Saturday I went with a friend for a ride on the North Downs starting at Coldharbour. Within 20 mins on Summer lightening my front wheel picked up a small log that you would never have considered a hazard and jam up the front wheel on the forks, resulting in an instant head to ground meeting at around 18mph. Thankfully the Giro Zen did it’s job and smashed into pieces, saving my skull. Just a bit of whiplash, two broken thumbs and a little face trauma was the conclusion of the incident.
Now I keep re-running the incident in my head and can’t explain how quickly this non hazard brought an end to my days riding and future weeks. I have had many years of riding experience and been involved in the cycle industry, seeing many nasty incidents but have never experienced the comedy effect of chucking something in you spokes and sending you over the bars. I looked at the bike yesterday, the front tyre blew out and the valve has been snapped off but no other damage at all. I then start to question the new wheels I’ve fitted and only ridden once before. They are a set of Crank Brothers Cobalt’s with a very unique spoke lacing which would allow items to enter the wheel. I previously ran SLR’s and over the years you could see the paint come off the spokes due to impacts with all sorts but the question is, are the cobalt’s more likely to do this again than any other wheel or was it a one in a million incident, unlikely to ever happen again.
Has anyone ever come across this problem with these wheels, looking for peace of mind really, so that Mojo returns when the thumbs start working again.

Nice dog.

I had the same thing happen to my rear wheel – 36 holes, the log broke 2 spokes took out my derailler and bent about 5 other spokes. Mucho peed off.

Your dog looks sad. Sounds like a nasty accident.

Ouch!

at the speed the wheel’s going around at 18mph I’m not sure if it’s more or less likely to pick up a bit of trail debris with a wide spoke spacing or not really.

That was the dog doing his best smile. he’s always sad unless he’s eating.
Wish it had been the rear wheel, might have been riding in Wales this weekend rather than walking.

I picked up a smallish stick in my (Conventional 32 spoke) back wheel once, riding at about 3mph, which in 1/2 a turn of a wheel pulled my rear mech up to vertical, twisted the chain and bent the dropout into the cassette, the bike was about 2 weeks old at the time. I wasn’t happy.

What I’m trying to say is that you just cannot stop this sort of thing happening. It’s unlucky, but it can never be any more than that. We ride bikes offroad in the woods so sadly we’re gonna ride into trees, pick up sticks in our wheels and fall off etc.

That does look nasty and I hope you get well soon, but there’s no way on this earth you can even attempt to blame the wheels for that fella! Sorry….

🙂

Your lucky your not dead! What were you thinking???
Wearing a HELMET!!!! Indeed!
We’ve all been told their dangerous on all the helmet threads and you didn’t listen did you……

Ouch! Hope the thumbs mend well.

For a bicycle engineering company, Crank Bros make great designers. ie they suck balls. Whilst I guess you could say that the accident wouldn’t have happened with a conventionally spoked wheel, how unique is a 24(?) spoked wheel to Crank Bros? Seems like it would have happened with any similar shaped wheel.

Did the stick jam between the “v” of 2 spokes?

[edit]maybe if you’d been looking out for trail hazards instead of checking your speed on the computer… 😉

Ouch! Sounds like bad luck rather than a design fault personally.

Did you used to work at Chelmer Cycles btw? (/stalker)

I sell these wheels, so don’t want to have to blame them, they do actually seem very good wheels. It’s a comment someone made to me about them having so few spokes, what did i expect to happen. My feeling is that an object isprobably more likely to pass all the way through the wheel than get lodged.

Nasty, stuff does get caught in wheels. It may even be slightly more likely in wheels with low spoke counts, like these, but trying to quantify that would be almost impossible. Would stuff be more likely to rattle out again before something serious happened?

Bad luck I’d say, no point getting antsy about it.

Seems like it would have CAN happened with any similar shaped wheel.

Is closer to it. 🙂

I ran wheels with a simillar spoke pattern for a few years and never had that issue with the front wheel in fact the only time I have had a stick wheel interface was with a convetional 32 spoked rear wheel one.

the 24 spokes in those wheels seem to run in pairs so more like 12 spoke

and yeah it seems likely that something big will get stuck in the wheel if there are bigger gaps between spokes,
when they are rotating at speed any objects only have a very small window to enter the wheel but the bigger the gap the bigger the window and at such speeds if it gets in and is big enough it probably wont be able to pass all the way through

although i have also got a stick stuck in a 32 rear and snapped 5 or so spokes

Seems like it would have CAN happened with any similar shaped wheel.

Is closer to it.

Not really. You can throw up sticks into any wheel, not sure about ‘small logs’.

That’s shocking! Were you that ugly before the accident… 😉

Satisfy your own curiosity:

WARNING this suggestion is clearly dangerous, do it at your own risk:

turn your bike upside down, crank it up to speed so back wheel’s spinning fast.

Try and throw a stick in the wheel X times.

Repeat another X times with “conventional” wheel.

See which jams the wheel more?

You’d probably have to do it a lot though for meaningful stats, and might write off a few wheels.

Thinking about it, I’ve destroyed 2 or 3 mech hangers with sticks through my back wheel on 2 different bikes as well.

I didn’t blame my wheel.

Sorry to say, but it seems like you’re trying to blame someone for this, and where there’s blame there’s a claim…..

I do stll work at said bike shop when they need me. Other than that I’m an insurance underwriter and see plenty of stab in the dark claims so not interested in making claims. Just trying to clear up in my own mind if I need to sell the wheels on, or just put it down to a freak crash.

They’re not the same as 24 spoke wheels, because the 2 spokes are together, in fact looking at the pictures I can only see 11 spokes pairs, so the gaps are massive compared to 24 spoke wheels.

A friend has these, I’ve seen him pick up sticks twice in a handful of rides, both times on the rear wheel and both times the sticks were minor and either twisted or snapped.

Apart from the price, I’d already decided I wouldn’t want these, no matter how good they look for exactly this reason.

Thinking about it, I’ve destroyed 2 or 3 mech hangers with sticks through my back wheel on 2 different bikes as well.

I didn’t blame my wheel.

Sorry to say, but it seems like you’re trying to blame someone for this, and where there’s blame there’s a claim…..

Sorry to say PP as usual you are looking to slate someone and make yourself seem big and clever.

I have been using a set of Cobalt wheels on and off for the past 2 years. I have had one over the bars incident caused by a stick going through the front wheel, that was during Dusk 2 Dawn in 2009 – no damage to me or bike, but I got a face full of dust. I then struggled to see for the next nine hours as my eyes were full of dirt. I have also picked up the odd stick while riding, but nothing else big enough to cause a OTB. A couple of friends also use Cobalt wheels, and I don’t think they have had any issue.

Personally I think this style of wheel has a ‘slightly’ higher chance of a stick going through the spokes and causing an off. However the difference between this and a normal wheel is fairly marginal, and personally it doesn’t cause me any concern.

PeterPoddy: Sorry to say, but it seems like you’re trying to blame someone for this, and where there’s blame there’s a claim…..

It must be pretty grim to be unable to look at anything anyone says, without automatically assuming the worst possible interpretation.

Sticks will get caught in wheels no matter how many spokes you have.

The issue is that as you lower the spoke count, bigger things can get in there.

I’d ditch them if they were mine, but then I think then I wouldn’t buy them in the first place because:

– Super expensive.
– Heavy.
– Non-standard spokes are a pain to source in a hurry if you break one (thinking abroad).

A design exercise that made it to production.

Much better off with a Hope/Stans setup.

I run a set of these and not had any problems. I think it works both ways – you could argue that fewer spokes / bigger gaps could allow stuff to go straight through or not be picked up, that would have been hooked up by a wheel with more spokes.

I’ve seen it happen once before, on normal wheels. A stick kicked up, jammed in the spokes and ejected the guy over the front and down a slope. He was totally unharmed but understandably shook up.

Edit: Sorry, that was very factual. I of course meant to say, bad luck and I hope you get well soon.

To be fair my friend broke a spoke doing something fairly innocuous, and 2Pure sorted him out with a new one and a handful of spares no questions asked.

Osborne have stuck with the lefty fork and SLR’s.

I heard a horror story about an Australian road rider. Descending his front wheel lodged in a discarded shackle missing its pin. It clamped around the front tyre, rotated up to the fork crown and pitched him over the bars. Very nasty face plant into tarmac, lots of missing teeth and facial reconstructive surgery.

Oof, looks and sounds painful. Hope your thumbs heal up quickly.

Seems like common sense to me that you’re more likely to get that type of mishap with those big gaps. I’d offload them if it were me. Once bitten and alll that… Especially if (presumably) you paid trade price on them so won’t lose much money.

I’m surprised anyone has suggested you’re trying it on or anything like that. I think you’ve been very balanced and restrained about it all.

Ouch! Mend quick.

How long is a piece of string is a similar question. These wheels on other bikes must have covered a lot of miles and yet in only a couple you had a nasty off. You can not put any odds on that happening. Who knows if you had a wheel with more spokes it may have just pinged off or it also may have got stuck. Were you following or leading, if following it may be that the stick/log had got flicked up and you just came along at the right(wrong) time to catch it. Your call at the end of the day whether you keep the wheels or go for a larger spoke count. If I had doubts I would change the wheel but it is what you think that counts as you will be riding. At least the lid did its job and you walked away from it.

Good luck with the thumbs.

……now if your helmet had a chin guard…..

🙂

The thumbs are the worst bit, to be fair. I’m more devastated that I had to wear tracky bottoms to work, so that I didn’t need help at toilet time. It was a toss up between the CB wheels or a set of Mavic ST’s. If theses CB wheels do cause more incidents of this than more conventional wheels, then there should be more legal evidence from those across the pond as they do like a claim for such things.
I got a few weeks to think about it but am concerned that I might not get it out the back of my mind and thus likely to ride even slower than I did before.

front wheel lodged in a discarded shackle missing its pin. It clamped around the front tyre, rotated up to the fork crown and pitched him over the bars. Very nasty face plant into tarmac,

I did something pretty similar years ago when my front brake bolt loosened going down a hill. brake pulled away from the frame and ran along with the wheel until the cable pulled tight…
I got a night in hospital for my trouble – briefly KO – but no major damage, so luckily I’m still gorgeous

As used for bike polo where I guess it’s very tempting to shove a stick through your opponents front wheel.

……now if your helmet had a chin guard…..

Lucky he didn’t. His head would have been snapped clean off. Apparently.

Sorry to say PP as usual you are looking to slate someone and make yourself seem big

It works though – when I met PP, I thought he was HUGE!

edit: RV, that looks painful, hope you’re on the mend soon. And hey, at least it’s only your bones – they mend. If it was your rear wheel you’d have to replace the mech, and they cost money! 😉

Sorry to say, but it seems like you’re trying to blame someone for this, and where there’s blame there’s a claim

That’s harsh.

You know I think there is a fair point here. Wider spoke spacing may well help admit larger sticks. I’ve had bajillions of twigs in my spokes but they always either snap or bend (so far) because they are small.

The other issue is that the spokes are quite chunky are they not – because there are fewer of them. Most others here are talking about snapping a couple of spokes. Well that would take a lot of energy out of the equation I reckon. With just one big fat spoke it might not snap and therefore chuck you over that but more violently.