Frame breaking – who's done it?

Just wondering after a comment on so called ‘hardcore hardtails’ who has actually managed to break a frame and in what circumstances.

Frame name, area of snappage and circumstances please, with pics would be nice to fully appreciate the gnaarness of it all.

ps. the only thing I’ve ever snapped is a stem bolt 😳

specialized sirrius roadbike
center of driveside chainstay
just riding along………….on a 300km audax.
started creaking and i could see the crack opening as i pedaled.

97 Marin team DH FRS broke it in 2006 JRA but had covered over 20k miles on it – replaced by ATB sales FOC.

2006 Wolfridge snapped the swingarm in 2008 after riding a fairly rough rock garden ATB sales supplied a replacement swingarm @ half price (as I wasn’t the original owner)

I rode over a stump on my Club Roost XC4 and heard a ping noise as the swing arm broke at the top corner. No Photo sorry. It was way out of warranty so I bought a new swing arm which interestingly had much heavier webbing in the area it had broken in.

Hairline crack in an old Cove Stiffee at the drop-outs. Riding in NZ, not sure exactly which route killed it but I’m not a big fan of big air.

Silverfish offered a half price crash replacement. I now have the newer frame with forged drop outs.

I have the best pic….will have a look for it.

Tange Prestige Hardtail, snapped IN TWO[/i]

Any frame will do but interested to hear how many ‘ordinary’ frames have failed and if there is one material more likely to fail than another.

cracked 3 DJ hardtail frames around the headtube and flaired another from riding them how they’re designed to be ridden. cracked an XC hardtail around the seatstay/seattube area. ripped all the BB threads out of another whil eriding, snapped a BB shell off one DH frame, linkage/seatstays on another. bent a few parts on a few others. smnapped a road frame JRA. I tend to break components far more than frames.

Cracked the headtube weld of an older DMR Trailstar. I was obviously being too gnar. By gnar I mean heavy and clumsy.

Here’s the pic, I also have one without me inflating my own head* on flickr.

JRA in the Pentlands, but had clearly been cracking for some time, better there than in front of a no. 26.

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brokenbikeandme[/url] by alan cole[/url], on Flickr

*(c) Spike Milligan.

I have cracked a couple of alloy frames around the headtube – a nice boutique Ti frame – again headtube… thats from jeycore xc duties…

paul

Marin Attack Trail – started off as a 2001 single pivot:

4 have cracked around the bottom bracket / main pivot, 3 caught as cracks , only one actually snapped on the trail.

2 cracked on the seat tube stub, at the weld below the seat clamp

1 on the swing arm between the caliper mounts.

All replaced, no quibble, under warranty. Only one took more than a week, and one took less than 24 hours.

Marin/ATB sales warranty department may be better than the R & D dept…

Pipedream Sirius snapped the chainstay.

Two Attack trail swing arms, remarkably like the ones in Snaps 2nd pics. Marin no quibble warranty and TBC in Edinburgh sorted it…

An attack trail and an airborne Lancaster.

Tsk. Some real amateur bike breakers on here. Make room for a PROFESSIONAL! 😉

Left my first bike (Raleigh Boxer) on the drive and my dad reversed over it
Snapped the stem in half on my Raleigh Grifter after that. Dad welded it back together.
’91 Kona Cindercone, bulged in downtube, replaced under warranty
Titanium Kona Hei Hei cracked at seat tube weld
Sanderson Breath, stacked into parked car, frame badly bent
On One 853 Inbred, Seriously bent mech hanger at 2 weeks old (Bent back) and driveside chainstay snapped (chainsuck) and replaced
2 Sets of forks (Crashes) on my Sarecen Helix hybrid, and a set of carbon bars
Currently got a nice big dent on the seatstay on my Pitch. It’ll be fine!

EDIT
Thinking about it, that’s the first 3 new bikes I ever owned all broken!

Steel sunn tox. Snapped the chainstay. Ages ago but seem to remember a crash at coad y brenin.

Global Ti 1.5 snapped the top tube about 1 cm from headtube. Replaced under warrenty even though it was several years old cos “It shouldn`t have gone there”

Heckler swingarm following a rather flat landing from rather high up.

Samuri to the forum please, calling Samuri, thread waiting! Thank you!

Attack Trails seem to be rather popular.

Al – I don’t think that was a frame problem, it was the front and rear tyres trying to distance themselves from each other!

cove handjob, two riders into one corner won’t go
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frame1[/url] by rOcKeTdOgUk[/url], on Flickr

pace fork brace

those pace fork braces used to pretty much break straight out if the box, hardly owt to brag about…

I snapped the headtube off a 2000 Marin Nail Trail

Cracked the downtube halfway through on a “brand x” alloy hardtail

Cracked headtube weld on a DMR Trailstar

Cracked wishbone on another DMR Trailstar

This is all listed on my CV.

snapped top tube on my kona muni mula trying to land a big set of doubles

Snapped the toptube on a DMR, but that one had a hard life, so it was expected. A bit gutting at the time though…

Scott G Zero my first full sus landed a small jump and heard a crack, cracked on the drive side of the swing arm around one of the welds. 😀

Another Attack Trail, 06 model, ovalised the head tube (bottom headset cup pushed in by hand).

Again very quick, no quibble ATB/Marin replacement with an 09 Wolf Ridge frame (including new shock).

twohats – Member
those pace fork braces used to pretty much break straight out if the box, hardly owt to brag about

when you ride with the finesse i do it’s worth bragging 😉

1x 1985 Raleigh ultra burner (five milk crates and a builders plank ramp to flat grass does not work!)
1x 2001 specialized enduro (common fault on the early ones, it cracked around the shock mount)
1x 2002 specialized enduro (warranty replacement for above!!) JRA at CYB and went over bars, cracked seat tube, frame was replaced under warranty again
1x ti456 (rear brake mount fell off whilst jra)
1x 29er (downtube cracked)
1x old Raleigh steel road frame knockabout roadbike (rear dropout dropped out)
1x pair of kona p2 forks (cracked at crown along seam of tubing)

Having a quiet spell at the moment, hopefully won’t be breaking anything soon as quite like the current bike lineup I have….

96 Diamond Back Apex. What a machine! LX groupset and nice tubeset. Still miss it. Remember when “long travel” forks first came out? Gotta watch out for them as you’ll rip the headtube straight off!!!!! Well, no they won’t. Not straight off anyway. A couple of years of general hacking and a season of DH (7th in the SAMS Southern Championships Junior I’ll have you know!) didn’t manage to finish it off, but a week in Les Gets did. Headtube came away from the top tube. Luckily a local car garage managed to braze it up and I finished the holiday on it. Try doing that on your carbon frame!
Anyhow, when I got back to the UK, I got a local welder to put the mother off all headtube gussets on, think spooky metal head on steroids. I ran it like that for a while until the driveside chainstay parted company from the BB. That was duly welded up and it was then relegated to the shed when I got my LTS. Another bike I miss but I digress.
When I started work full time, the Diamond Back was dug out again and built up singlespeed with some Z1’s for general commuting and hacking duties. One day whilst riding to work, something felt a bit weird with the bike. A couple more days and the problem got worse. On closer inspection I noticed the downtube had a crack all the way round but the split hadn’t met up. Back into the shed it went again where it still lives. Think I’ll get it welded up one of these days!
Damn I miss that bike…

Aluminium and Ti but no carbon yet! 😀

snapped a cannondale gemini swing arm but that’s not really much of a surprise, I hear quite a few of the earlier ones went.

Pace RC303, cracked at the join between the seat tube and the seat tube/top tube gusset. Discovered after thinking “my saddle’s creaking more than usual” on a ride at Glentress. It seems like a lot of large RC303s suffered from this.

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Gary Fisher HooKooEKoo, snapped top of seat tube while riding an exceptionally tame piece of singletrack. Replaced under warranty with the next model up!

My P7 after an evening pootle round Llandegla black. 🙄

Hairline crack on 3 CDales in same place – driveside seatstay weld to bb. 2 ridden as SS and one scalpel. Cracked one other through driving the granny into the bb shell after losing 2 crankbolts. All were warrantied no probs, even the last one which was clearly my fault.

Can’t complain at all. 3 – 4 years out of a lightweight Alu frame under 16stone of man seems reasonable to me, especially when you get a new frame to replace the busted one.

Zaskar LE – JRA – however it was being used a a jump bike
Spooky Metalhead – hit a parked car

both headtube off jobs

Great pic Al. Here’s one you’ve seen before of one you broke earlier.

Icracked my ’88 Stumpjumper on the downtube just behind the headtube in exactly te same place as Kevin Dangerous did the week before. Well chuffed to be as rad as Dangerous. Specialized gave me an ’89 replacement. I still have it.

Verses, looks like you had a crack on the front of that tube emanating from the hole in like with the top tube for a while.

We could be here a while…
1990 Trek 8900 bonded alluminium – tore the rear mach hanger off
1991 Rocky Mountain Blizzard – bottom bracket shell stretched
1991 Rocky Mountain Blizzard – bent rear brake boss
1992 Rocky Mountain Blizzard – cracked wishbone seatstay
1993 Trek 9900 Pro Issue OCLV Carbon – snapped rear brake boss
1993 Trek 9900 Pro Issue OCLV Carbon – bottom bracket shell fell out
1994 Kona Explosive – cracked the diveside chainstay – Welded locally and now my SS
1998 Intense Uzzi SL – snapped seat mast – snapped chainstays x 2- snapped seatstays x2 (I had this for seven years)
Been riding Nicolai’s since 2005 and not broken one of them – loads of components though…
2010 Whyte 19 steel – cracked dropouts

Don’t start me on forks and other stuff.

My Trek Y3 – the bolt holding the frame and the swingarm snapped as I waited at traffic lights.
Use Ti post – snapped when I stood up riding over a sleeping policeman.