Trek Madone 6 forks breaking!

[ridebikeme]

Absolute, you're right any fame material can break. After 18 years in the industry, I've seen aluminum, steel and carbon crack. Although as Zen mentioned, when carbon breaks there is NO warning, at least with most of the other materials there is generally some sort of warning upfront before something happens. I'm sure that Margo from Luna can attest to that.

The important thing here is that people take care of their bikes, have them serviced often and do visual checks frequently... if there's a question have a shop check it out. Always, air on the side of safety above and beyond everything else.

[aicabsolut]

when carbon breaks there is NO warning, at least with most of the other materials there is generally some sort of warning upfront before something happens.

What is your basis for this statement? A friend of mine was quite surprised the day the chainstay of his aluminum frame came apart at the weld to the seat stay one day last winter. I've also seem that kind of failure on a different brand Al bike happen during a race for no apparent reason.

Zen, I've seen carbon failures that weren't catastrophic (in terms of crashing and burning). You can easily crush a seat tube at the collar without causing the frame to splinter. Some steerer tube failures happen where cracks extend lengthwise through the tube rather than causing the stem/bars to shear off. Hincapie's aluminum steerer failure was just as catastrophic and sudden as the failures of the carbon steerers 2010 6 series Madone.

As for steerers, how often do you take your fork off your bike to assess the steerer tube?