Just wondering who has done this and how long / what foolishness it took? I like my Boardman HT, I’m not doing anything serious yet, am not a good enough rider, but I’m gradually going bigger and sillier as I get better and am wondering when/if it will expire. And I don’t mean damage due to sticking over-long forks on.

Do frames tend to fail at the bottom bracket from hucking off stuff too heavily or at the head tube from nose-diving landings badly? How else do they go (assuming all welds are good)?

Too many variables IMO, if a frame breaks then each will have its own weak point.

Unless it’s an XC race bike it’ll probably stand up to a lot of abuse. Most people used to dirt jump on very small XC frames and forks back in the day.
If it does fail catastrophically I’ve seen a few head tubes ripped off when people come up short on jumps

In my experience XC bikes can take a lot of aggressive riding, but I suspect the difference will be apparent when you get it wrong or are not as smooth as normal…

2 cracked XC HTs for me. One was a Pastey Howler (853 steel), one was an aluminium Maxlight XC120. Both cracked in exactly the same place, about an inch away from the bottom bracket shell on the driveside chainstay. I’m no heavyweight but I did ride them pretty hard.

Define silly – are we talking 3 ft drops or 10ft gaps? if the former it’ll probably go for ages – even if it’s the latter as long as you’re smooth it’ll probably be fine. It’s when you come up short that they snap (or have too much post out and eat a lot of pies).

as long as you’re smooth it’ll probably be fine

What it boils down to really. I ran a 5″ fork on a 1996 Rockhopper for 6 months a year or so back. Its still alive…

There’s a right tool for the job, but if you’ve ever seen an XC race a lot of courses would have MBR readers reaching for their 6″ all mountian bikes.

If your worried then soemthing like a 456 frame will take more punishment and costs peanuts. Then just work on upgrading bits as you progress.

There’s a right tool for the job, but if you’ve ever seen an XC race a lot of courses would have MBR readers reaching for their 6″ all mountian bike.

lol 🙂

My experience of XC frames being put to hard duty is from a few years ago when they were the only frames we could get. Most failures were around the bottom bracket, headtube, or dropouts.

These are the places to watch imho… and for the Boardmans keep a close eye on the headtube 😉