Hey Brendon! I reiterate the joy of others that you are fine and your bike may be too. A few thoughts:
1. How in the world did you see that in the field? I'd have totally missed it. Of course I'm not the most observant person and have missed really obvious things for days being a knucklehead. 2. Australian fauna and flora are on a whole different level when it comes to both passive and active dangers they present. Makes my territory positively wimpy. Even our tree branches don't try hard to kill or maim, just breaking easily. Wimps. Keep riding with abandon! With abandon Patrick On Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 7:31:42 PM UTC-6, brendonoid wrote: > > I agree that steel is the best frame material and I will most likely be > riding this bike again with a new fork. I tend to get emotional about my > bikes and overreact especially about my rivendells but just wanted to > reiterate a few bullet points: > - My fenders did not have safety clip thingos > - I had the nitto Big Front Rack equipped which was basically a tubular > space frame reinforcement preventing the fork from bending as designed. > - The trail I was on was absolutely littered with sticks branches and bark > and I had ridden the entirety of the the previous day on the same terrain > with no issues. There was no line to pick that would avoid this stuff. Wish > I had a photo. Karri trees drop a LOT of litter. > Thanks again folks for the advice, encouragement and commiserations, I'm > much more or a lurker than a poster and have enjoyed reading the content on > this forum for many years. > Cheers to all, > Brendon M. > PS oh I actually have a bad photo of my bike the day before I crashed it. > Can't make out much of the bike from this angle but the bags 'backwards' on > the front to clear the Neo Retro Cantis. The [image: > Appaloosadaybefore.jpg]Smart Sams, whilst perfect for the pea gravel, > would also have been a contributing factor as the tread can be very grabby. > The bags are very lightly packed with hiking gear and I don't think the > weight was a significant contributor. > On Tuesday, 30 June 2020 at 17:23:00 UTC+8 brendonoid wrote: > >> Hey guys, I just wanted to let everyone know the obviously stupid thing >> that I did even though I knew it was stupid has ruined my bike. Maybe this >> will help others as a warning or something... ? >> I've been running some cheap plastic fenders SOMA somethingorothers that >> did not have those plastic easy break stay connecters that most common >> sense fenders have. I knew this was a hazard but had ridden many 1000s of >> kilometres on them and had just sort of forgotten about it. >> It gets worse; I attached my Nitto Big Front rack (34f)? to do an >> overnighter on a nice trail while i was on holiday squeezing the adventure >> inbetween some bad weather and storms. On the second day, 80kms from the >> next town as I crested the hill...through a lot of debris and broken >> branches... doing ~15kmh (not exceeding 20kmh) my bike suddenly came to a >> stop. Just a firm enough stop to lift the back end up a little bit and make >> me have to put my feet down suddenly. >> The fender stays had lodged themselves into the fork along with the thick >> piece of bark that had caused the accident. >> "No worries! these cheap fenders finally failed!" I thought, "my stupid >> fault. Oh well, lucky I was going slow!' >> As I disentangled the mess, removing the front wheel, "Oh no, the fork is >> bent" I realised. "It's okay, the wheel isn't hitting the downtube I can >> still ride out of here... why has the head badged popped out funny though?" >> Oh, the headtube is shaped like a banana... >> Welp. >> I could have been doing 40km/h down hill and i could have died as well as >> killing my bike. This is what I am trying to commisserate myself with. It >> barely helps. >> I live in Western Australia. There are no local frame builders I know of >> or would trust to try and repair this frame. Shipping the bike back to >> Rivendell is going to be an expensive excercise and in these COVID times >> I'm not sure they can do anything anyway. I really just don't know what I >> am going to do. >> The accident was so minor and I have bent forks before. The problem here >> and the reason it has been so catastrophic is because the Big Strong Nitto >> rack reinforced the fork removing tis failure mode of being able to bend, >> that force was translated into the headtube as the fork actually bent where >> the steerer is welded into the crown lug translating that force into the >> headtube. >> I can post pictures if anyone is interested. The frame is weirdly >> straight and I cannot find any distortion in the maintubes despite the >> obvious bend in the head tube. The headset cups are only out of alignment >> to the point that a sealed bearing headset can absorb the variance and >> seemingly work ok. >> The bend has to have gone somewhere though and I'm not sure that if I got >> a new fork that I could feel safe riding the frame as is... >> I really just needed to vent, >> Thanks for listening, (reading I guess) >> Brendon M. >> >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/44c6a94e-d082-4031-a26b-82852c96089co%40googlegroups.com.
