Shimano (US) Ultegra & Dura Ace crank recall

Thought I’d add that I weighed the big rings and both are 115g. So they look the same, weigh the same, but defo not the same……

@sillyoldman – I’m not sure why you’re so affronted that I’m suspicious of Shimano, especially as they have known of these failures for a number of years and decided to do sod all about it until now.

However, I’m sure that the head honchos are weeping into their sake right now because some guy on the internet doubts they are being transparent about this. So now I feel just awful. 

got my replacements today 🙂

@Klunk, what cranks did they supply? Mine are off at Madison right now.

FC-08 (FC-6800/R8000) 52-36 170mm

I’ve ended up with a couple of Ultegra cranks affected by the recall. One at least looks fine to me, but I obviously don’t want it to fail on me on a ride. Has anyone had any particularly good treatment from any of the chain stores (or any bike shop in Edinburgh) where the shop’s default is to arrange a replacement even if they can’t see any problem?

I took mine in two weeks ago for the samw reason to a store who do offer the inspection service. I didn’t do it officially i just stripped the bike and chainset down myself and took that in and they said all visually looked well and there was no need to take any further action. Unfortunately with this type of recall they aren’t replacing unless there are definite signs of debonding. Its frustrating and i assume your question is to find a retailer who will send the chainset in without question in the hope it will get a replacement by madison.

MapDec in Kendal had this policy, made a short video where they mentioned such, then seemingly got added to a “banned list” held by Madison when they refused to take said video down. This then lead to another, fairly humorous video/webcast being posted where they doubled down on their position and effectively gave Madison the finger.

I sympathise with them to be honest; their take is ‘if we examine a crank ourselves and declare it OK, and then it fails spectacularly, aren’t we in line for legal action? Best off sending them all off to Shimano then!’ Seems Shimano disagree…

I haven’t even bothered looking at the 6800 cranks on my CX bike. If they were replaced as part of the (not a) recall then a) they wouldn’t match the rest of the groupset and b) I don’t think they’re offering 36/46 chainrings so wouldn’t work for me anyway.

(it’s all kind of irrelevant anyway as I appear to have given up cycling)

I sympathise with them to be honest; their take is ‘if we examine a crank ourselves and declare it OK, and then it fails spectacularly, aren’t we in line for legal action? Best off sending them all off to Shimano then!’ Seems Shimano disagree…

And pretty much the only way of ‘testing’ the legality is for a failure to occur (with associated injuries etc) and to see whether Madison/Shimano ‘hide’ behind the retailer.

I’ve got three (!) sets of 6800 cranks between mine and my partner’s bikes. Unfortunately they’re all fine – I’ve just looked myself rather than faff taking them to a shop. Shame as I like the look of the new slabby ones.

The other way to do it would have been to do a proper recall on every crank ever made with that technique, to ensure that no customer was needlessly harmed by their faulty product in the future. I guess Shitmano worked out that it would cost them too much money to put safety first, and decide to protect the bottom line. Barring in mind we first started noticing this happen almost a decade ago, the importers response was always to claim an isolated incidence… every time. A solid reputation trashed, just like that.

I’ve got a set that have the reference numbers that means that they warrant being inspected. Can someone DM me the name of dealer somewhere near North London with the same attitude as Mapdec please? Don’t want to get them put on Shimano’s shitlist.