Cleaning my Cinelli Xperience road frame yesterday I noticed a crack at the bottom front of the headtube. It’s most noticeable outside but definitely present on the inside.
Whilst I don’t really have the confidence to ride it anymore I’m just wondering what you lot think – could it carry on being used or is it just about to fail catastrophically?

Outside

Inside, with crack circled

Inside close up

New frame time if it was me, as I like my good looks and teeth.

A bit of duck tape round that and it’ll be fine!

thing is, a catastrophic failure is usually where the HT comes away form the down tube or the top tube folds. How many times has anyone seen the headtube bottom ring split “catastrophically”?

That’ll buff right out.

It won’t fail catastrophically for a while.

I bet you don’t ride it.

Jubilee clip?

That looks more like a sticker to me…….

It won’t fail catastrophically for a while.

I bet you don’t ride it.

My thoughts exactly and I won’t be taking that bet.

I’d put a hoseclamp around it and keep riding – but I wouldn’t buy one of those daft internal-bearing frames anyway, ‘cos they’re just asking to do this 😉

So why ask?

LIking it LSD

Yea definitely a sticker.

So why ask?

For general interest, interaction and online conversation. Thought that was what a forum was for.

If you hadn’t cleaned it you would have had many more happy months riding it!

Can’t stuff like this be fixed? (welded?)

It’ll explode in a massive fireball. Don’t worry though, Bruce Willis will save you.

I’d ride it, reason being, it’d need to get a lot worse before it becomes an immediate problem – even if that crack runs the whole height of the headtube it’d still need to spread or have a second crack form before anything immediately awful happens. And I’d expect to be aware of it worsening first.

That said, it’s not my face.

Warranty claim?

Too far out of warranty unfortunately and the most annoying thing is that I found it right at the end of a two hour cleaning session.
Everything in me says it will hold on for quite a while but my brain keeps playing images of my front teeth hitting tarmac at speed.

I would have it welded with a strengthening band ut on it.

Why would you want to fix it? It’s about as legitimate a reason for a new bike/frame as you’re ever likely to get!

every bump in the road would have you wondering…

There is no way I’d ride that. It might last 100,000 miles, it might fail on the next bump you hit at 40 mph. No guaranteeing that the fail would not result in the front of the bike coming away. Looks like there is a chip or some kind of imperfection at the edge of the tube, I’d get it back to the maker, maybe they’d at least give you something off a new frame.

+1 for jubilee clip. It’s a road bike. what’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like you’re taking it off any sweet drops.

+1 for a jubilee clip, or get a steel band sweated on tight.

Job done.

My first thoughts were that it started with a steel cup being bashed in skew, but it probably has a cartridge bearing insert, so the cause is no longer apparent.
Could be a loose headset caused the bearing to rock and initiate a fatigue crack.
Material or machining defect also a likely cause, but if it is out of warranty, that’s it.

PaulD