I read Xtri, which said that Bjorn’s second fork broke at WF. Slowman’s piece said this:
Swedish bike monster Björn Andersson’s fork cracked pre-race (a Spanish mechanic installed a star washer into the carbon steerer last month; a no-no). Bicycle Sports installed a new Reynolds fork as a replacement. Then, one mile into the race, Björn’s Italian-made stem broke.
which says that his stem broke. Since I use the same stem, I am keenly interested in what, exactly, broke at WF. The stem or the fork?
“To compensate, the on site mechanics had perhaps over-tightened the stem on his replacement fork and the whole assembly snapped at the headset almost immediately he rode out of T1.”
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“To compensate, the on site mechanics had perhaps over-tightened the stem on his replacement fork and the whole assembly snapped at the headset almost immediately he rode out of T1.”
Well, that’s my point. The Xtri article isn’t really clear. When they say “the whole assembly” do they mean the fork or the stem? If the stem broke, I’d like to know which part of it broke.
it doesn’t sound as if it was stem failure at all. trying to visualize based on the description, it seems that it broke off just above the head tube–that it was the steerer on the fork that failed rather than the stem. sounds as if the stem, aerobar combo snapped off with a samll piece of the steerer tube still in the stem…
The stem cracked just above from where you tighten the bolts. As Dan pointed out the first fork was installed in the wrong way and there was no other problems with any of the forks.
The stem cracked just above from where you tighten the bolts. As Dan pointed out the first fork was installed in the wrong way and there was no other problems with any of the forks.
Bjorn,
So it did not crack at the adjustable part, only at the point where it clamps onto the fork tube?
Any idea what caused it? Those are high-quality stems.
I’ve got a Ritchey Pro adjustable stem on backorder at my LBS…asked the mechanic about how stout it was, and he said the splines on it required quite a bit of unthreading of the bolt in order to disengage…meaning once you lock it down, it stayed pretty well.
I need to lower my bars a bit, so I reading this thread with great interest…I wouldn’t want to have a stem break in a race.
You did that with a machine, right? Isn’t it pretty hard to do on an actual bike?
I’m worried about one of these breaking:
– mainly, I’d like to know just what part of it broke on Bjorn’s bike.
Did it break on the back side of the head tube, near the bolts, or did it break on the front side of the head tube, at the big joint that pivots up and down? The latter is more worrisome and catastrophic.
I had the ITM “The Stem” break on me, and I am not Bjorn, that is for sure. It broke where you tighten the stem to the fork. Scared the hell out of me when I saw it.
I switched to Ritchey stems. To hell with light weight stems. They are definitely not worth it.
Bolts can also break. I’m not going back to 2-bolt front cover construction after last week a titanium bolt from a Cinelli Solido stem broke on Sergio Marques in the middle of a race, costing him a possible win and some interesting prize-money. I never liked those 4mm ti bolts, looks like I had a reason for not liking them!
