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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2635
Location: Canberra, Australia1/31/15 4:24 PM |
The consequences of fork failure
Heard on Thursday that one of our club members had crashed on his early morning training ride and been taken to hospital with fairly severe head and facial injuries. The police report in the next day's local paper said that the crash appeared to be the result of a failure of his bicycle and not rider error.
On yesterday's ride I found out that he subsequently died in hospital, and that the crash was the result of his steerer tube failing. The bike was a fairly elderly Trek 2200, which has an aluminium steerer, and one of the LBS owners on the ride said that to his knowledge the bike had been crashed at least twice in races.
I guess we wait for the coroners report to find out more...
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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19200
Location: PDX1/31/15 4:28 PM |
Sorry to hear it. Sounds like a spiral fracture of the steerer maybe...
Full inspection after crashes!!
Last edited by Sparky on 1/31/15 7:38 PM; edited 1 time in total
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sandiway
Joined: 15 Dec 2003
Posts: 4902
Location: back in Tucson1/31/15 7:21 PM |
Awful news. Will the coroner have the fork inspected?
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KerryIrons
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 3255
Location: Midland, MI1/31/15 8:34 PM |
Aluminum steerer
My condolences on your club member. What a terrible way to go.
It seems both on a theoretical basis and from too much real world experience, Al was never the right material for a steerer tube. The wrong place to be trying to save weight with Al. You don't want something with finite fatigue life in that application, it seems to me.
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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2635
Location: Canberra, Australia1/31/15 11:25 PM |
quote:
Full inspection after crashes!!
My viewpoint (quite possibly wrong):
1. Steel forks - if there are no visible bends, bulges, or deformation, they're ok to keep riding
2. Al steerer fork - I don't have any and I wouldn't ride one
3. Full C-F fork - I view them as disposable items - damage can be completely invisible on any visual inspection, so the two C-F forks I've crashed, I just replaced them rather than ride around wondering if the fork was ok or not.
Short report on the accident in today's paper - gives even less information on the cause of the accident than the previous article of three days ago:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/cyclist-dies-in-first-canberra-fatality-of-2015-20150201-133085.html
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ErikS
Joined: 19 May 2005
Posts: 8337
Location: Slowing boiling over in the steamy south, Global Warming is real2/1/15 6:47 AM |
In my past life I inspected carbon structures on F16s. They are incredibly overbuilt when compared to bikes. Not just tougher because of what they do but the margin above the design load is much higher.
On an aircraft much of what I looked for was surface blemishes. If it was even a tiny ding you got the NDI folks on it to look for subsurface damage. It was often there when they put the ultrasound stuff to the structure.
We don't have fancy NDI equipment so if I ding or crash a carbon part I replace it. I also am diligent to inspect those items often.
Carbon is brutally strong for it's weight and we love it for that but it is not Huffy resilient so respect the stuff.
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dddd
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 3345
Location: NorCal2/2/15 4:07 PM |
Nick, sorry to hear about your club mate's accident.
I've heard of a Trek Al steerer failing with a pro on board, and obviously not riding years-old fork..
I wonder how old that the fellow's bike was, and especially how heavy of a rider?
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Dave B
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 4511
Location: Pittsburgh, PA2/2/15 5:05 PM |
quote:
I've heard of a Trek Al steerer failing with a pro on board, and obviously not riding years-old fork..
That was George Hincapie at Paris-Roubaix in 2006. And even at that, George had been in a pretty good crash earlier in the race which must have damaged the steerer.
One thing I noticed from Nick's report is that the fork that failed had been in two crashes in races before the fatal event. That can't have done it any good.
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