottom bracket causing chain to slip of

doh you sauid you were flying downhill at the time ?
hmmmm thats a whole different kettle of trout
sorry for wasting your time !

maybe you could still check chain tightness !

maybe you could still check chain tightness !

and came to a skidding halt with the right chainstay pulled about 1.5" to the right and big crimp in chainstay. Condor say it's unrepairable.

Bit difficult to check chain tension in these circumstances.
What's the frame material, and what was Condor's reason for saying it was unrepairable?

Wise men learn from the experience of others, it is said.

I have twice had a chain come off and jam while descending. The first time when I was very young and ultra light but riding a very heavy frame which survived without bending, the second, when I really should have known better, in the middle of a club run group going down the hill from Remenham towards Henley. Wonderful to relate, we all stayed upright. However the damage to the frame was just as described above, but luckily the late and much regretted Dave Russell was still around and he had no difficulty repairing it.
There is no question in my mind that both incidents were caused by allowing the chain to become slack.

I admit to being a fool who has had to learn from his own experience, but I have learned the lesson well, and now I always check the chain tension before taking any fixed bike anywhere near a hill.
Two points to note:

1. A new chain takes a few miles to bed in. Recheck tension frequently (first 10 miles) until it stabilises.
   
2. Allow for tight spots. Most sprockets are not perfectly round, so it is necessary to find the tightest point and set the tension there.
   

+1 I nearly had a nasty accident resulting from a slack chain + unspotted massive pot hole + last minuet bunny hop. No bike damage but my frame is a tank.

It was a steel frame, which is why i was bit more surprised than if it had been an alu jobbie.
In retrospect the chain was on the slackish side. It was pulled over an inch out of true and left a crimp in the chainstay, so to replace the chainstays and re-track wouldn't be that cost effective.

I'm going to try and speak to a framebuilder this wknd and i'll keep you all updated what he thinks. I'll probably end up with a diff frame, but i'm sure with a decent bit of effort it could be easily re-straightened for light duty for polos/flat riding, so may well offer it up through the classifieds.

just for ref. people, spoke to mario (vaz), who's brother is fixing the chainstay for a very reasonable £50 and then mario's respraying it and sorting some new decals. Very interested in the results as there's some 50/50 views on his work, he gauged it would be done in 2/3 weeks. My view is that it's cheaper than a new frame and if it's an ok job and lasts a bit i'll be chuffed.

For what it's worth, he did say he'd had a few other condor pistas in to fix and didn't rate the taiwan quality too highly.

arent condor pistas made in italy?

sadly not.

No Italian frame under £500 is made in Italy. Even Pinar Prince frames (£2,699 retail) are made in China.

Picking up my frame from Mario Friday, so that's 2 weeks for new chainstay and respray.
He's also putting on some gold decals. Hopefully i'll build it up for Saturday's ride if anyone wants to gander at Marios work in the flesh.

For what it's worth, he did say he'd had a few other condor pistas in to fix and didn't rate the taiwan quality too highly.

People shouldnt just diss Taiwan like that. They have the best bicycle manufacturing expertise/output in the world.

The only reason that some frames dont meet expectations is that they are extremely good at working to a pricepoint, if the European/American brand gives a maximum budget (usually very low) they will build working bikes for that price. In most cases the companies get greedy and stress price over quality too much.