RocketMAX gen 3 with a cane creek 40 headset. EC at the bottom to take a tapered fork. The cup which the bearing sits in has sheared off from the ring pressed in to the frame!
Is this a thing? I can't say I've heard of it happening before. Forks just been refitted after a service, tightened up, took on a short ride then tightened the preload again when it shook itself loose
Thanks Cy, I've already spoken to Sam and will come and see you with it on Tuesday. To me the frame looks ok (likely steel has saved me there!), I was just very surprised and was wondering if anyone had had this with a cane creek before!
Well that was no fun. Can you do it to a Giant bike next time?
Cy the Giant killer ! 👊👊👊
I was hoping for 31 pages of slagging off a bike company.
Its bang out of order when a bike company replys first saying get in touch and we will see what we can do.
Did you not read the part where he said he removed the forks himself and it wasn't an authorised dealer? 🤣
Its things like this that you remember and influence your choices when you are in the market for a new expensive bike.
I still want to see a picture, even if Cy's on the case.
Edit: Links wouldn't work as I'm doing this on my phone. Will try again once cotic have looked at it when I get home
Edit: Links wouldn’t work as I’m doing this on my phone.
They did actually. I was able to view both images.
I was just very surprised and was wondering if anyone had had this with a cane creek before!
I did the same thing to a hope headset in a tin frame
And I worked on a seven road bike with a Chris king ti cup that BENT at the same point…..
Cy the Giant killer ! 👊👊👊
I was hoping for 31 pages of slagging off a bike company.
Its bang out of order when a bike company replys first saying get in touch and we will see what we can do.
Hang on. Not so fast. I want to know why Mr/Mrs Cane Creek isn't on here defending his/her product!
I actually managed to do the same thing to a Cane Creek S3 a few years back. Was on my Cotic BFe, actually. Headset was a few years old and I came off pretty hard. Didn't notice for a couple of months as I messed up my shoulder, initially thought I'd ovalised the headtube.
I've seen a headset cup shear in a similar way.
It was blamed on fitting it with a block of wood and hammer.
The forces when fitting went into the outer sleeve the bearing sits in instead of the inner part that is supported by the head tube.
No idea if you could create enough force like that but that's what was blamed for initially damaging it then riding finished it off.
It doesn't suprise me that this happens. Tapered stearers in 40mm headtubes has always been a bodge. Especially with ever slacker head angles - that is a lot of shear force on the sleave. Also I would expect the aluminium in the sleave to be Especially thin even compared to traditional straight headsets. A tapered fork is 1.5 in at the bottom or 38.1mm that does not leave much room for the sleave to avoid contact. Tapered should never have become a thing, we should have stuck with 1.5in straight steerers. The taper is too expensive for small companies to machine headtubes...hence the bodge.
@ndthornthon It's true it's pretty tight, but we have used the EC44 headsets for over a decade and I have not heard of it until this post. Obviously there are one or two others out there, but that's out of 1000s we have sold, and that's just us. I have been riding a bike with a 63.5 deg head angle since 2017 and never had anything like this. The team - when we had one - never broke headsets either. Lot's of other things, but never headsets 😉
I wasn't suggesting it was a fault with the headset... cane creek headsets are superb. you are limited by the space available..its just a less then perfect solution (maybe bodge is harsh). Failures maybe extremely rare but they do happen. I can't think of a way in which an internally mounted headset could fail.
My kindom vendetta frame was £500 more expensive to buy with a tapered headtube compared to a straight one. OK I got fancier dropouts too but most of the extra cash was for machining the head tube.
How on earth is it a bodge?
A 1" steerer fits in a 30.2mm head tube bore (4.8mm diameter difference).
A 1.125" steerer fits in a 34mm head tube bore (5.4mm difference).
A 1.5" steerer fits in a 44mm head tube bore (5.9mm difference).
So it has slightly more potential headset cup wall thickness than all the external cup standards that went before it.
Tapered head tubes are expensive because machining the top and down tubes to fit the taper is much more complicated. And the head tube itself is more complicated to make. That is why 44mm straight head tubes are a very good compromise - you could even run a 1.5" straight steerer 🙂
Failures maybe extremely rare but they do happen. I can’t think of a way in which an internally mounted headset could fail.
My failures were both straight 1 1/8th with external cups.
I saw plenty of internal headset failures particularly on hard ridden bikes where the headset cup just falls out of its seat largely due to a smaller interface than an external cup.
These failures happen from time to time. Hard to blame it on the design
My failures were both straight 1 1/8th with external cups.
As was the one I posted up there. It was also installed with a press. Don't think it has anything to do with the headtube or specifically the fitting process, just metal fatigue and being a rad bastard 😎
An update to this:
I took the bike to cotic on the way back home today. They popped it up on the stand and had a look at the headset and the head tube - they reckon what might have happened was the press was overtightened when putting the lower cup in, deforming the cup slightly and creating a weak point. They have very kindly fitted a new lower cup free of charge and I'm back off. As they're already known for, amazing customer service and were gonna go demo a mulleted rocket max for my girlfriend soon!