I would also flip the bike over and spin the wheels, pedals, crank etc (with the chain off). it’s normal for these items to be a little tight when new (moreso with cheap stuff) but you need to judge for yourself if maybe some of the bearings are overtight. any problems in the hub will be exacerbated by the smaller wheels.

monkeysfeet, I have put around 7000 miles on my spoon in just over a year with no visible signs of wear. none. possibly the logo has faded slightly…

+1 for spoon. use it on the road and spend about 2-2.5 hrs on it daily

I use vittoria rubino pro slick folding mtb 26×1.5″ for high mileage commuting. not officially one of the most puncture proof tyres (marathons etc) but ive been using these and their road bike counterparts for a while now and rate them nonetheless. rated to 95psi, which on a 1.5 tyre should give decent load luggage potential. rolls fast. not the grippiest ever but long lasting. maybe get one as a spare? £17.99 on wiggle last time I looked – not too bad for a folding?

I’d be suspicious of those short crankarms. doesn’t sound very ergonomic to me. but the next thing I would look closely at would be tyres and pressures. betting the standard ones aren’t much cop. would imagine that the pressures would want to be higher than an mtb tyre of similar width to keep the ratio of contact patch length to radius. schwalbe have an excellent document on all things technical related to tyres on their website.

dales rider, you are simply wrong.

it’s ‘woe betide’, not ‘wow betide’

HTH

+1 on the mo86s. over a year of daily use on 32 mile round trip. no stretching, no cracking, velcro intact and the stench doesn’t quite strip the wallpaper yet.

for commuting you’ll want mudguards even if it never sees rain. surprising how much grit can get into mechs and headsets.

also be sure to avoid ‘integrated’ headsets like the plague.

check carefully for toe-overlap (not everyone minds this but you should be aware of it)

‘great colour’ lol…horses for courses I s’pose.

I’d prefer disc brakes and rack mounts too but that’s just me. as a road bike noob, shallow drops will probably allow you to use them more too.

happy shopping!

I like my deda rhm01. shallow drop “compact”bar. got 42cm anatomic (anything but!) fsa on one bike qnd don’t like them. my other bike has 44cm deda which were cheap as chips. recently got round to measuring my shoulders and found that from top of bicep tendon to tendon inside measurement is 44cm. so I feel there’s mileage in that measurement theory.

I’m 5’9″

if I were buyin now I would get the charge filter hi. or the whyte charing cross. but probably the charge. or the whyte…

got a GT GTR-4 couple of years ago. spent ages getting the fit right and replaced the quick rot hubs but gradually grew to hate its bone-jarring ride even wih 25mm tyres. currently using a 20 year old cromo rigid mtb with drops and slick tyres and am faster than ever over my 32 mile daily commute (round trip).

find the rolling on smooth tarmac is impaired, but show the bike some rough tarmac and it steamrolls straight over it. sometimes follow a chap on a claud butler road bike and he slowly gaps me on smooth stuff but come the rough and it’s like he’s hit the brakes!

and I get off feeling like my spine is still in the same place it was when I set off. btw, the mtb weighs almost 12kg, the GT is less than 10kg.

you were going uphill and pedalling hard. this puts most of your weight on the rear. to lock the wheel up (overcoming your pedalling force too, lets not forget) and cause a skid (at least in the dry) requires a tremendous force. try doing it by braking….

carbon frames (and hydroformed aluminium) are very light because they allow the designer to remove material where it is not needed to cope with ‘designed for’ stresses. that is why many designs are inferior to a traditional steel frame when it comes to coping with forces outside those of typical (or even extreme) riding.

michaelmcc: using those gears is considered poor form as it increases wear/mech rub – not for fear of instant catastrophic failure.

as others have said, if the drivechain locked up because the chain length was too short or the b tension screw adjustment was wrong, then thats just one to chalk up to experience.

OP says:
“I have been thinking about this a bit more now and I am struggling to understand how the rear wheel locking as a result of the rear mech getting caught in the rear wheel / on the cassette would cause such failure in the chain stay.”

when you lock wheel under braking: firstly you have generally unloaded it by transferring weight onto the front, hence force required to overcome friction is reduced; secondly and more relevantly, the reaction forces in the frame are distributed differently. on a rim braked bike, the force is applied at the edge of the wheel, has a greater torque arm and less force is required to balance the torque produced at the contact patch. with a disc brake, the force counteracting this torque must be higher as it is applied through a smaller torque arm (the radius of the disc) but it is spread through the chainstay (as a bending moment) and the seatstay (as a compression force). also these parts are generally somewhat reinforced or at least braced on a disc braked bike.

when the transmission locks up,the force is produced by tension in the lower chain run, not the upper portion. a straight chainstay would see this force as more of a compression force but a curved stay will see a greater bending moment. the seatstay is unable to provide much support here as it too is mostly under bending, with any additional component force being in tension not compression.

guess that makes fourpence now

I had a spill last year that bent mech hanger. Didn’t even notice until the next day I went for bottom gear and the mech hit the spokes. This brought me to a VERY abrupt stop, annihilating the mech in the process. Not the same situation as yours, but you have to consider the forces going through the chainstay when the transmission locks up are far greater than just the driving force produced by your legs. Added in to the mix is the force required to reduce your speed (and hence momentum) to zero in less than one revolution. This probably far exceeds any ‘designed for’ stress. Most chainstays curve out towards the wheel hub, meaning that this force will produce a bending moment, not just a compression load.

I would say the main question is how the transmission locked in the first place.

My tuppence worth…