Cyclyng gear we broke.

David has his own column at the Postivo Espresso website where he reports about all the stuff he managed to break during his long cycling career. Accordingly this column is called „Cycling gear we broke.“ You can see a lot of broken stuff ober there, like saddles, pedals, brifters, rims, tires, handle bars, derailleurs, cranksand even cables. 

So far my own history of breaking things is rather short. Yes, I managed to destroy many spokes, one or two rear derailleurs (and in the wake some adaptors) and even one frame (Cervelo Soloist) but generally speaking I had few issues.

Until recent events forced me to open my own column, appropriately called: „Cyclyng gear we broke.“ This is the first installation.

Ambrosio Stem

This one was mounted on the CIÖCC brevet bike I built up for Hannes this year. Without warning it snapped just a few days before he was due for a longer trip, and some days after he went riding with his buddy Eddi  Looking at the construction, I would say that the cross section was alreday weakend by the drilling of the hole for the mounting screw – no sound engineering. But certainly good looking in an Italian way.

H Plus Son Archetype Rear Wheel Rim Drive Side

I managed to destroy a fair amount of spokes, in particular of Campagnolo Zonda wheels, but never ever did I destroy a rim by fatigue. I was riding home from a 140 km trip, when I noticed that my rear wheel was rubbing at the brake pads. Huge lateral tolerance. I checked all spokes but they all had proper tension; so I decided to open the rear brake, ride home and take a look later.

This is the very first time I have an issue with one of my self-built wheels. Normally they last well; depending on the material I need to do some trueing from time to time, but that’s it. Even the failure happened on the drive side, it is hard to imagine that the spoke could be tensioned that much, that the rim was prone to failure. This seems like a production quality issue to me. Orprhaps my expectations in rims are too high…. I used this wheel for about 20.000 km – can I expect more?

Honjo Mud Guard

Huge and long crack in the rear mud guard; one of the wonderful Honjo Testach Mud Guards I own. No idea  when, why and how this happened. Need to replace this one but they are so difficult to buy.