Not BS, just you not understanding his type of failure.

You can crack a spoke bed BUILDING the wheel being careless on a wheel that isn't defective. It doesn't matter that someone else has ridden thousands of miles and not had a problem with that same brand of rim.

Fine. The OP still deserves a new wheel and you guys should stop blaming him.

I haven't seen the original post to see the description of the failure, but even if it was still up I haven't seen the wheel itself. And even if I did, unless the failure mode was ENTIRELY obvious I'd be guessing at the cause. A composites engineer at Zipp could make that distinction, but I certainly don't believe that I can - but I'm just a "regular" engineer.


I'd suggest you read Josh's blog posts again. Yes, Zipp wheels make it through Paris Roubaix under the supervision of highly-trained professional mechanics. However Josh's posts detail how even careful prep can lead to failure.

I do think that Zipp "appears" to have left some holes in their customer service model here. For a wheel with so few miles, it could have been damaged in shipping, or improperly tensioned by Zipp themselves. Stuff happens. I can't say whether I agree with Zipp's assessment of the situation or not, as I've never seen the wheel. However: I can say that I'm less likely to buy a Zipp wheel in the future. My reasoning isn't about the customer service model though, but rather my personal analysis that the risks associated with all-carbon wheels outweigh the benefits.

If the wheel was purchased built, wouldn't a build error count as a manufacturing defect?

I think it is reasonable to expect a more understanding customer service experience when you pay top dollar for a wheel.

but we also have no idea how the OP treated zipp, what he told zipp, what happened *Really* etc

so I can conclude nothing.

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"Not BS, just you not understanding his type of failure."

What would cause this type of failure during operation? I could see if the guy hit the RR tracks and there was rim impact damage, but if the perimeter of the wheel does not show damage, wouldn't you say the manufacturer would be inclined to believe manufacturing defect? If it is possible via over-inflation, just how much over-inflation would you say it would take?

My eldest boy is a shift manager at Starbucks, where people buy $5 coffee. At that level the customer is always right - whether it be the spoiled 17-year old who didn't get the proper amount of foam on her latte, to the legitimately angry customer who had coffee accidentally dropped on his car at the drive-thru window. Both might say rude things, but the customer service (and management) model is to remain calm and try to please the customer. In this case, we're talking about $2,000 wheels. Zipp should have a pretty high customer service bar.

A build error yes, my post had nothing to do with a wheel being broken while it was being built and then sold to a customer.


In a wheel the spoke bed is often the weakest link in terms of strength, low enough that if improperly tensioned while being built it can crack both metal and carbon at the time it was being built. The point of this was to demonstrate how little it actually takes to damage a wheel of ANY material by ANY manufacture and that it doesn't have to be a defect because someone later applied significantly greater force than the limit by hitting train tracks.


I don't have actual numbers in front of me that account for weight etc so these are completely made up for this example.

If a spoke bed can handle 180 kgf and the wheel is built to 120kgf spoke tension it is fine. If that wheel then sees 140-160 while being ridden it is fine. But if that wheel is subjected to 200kgf of force at the spoke bed while hitting train tracks it has exceeded that limit and can crack. That doesn't mean it was defective, it means the user exceeded the limit of the part.


Someone getting a little too happy with the spoke wrench not knowing what they are doing can put enough force on a rim to crack or bend a spoke bed, that was an example of how easy it is to damage it not that it was a defect if it becomes damaged while riding.


By making sure people are aware it was a spoke bed failure and not say a brake track failure does actually make it slightly more possible to be a defect (in a way I was helping the guy despite claims by some users here). But it doesn't automatically make it a defect just because it is something a guy on a couch could screw up while building a wheel.

I think we're saying about the same thing: the wheel (as a unit) might have been defective, from either a rim problem or a tensioning problem, assuming that it wasn't built by a guy on a couch.

Agreed. It's amazing how many people in this thread think that they know exactly what happened and exactly what damage the wheel sustained.

This despite the fact that the OP's original post has been long since deleted and, as far as I know, nobody's actually seen the wheel.

I've had the unfortunate experience of hitting a pothole at full speed and breaking a Zipp 404 rim THE VERY FIRST TIME THAT I RODE WITH THE WHEEL. There was no manufacturing defect in my case. I never expected Zipp to give me a free wheel. Sometimes stuff breaks when you ride a bike. I was stoked that Zipp was willing to offer me a crash replacement that allowed me to replace the wheel at a fraction of the original cost (and, subsequently, the city reimbursed me for the crash replacement cost because it was pothole damage).

I've also broken several aluminum training wheels in the last 20 or so years of riding bikes. It hurts a lot more when you break a $1500 dollar wheel than when you break a $100 wheel, but that doesn't mean it's any less your fault.

I'm not actually stating that is what could have happened, it could have happened, but that isn't what I was trying to say.

What I was trying to explain was that everyone seemed to be focused on (since he deleted his posted) that hitting a train track shoudl have caused some sort of damage to the rim/brake surface in that area. All the focus on oh it didn't bottom out so it had to be defective made this evident. That wasn't the point where the damage occurred and just because that damage didn't occur by no means indicates that it must have been a defect.

The impact force from hitting train tracks could possibly have been enough that even on a 100% perfectly built wheel, with 0 defects.. still cracked at the bed.

I Was bringing up the spoke tension and building it to point out is that those forces are not that great and that turning an aluminum nipple with a steel tool and not stripping the nipple can still put enough force on the spoke that a rim fails.


It can fail at the spoke bed from impact.

 

If all else fails, request a Zipp Trucker cap:




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Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

Wait. Are the blood guy? What was the story on that? You never gave us the full details!!!!

Truth in here cause nobody knows how things are explained and so on.

To give an opposite example....after the hub recall my wheels didn't match at all anymore, had a 2009 zedtech 404 which was "safe" after the recall but looked like shiit but from selling points worthless.
Anyhow, I explained that to zipp (US) cause over here in Germany they wanted me just to understand not to be able to serve every needs.
Ended up I sent both wheels in again and received a brand new set of 404FC. That's kinda backing up a product big time.

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-shoki