JRA last night, dropped chain and as I was on a pretty busy downhill road in a forest decided to coast a bit to find somewhere to pull off the road. 20 seconds later, I hit a pothole, chain sucked into rear wheel, rear mech ripped off and so on. Started dismantling today and was greeted with this:

When the hanger has “snapped” it’s actually snapped between the two bolts and the rearmost bolt pulled through the carbon by the looks of it. Not sure if the frame is dead now or not. What does the STW hivemind say? I’m going to have a crack at Cannondale to see if they can help me out.

Fixable (as almost all broken carbon is), just might not be worth it as it’s like to nee some modifications to the original design in that area to be strong enough, although from that angle I’d say it is worth it and shouldn’t be too tricky.

(cannondale will likely tell you to scrap it as they won’t want the hassle/liability of fixing it)

Looks like you now have a rather fancy singlespeed pub bike!

looking at about £300 repair at carbon solutions

Speak nicely to Cannondale. It’s not warranty and, as above, they probably don’t want to liability/aggro of a repair. However, they might take pity on you and offer an assisted purchase which might be in the same ball park as a repair.

Well I see Paul’s are doing framesets for 600 quid so that will be the baseline.

Is there a threaded insert in there?

Have you gotten the replacement hanger yet?

Two small bolts holding the hanger on. That’s it. I’ve left the frame with the local dealer to discuss crash replacements

TargetComposites

Personally I would just chuck the hanger on with one bolt. Hanger is just well a hanger for the rear mech. Hanger sandwiched in the qr so dropout interface not affected. Probably swap to something like the rws skewer that I know can be done up very tight.

Infact once the qr is done up with hanger in place, the friction will probably be enough hold the mech hanger in place.

You have now a more compliant hanger interface so may not snap next time 🙂

Depending on how old the frame is and what crash replacement price they come back with I would consider a DIY repair.

Dremel out the damaged hole, get rid of the loose material and use a hanger and bolts as a “jig plate” to bond a threaded insert in position. Once that’s set,remove the hanger and you can reinforce the area, might not be pretty but would probably work…

They’ve told me to piss off effectively. Apparently “10% of hangers don’t break where you expect them to” so this is considered “normal” damage in the case of a hanger breakage. Seeing if they’ll do me a favour but if not I doubt I’ll buy another Cannondale, their general attitude has been a bit “so what?”. Surprised that they don’t even offer a small discount even if I might not take it.

Anyway,ho hum. PX or Ribble maybe then

if worst came to worst could you just epoxy on a new hanger. Sure if it breaks again you are going to break the entire frame, but at least it means the frame is ridable for the forseable?

That’s not a Cannondale Six by any chance (paint scheme looks similar to mine)?

do you have cover for items away from the home on your insurance, they normally cover ‘all risks’ which means you’ll have accidental damage cover even if you didn’t select on the main part of the policy.

I’d ride it with the one bolt on a new hanger. My Defy SL had only one functioning bolt for a long time. The QR holds the hanger tight anyway.

Pretty poor form though.

That’s not a Cannondale Six by any chance (paint scheme looks similar to mine)?

Synapse (not the high-mod version though).

do you have cover for items away from the home on your insurance, they normally cover ‘all risks’ which means you’ll have accidental damage cover even if you didn’t select on the main part of the policy.

Emailed the agent (it’s backwards here in Luxembourg, you buy via an agent) to ask. I guess the answer will be no but who knows.

I’d repair it myself using a carbon-filled epoxy to bond/fill the damaged areas and rub flat with wet/dry. The drop out is solid material so hugely over-engineered.

Going to try to fix it. Is there a specific type of epoxy I should use?

All the screws really do is locate the hanger and keep it in place and take the torsion if your axle is loose. When tight the friction forces of the axle should be doing all the work – the load is not split between different fastening types in a joint, the stiffest one will be loaded first and when that fails the next set of fasteners take the load (speaking from experience of people thinking adding rivets or bolts to bonded composite joints will make them work together in the same load directions, they don’t).

I would send it to someone to clean up the area and then vacuum infuse some resin along with adding a probably a bit of woven carbon around the tail edge to stabilise it and feather it into the seat stay. Then re-drill the hanger hole and you will be all good.

Just make sure you use a decent internal cam QR with a steel axle (Ti ones stretch under twisting loads and external QR’s are rarely as tight).

Cannondale have responded to my “Disappointed of Luxembourg” email and said they’ll sort something out for me. Not waiting with baited breath but a gesture is at least better than their first effort.