Chainring Failure (Bike Anti-porn)

So, cycling back past Liverpool St tonight and this happens...

Not quite sure what's to blame here - chainring bolts or the chainring itself? Can I go to the manufacturer with this picture and ask for a replacement etc?

the fact the chainring is bent rather than broken make it almost certainly a bolt issue.....imagine you must have been pushing it pretty hard!

3/32 road chainring?

Those look like FSA vero's? If so, same thing happened to me. Cycling along, little skid, heard a popping noise and the chainring had bent in far enough for the cranks to no longer rotate

I was actually just setting off from traffic lights...

Its missing 2 of the bolts, so I'm guessing they failed and flew off, but has also bent the chainring arms on the crank too :

Not sure on its size, its a Surly stainless steel... think its 51T... well, was...

Yeh, they're zeros... probably won't get FSA again :

Want something italian to match the taper on the BB properly - recommendations?

They are Veros not Zeros. That shouldn't happen. Warranty claim if they are less than 12 months old. Wouldn't get too excited about compensation for chainring or frame damage. Thank fuck it isn't in the rider down section!

Want something italian to match the taper on the BB properly - recommendations?

Campag? Miche?

Yeh campy or miche or anyone decent really... tho I thought miche mainly do JIS?

Miche generally do anything they can think of to make life difficult IME. Campag FTW.

Hang on a min - Veros are supposed to have the chainring on the outside, not the inside.

There's your problem, it probably pulled away off the back.

Possibly partly due to a poor chainline?

And let's face it, any bike with deep section carbon rims, aero BB shell and Conti GP4000s deserves better than FSA Veros.

fsa veros are great........on my sscx bike

exactly the same thing happened to me playing polo. hadn't tightened one of the bolts enough so it failed and the force of pedalling pulled the chain ring off and snapped it. may be an entirely different explanation for this of course, but they could claim user error if you put in a claim.

just looked back at some photo's of the bike that this happened to me on, and the chainring looks to have been attached on the inside. This was how it came when it was delivered from CRC so thats probably why it went wrong. A couple of the arms on the chainset had bent in which i guess means it wasnt just failure of the chainring bolts

Yeh, sounds like chainring on the inside is NOT the way forward... Guess the next one I'll get I'll have to make doubley sure that the bolts are supertight then.

My chainline was perfect to the nearest 0.5mm pretty much, thats why the chainring was on the inside... not sure why they put the notches in on the crank chainring arms on the back then, if you can't fit anything on there. Ah well, lesson learnt I guess...

The Vero's I have feature a very small notch / tab / thing on the inside and a much more substantial one on the outside. I always assumed that this was to take a fair bit of the strain and the chainring bolts were to hold the chainring against these notch / tab / things securely. Admittedly none of this is based on anything other than assumption and the failure you experienced could be the chainring position or the chainring itself or something else. I have had crank bolts go pop a couple of times and the chainring didn't taco on either occasion. One of these times was going up swains lane, with all of my awesome power, so there was plenty of opportunity.

I ride my veros up swains regularly.
need to check but i think my chainring is on the inside because i have a chainring guard on the outside....

If it came from CRC with the ring mounted on the inside, I'd take it up with them.

I'm pretty sure that as far as the Sale Of Goods Act etc goes, you take it up with the retailer, who can then take it up with the manufacturer.

Apart from squaring you up, they need to stop selling them like this; imagine if you'd been honking up a hill and this happened: you'd be carrying your teeth and balls in a bucket!

Looking at CRC, they quote a 43.5mm chainline: I wonder if some bright spark decided to mount them inboard to bring it down to the usual 42mm?

That bright spark would be me, sir ;)

Oh...

I guess I didn't give prior thought to the forces/moments with having it on the inside to get a better chainline... but still confusing as to why it was designed to look like it's able to be fitted on both sides

Does the crank spider have a shoulder on the inside to support the chainring or is it a singlespeed crank?

The chainring bolts are missing -that is the cause of the problem. They may have worked loose because the ring was moving as it was unsupported in the inner position, or they may have fallen out because they were incorrectly fitted.
No amount of bad chain line is going to cause the bolts to drop out. If you moved the chainring into the inner position and there are no shoulders to support it its doubly user error.
You need a shorter BB to get correct chain line