pwa wrote:amediasatex wrote:Starting to feel the same. Or maybe we are both lucky?
Go with lucky, I get quite attached to my bikes (if I like them) and it makes me quite grumpy when they break, I would much prefer they didn't.
Breaking a frame every year seems a bit strange to me. I've got club mates riding the same frame for thirty years.
I've got some that are that old, and older, and some I've had myself for 10-15 years and still in one piece, so it's not like it's a new frame breaking after a year of use each time, just on average I seem to suffer a breakage in 'a' frame every 12-18 months or so.
I wouldn't suggest there is anything wrong with the way you treat your bikes, but I wonder what causes these failures. Do you buy frames with particularly thin walled tubes, very truncated lugs or something like that?
The only common factor really is me and my riding!
Over the years I've broken welded and lugged steel frames, both lightweight and 'sturdy'. The Alu frames have all been quite substantial too, to be fair most of them were MTBs and used for actual MTBing, not abused but used as intended, but some were road bikes or commuters too, probably 70/30 split. The Carbon failures have been on fairly light frames but again, not super light or anything.
The two this year had nothing in common really...
One was a welded steel MTB frame used as a commuter but hadn't seen too much bad weather and was in good condition, less than 12 months old and cracked around the downtube from what appeared to be a dodgy gusset weld.
The other was a 3 year old welded Stainless Steel road frame, hadn't done huge mileage, mostly in good weather, literally only seen about a dozen wet rides and cracked around a seatstay, cause as yet unknown as it hasn't visibly initiated from any obvious defect or damage, but it is 'near' the weld with the brake bridge and roughly follows the line of where the HAZ would be but that could just be coincidence.
Both reputable brands, mid-range frames, not super fancy or lightweight, just bad luck