Ride Ending Mechanicals

Wow that’s a good one. Glad I’m not the Whyte marketing team, there’s no doubt what frame that is.

It was crash damage, not a massive crash, but still a crash and they replaced it no bother.
Not a great advert for the frame but their warranty was excellent 👍

Deeper mud than anticipated before the slab, OTB, brand new S-works tyre tubeless (very thin), barbed wire put a great big slit through it. No crisp packets etc to bodge with a tube ..

ebay 54t copy of dt star ratchet stripped on first proper climb of first ride

Had a shimano freehub fail just before McMoab, Kirroughtree works suprisingly well as a push and pump trail. When you really don’t want to lose speed its surprising just how hard a rock feature you can ride blind on sight without touching the brakes ..
Had another shimano freehub lock solid, rode whinstone lee tor descent (not alpine) as if it was a fixie, then took the chain off for the beast, Must be my best run down there. Chainless is so much smoother ..
Mate had a shimano freehub lock in ‘off’ as above in the cold. Peed on it to thaw it ..

Ripped a few pre-shadow mechs off resulting in singlespeeding bikes. Ever fearful since going to eagle with it sitting so much further out than shadow

Superstar tesla hub went bang on day one of a week in courchevel. Turns out another chalet guest didn’t live far away from home and very kindly swapped his rear wheel with me until I got back. Saved my holiday. As the week progressed discovered the phenomenon of pitted rotors, no amount of pad swapping will get you through in the alps .. baulked at paying £40/rotor at the time

On free hire bikes for a week in PdS, still not sure why but assumed DH bikes would have DH tubes in, one or two tubes between two of us, ran out in avoriaz on the tamest cut through below the lift to the road, cue my brother cautiously riding back to the bottom of chatel (Where we were on the way back from) to buy a 19eur DH tube. bought a puncture repair kit but it was so hot they wouldn’t stick overnight .. one of us was 26 the other 650. had every combination of tube size swapped between each bike ..

1) Back when online shopping was a Merlin Cycles 3 page double spread I in MBUK, I arrived for a holiday in Scotland and promptly snapped the seat post bolt. It was over a week and several long journeys finding tiny bike shops before I was able to buy a replacement.

2) Years ago my wife was offered a days test on a very expensive full susser with top of the range carbon SRAM. We swapped over (before a massive climb conveniently) so I put it in first gear, and discovered that the shop hadn’t set the limit screws properly. The mech self destructed, but worse, the hanger didn’t break but twisted in such a way that the bolts were completely seized and we couldn’t swap it for a spare one of our friends had. The shop were good about it but it was off the demo fleet for weeks!

3) A few weeks ago a friend realised his chainring was loose. On further inspection, it was attached to the cranks with 8 tiny torx bolts…the type with a security pin in the middle. Unsurprisingly none of us had s multitool with security torx tools! He had to walk home…I think it was a Shimano crank?

A Grapil frame, the chainstay snapped whilst JRA. But then they all did.
A Marin Quake frame I snapped the shock pivot riding a log pile.
Snapped handlebars on entry to the bombhole at Aston hill, the resulting four fractures in one wrist ended my riding for a bit.
Snapped a set of fancy CNC FSA cranks years ago JRA again.
Snapped a set of SLX cranks on a Hardtail first run at BPW, was on a ride up ticket as working nearby, so not a massive loss.

Many years ago when I lived in N. Wales we were riding at Coed y Brenin (so will have been the original trails) when the back end felt “funny” and began squirming as if I’d got a flat. I couldn’t see what was wrong. Back at the car park I had a better look …

The lower pivot mount for the rear triangle had broken away from the frame! The welds on both sides had simply cracked. This was on a Scott FSR, the frame had a lifetime warranty which they honoured.

On the theme of back in the day, I wrecked a brand new set of FSA Power Pro cranks (didn’t everyone?), luckily I was only about 30s out the door so it wasn’t a hard push back.

Also made the chain length/mech hanger error couple of times, luckily it was uplifted (race weekend) so I just went chainless.

Another race weekend saw my brand new wheel explode on a small drop at AE just after the road crossing rock garden, luckily someone lent me a spare wheel for the weekend. Less fortunately it was a 24″ wheel off his Bighit but beggars can’t be choosers. Original wheel lived to fight another day thanks to Big Al and has just been retired as the bearing cups and cones are utterly knackered. 721 is still good though.

Another brand new wheel, this time from Merlin, first ride and I sheared the freehub clean off the Deore hub. That got sent back and upgraded to XT which lasted until it got nicked.

Managed to seize one of those horrible flangeless Deore hubs and grind the nuts into the dropouts. The frame damage cleaned up and the rim was a ditch witch so over all I think I broke even losing that one.

Oh, yeah, and at the bottom of FW DH I thought my Planet X Bommer was a bit twitchy, I thought it was because the MX6’s foot nut had loosened off and shat a legs worth of Dexron III down the track but it turned out the wee rusty bit on the down tube was actually a crack and it had folded in on itself. Plus the forks were empty.

Haven’t had any for ages, last one was shaking a frame pivot out of my Remedy at BPW- the pivot axle was kept in but the bearings weren’t, one vanished forever alone with the bolt and I ended up rattling down the rest of the trail with the axle just flailing inside the frame. No idea how far I rode like that, but once you notice you’ve kinda got to stop.

Modern bikes are good though eh? Considering the absolute beating mine get, they pretty much don’t break.

MX6’s foot nut had loosened off and shat a legs worth of Dexron III down the track but it turned out the wee rusty bit on the down tube was actually a crack and it had folded in on itself. Plus the forks were empty

To be fair my MX6 leaked right from the box. Total loss lubrication system.

I think mine already had the triple wiper seals installed, amazingly there are still Stratos forks out in the wild that haven’t!

I snapped the cable for the rear mech, 47 miles away from home.
Front mech still fine, so i screwed it up onto the middle sprocket and rode my 3 speed mtb all the way home.
Was a bit spinny any time the road went vaguely downhill, but I managed it in about the same time as I would normally do it.
Overall the route was downhill, with only a couple of lumps to deal with, i had a howling tailwind too.
I can’t imagine that being so easy with modern 1x drivetrains though.

Not me, but a mate on a ride to the Anderton Boat Lift 7 1/2 years ago according to the date ! Sort of made it back with a tie down strap from a nearby Halfords.

I had to travel for work and took my bike. On my first ride out the DT swiss freehub gave up engaging. Thankfully I wasn’t too far from the car. Maybe a few miles through undulating terrain. Didn’t get it fixed until I got home.

Not me, but a mate on a ride to the Anderton Boat Lift 7 1/2 years ago according to the date ! Sort of made it back with a tie down strap from a nearby Halfords.

Haha! That was the revised version of that frame – I had the one from the year before. For a few rides it creaked like a byatch. Tightened saddle, post, cranks, rings, rear q/r. Lubed everything. Still creaked. Got home from its final outing and found that the seat tube (lower section) had sheared right round. Bin. But at least it got me home.

Once fitted a set of Maverick SC32s and in their first ride had a massive issue with the front brake pulling to the left. This was discovered in the pissing rain somewhere on the top of Grizedale. Stripped down the headset in the middle of a bog. Dunno what had happened but I suspect I’d fitted the crown race upside down? Whatever ball bearings were still left in it weren’t really doing the job, so off I retired to the bike shop to buy a new headset.

Many moons ago it was triple puncture for me on the commute back home. Bang on in the middle of the way.
6 miles walk back home from outskirts of Coventry.

Also one Lakes ride cut short for one of the friends in the group:

Same with one Peaks ride:

Cheers!
I.

2 or 3 weeks ago a shitmano deore 12 speed mech that was new in April exploded as soon as I pedalled after coasting down towards the first trail of the evening. Also bent the First 4 cogs of a 2 week old cassette.
Local shop I bought it from was no help and told me it looked like crash damage (it wasn’t) I won’t be using them again (Slam69) as after asking me to pay 7 quid for delivery to send it back they then haven’t responded after I tried to get into the invoice a few days later to pay and couldn’t. I’m guessing they binned the shot mech.

Had a ride out with a buddy at the beginning of the year after a week of heavy rain…

Ride going well, we both stopped at a HUGE puddle to contemplate going through it or turning back for 4 miles to go round it…through it was the decision

Was about 3 1/2 foot deep in the middle but we were committed at that point, another 100 yards up the road and my legs started spinning, cranks moving, chain moving and still intact, cassette moving but no bike moving, walked the 6 miles home just as it had started to piss down again

stripped bike and found my rear hub had decided to s*** itself in a big way, not one single pawl or spring to be found within the free hub

Same friend went for a solo spin just recently on a day off work, the message I got from him after

“managed to get out on mon, went from Bradwell to Burnham all good but on the way out of Burnham got 5 punctures (4 too many for what I was carrying – spare tube & 3 patches & glue etc) then rear tire split so had to walk the bike back 10 miles to the car in ze 30 degree heat. This was not conducive to my ginger conditioning

My shoes gave up in the 2 hrs walk & they removed the skin from my heels in an epic fashion with 4cm holes where my heels should be”