MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Had a OTB after crashing into another rider on my road bike recently (don’t ask!) and not ridden it since. Had a good look at it and amazingly there’s hardly a mark on it other than a flat front tyre considering I hit him at 25-ish mph - seems I ‘exited’ the bike before flying over him. How do you know for sure if the carbon forks for example are still ok to ride on as they’d have taken the brunt? I’ll be thinking ‘Is this the day they snap?’ when tanking it down a descent. Safe to assume if there’s nothing visible it’s ok?
Cheapest and quickest way is just to replace them if you're unsure
Along with other key items such as bars
Take the wheel out and twist and bend them by hand. If you hear cracking, bin them.
Depends on whether the crash was a dead-stop impact, or whether the bike went sliding down the road. For crash damage, inspect the frame closely for damage e.g. cracked or crazed paint indicating a point of impact. For the forks, check the crown carefully for signs of cracking. The bars turning and striking the top tube or down tube has finished-off many frames.
I once had a frame x-rayed in the machine on an RAF base which they use to look for stress-fractures to see if it was cracked or just badly scratched.
If you know someone who knows someone etc then things can be checked.
It was an alloy frame mind, no idea how carbon comes up on s-rays
Bunny hop off a kerb a few times, if it doesn't snap or make funny cracking noises, happy days! 😆
Google suggests you can do a tap test on it too, no idea if that idea is valid or not.
Been doing some reading up on this. Without X-ray it’s impossible to be sure so after new forks now, just for peace of mind as much as anything else.