This happened October 5th 2007. Riding around Wandsworth Station towards Kew my rear triangle snapped. Luckily the triangle forced the wheel onto the broken chain stay, acting as a gentle but forceful brake. When I get the new triangle, hopefully they'll spray it in the same electric blue colour, and while they are at it, I'll ask them to re-spay my front forks. I got new forks back in, I think 2005, following a bike crash where the forks had absorbed the impact when a car drive into me head on. I was thrown and suffer no injury. Annoyingly, the forks came back in black.
In January 2006 the rear suspension collapsed into the seat tube. Here's a view of where the rear suspension touches the rear tube.
It is possible that this was weakened in the crash of 2005 and the rear suspension had just been tap tap tapping at it since. The seat tube collapsed going over a speed bump near Waterloo Station in London. Again the failure was graceful because the x-frame cross struts essentially held the seat upright enough for me not to fall off. I initially thought I had a flat tyre before I noticed that the frame had failed.
4-months later I got a new frame, seen here after riding back from the shop without mudguards.
Now in servicing, all the other parts of the bike have been replaced, except for the brake levers and pedals. So, there will be no major parts of the bike older than 4 years once this is done.
I've decided to upgrade the gearing while I'm at it. The original gearing never worked properly for me, and I guess I didn't know how to maintain it right (adjusting the cables etc). Anyhow. I will order a Capreo hub, cassette and derailleur for the back. I may have to buy a 36-hole hub from the US if I can't find one over here.
My TSR on the other hand needs new dropouts. In this picture, there is not meant to be any space around the wheel nuts, and Sturmey Archer should be horizontal.
The cause was simple, progressive weakening of the drop out from excessive torque and repeated repair (banging back into position). After the third repair, the bike shop told me that it was unsafe.
Looking back through my iPhoto collection and can see that this has happened before:
This photo was taken on September 23, 2007 and shows my hub following an incident in Peckham where I had entered the high street directly in front of a bus, but in 7th gear. I selected 2nd gear and pushed without lifting off and the hub pushed through making an almighty crunch. The hub went out of alignment and I had to miss the first London Freewheel that weekend. However when I rotated the anti-turn washers to face backwards, the hub worked again.
I did not realise that the dropouts were damaged, and rode for several thousand additional miles till the hub ran out and wheel started to disintegrate. I had the new hub fitted and the shop banged the drop outs back into place. They were banged back a second time when I had the wheel rebuilt to solve spoke issue, but it was rebuilt with washers that were too weak and which cracked on the first test ride. Then another bike shop fix (chain replacement) left the drum brake loose and the brake turned, putting more stress on the dropouts. And finally just riding in 8th gear, pushing down Peckham Rye hill caused the dropouts to spread a few days later. When they were bashed back again, apparently they were soft. So I'm waiting to see what the bike shop/Pashley can come up with.
1 comment:
my Moulton APB had the same issue with the seat post tube at the suspension mount , but mine folded like a toilet roll & I fell off the back of the bike.
Did Pashley give you a FREE replacement frame?
as this is evidently a design fault
Ben
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