Cracking Sound and now hairline crack below seat tube collar

bus_ter
bus_ter Posts: 337
edited August 2012 in Workshop
Out riding my new Carbon bike today (about 2 weeks old!) and I hit a Pot hole and hear a cracking sound! After the ride I inspect the bike and find this hairline crack below the seat collar on the frame. It's aprox 6mm long and you can feel it with your nail. It looks a little more obvious than the images show.

I'm pretty sure I haven't overtightened the collar bolts because they have 6-9Nm marked on the collar and I used a Ritchley 5Nm torquekey to tighten them and didn't get anywhere near the point before it 'clicks'.

Is this anything to be worried about? My LBS thinks it's probably just the paint/gloss coat as the carbon should flex. I'm hoping for a second opinion here.




crack2.jpg

crack1.jpg

(the pink stuff is ritchley torque paste as I removed the seat post and re-fitted with even less torque.
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Comments

  • Monty Dog
    Monty Dog Posts: 20,614
    Cracking sound was probably the noise of the seatpost slipping rather than the crack in the photo. Looks to me like a superficial crack of the paint / cleatcoat which tends to build-up at the end of tubes, around holes and slots etc. Suggest you draw a line at the end of the crack with a fine indelible marker pen and keep an eye on it - if it keeps going and gets towards the headtube and seatstay junction then it may be worthy of more investigation.
    Make mine an Italian, with Campagnolo on the side..
  • bus_ter
    bus_ter Posts: 337
    Thanks Monty Dog, once again you reply to one of my threads :-)

    I will keep a very close eye on it. It's a brand new bike, and my first Carbon, so I'm quite paranoid something could be wrong.
  • I suspect that probably is just paint crack. I have to admit though that everytime I see a post about carbon this kinda thing is mentioned and it has well and truly put me off a carbon bike. The most i'm ever gonna go for is carbon forks.

    The fact you can still buy steel bikes from the 60's or earlier which are sound proves that you can't beat metal and my colleagues carbon bike weighs the same as my alloy/carbon forked one. I do wonder about the longevity of carbon. I'm too scared to own one :?
  • rolf_f
    rolf_f Posts: 16,015
    adwt2004 wrote:
    The fact you can still buy steel bikes from the 60's or earlier which are sound proves that you can't beat metal

    No it doesn't! All it proves is that steel bikes can last a very long time. It doesn't actually prove anything about carbon bikes or bikes of other metals such as alloy. We need to wait another 20 years before we can comment on the endurability of 40 year old carbon frames.

    FWIW, my understanding is that steel and carbon bikes should last indefinitely. Alloy bikes are the ones with the stress limited lifespan.

    And don't be scared of carbon - it's rather nice. I've covered 5-6000 carbon based miles with no problems so far!
    Faster than a tent.......
  • mamba80
    mamba80 Posts: 5,032
    If i had a 2 wk old bike with that sort of hairline crack in it, regardless of whether its paint or structural, i d want a replacement.....
  • Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.
  • rolf_f
    rolf_f Posts: 16,015
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?
    Faster than a tent.......
  • vs
    vs Posts: 468
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    And don't be scared of carbon - it's rather nice. I've covered 5-6000 carbon based miles with no problems so far!

    I've put 100,000 miles on a 2003 trek 5500 and I'm intending to ride it for another 100,000
  • Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?

    We're not talking metal fatigue on aircraft are we???? We're talking about bikes. I'm entitled to my opinion m8 :wink:
  • rolf_f
    rolf_f Posts: 16,015
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?

    We're not talking metal fatigue on aircraft are we???? We're talking about bikes. I'm entitled to my opinion m8 :wink:

    Of course you are. But you seem very worried about the strength of a material that is now used to construct airliner wings. Personally, if I was afraid to ride a carbon fibre bike, I'd certainly not want to fly in an airliner with major carbon fibre structural components.
    Faster than a tent.......
  • nferrar
    nferrar Posts: 2,511
    Presumably there's no signs of that crack inside the tube is there? Also with the post out and pushing in that area does the opposing edges of the crack move much? I agree it's likely just the paint but that's an easy place to do a bit more investigating.
    As for carbon, it's fine, ofc people are entitled to their opinion otherwise, in the same way as people are entitled to wear tin foils hats or worry about the sky falling on them...
  • Gary D
    Gary D Posts: 431
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?

    We're not talking metal fatigue on aircraft are we???? We're talking about bikes. I'm entitled to my opinion m8 :wink:

    Of course you are. But you seem very worried about the strength of a material that is now used to construct airliner wings. Personally, if I was afraid to ride a carbon fibre bike, I'd certainly not want to fly in an airliner with major carbon fibre structural components.

    Not just the wings now!
    Fuselage, vertical and horizontal stabilisers etc etc.
    The next generation of passenger jets we will all be flying around on within the next 5 years or so are up to 80% by volume and 50% by weight CFRP :shock: :shock: (Boeing 787 Dreamliner).
    During testing, the wings were flexed up to 25 feet and passed the tests :? :?
    They are basically very strong Airfix models glued together!!

    Gary.
    Oh and I feel like I've been raped by an Orangutan :shock: And I've got legs like Girders :lol:
  • Gary D wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?

    We're not talking metal fatigue on aircraft are we???? We're talking about bikes. I'm entitled to my opinion m8 :wink:

    Of course you are. But you seem very worried about the strength of a material that is now used to construct airliner wings. Personally, if I was afraid to ride a carbon fibre bike, I'd certainly not want to fly in an airliner with major carbon fibre structural components.

    Not just the wings now!
    Fuselage, vertical and horizontal stabilisers etc etc.
    The next generation of passenger jets we will all be flying around on within the next 5 years or so are up to 80% by volume and 50% by weight CFRP :shock: :shock: (Boeing 787 Dreamliner).
    During testing, the wings were flexed up to 25 feet and passed the tests :? :?
    They are basically very strong Airfix models glued together!!

    Gary.

    I think all you lot are being very discriminatory against aquatic lifeforms.
    Ocean going yachts anybody? :D
  • rake
    rake Posts: 3,204
    oldraver wrote:
    Gary D wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?

    We're not talking metal fatigue on aircraft are we???? We're talking about bikes. I'm entitled to my opinion m8 :wink:

    Of course you are. But you seem very worried about the strength of a material that is now used to construct airliner wings. Personally, if I was afraid to ride a carbon fibre bike, I'd certainly not want to fly in an airliner with major carbon fibre structural components.

    Not just the wings now!
    Fuselage, vertical and horizontal stabilisers etc etc.
    The next generation of passenger jets we will all be flying around on within the next 5 years or so are up to 80% by volume and 50% by weight CFRP :shock: :shock: (Boeing 787 Dreamliner).
    During testing, the wings were flexed up to 25 feet and passed the tests :? :?
    They are basically very strong Airfix models glued together!!

    Gary.

    I think all you lot are being very discriminatory against aquatic lifeforms.
    Ocean going yachts anybody? :D
    yes but you can only sink on a yatch, you can't fall out of the sky or do a headstand.
  • rake wrote:
    oldraver wrote:
    Gary D wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Rolf F wrote:
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Me too, metal doesn't behave like that so I will stick with it. Let others do the long term testing.

    Presumably you don't fly then?

    We're not talking metal fatigue on aircraft are we???? We're talking about bikes. I'm entitled to my opinion m8 :wink:

    Of course you are. But you seem very worried about the strength of a material that is now used to construct airliner wings. Personally, if I was afraid to ride a carbon fibre bike, I'd certainly not want to fly in an airliner with major carbon fibre structural components.

    Not just the wings now!
    Fuselage, vertical and horizontal stabilisers etc etc.
    The next generation of passenger jets we will all be flying around on within the next 5 years or so are up to 80% by volume and 50% by weight CFRP :shock: :shock: (Boeing 787 Dreamliner).
    During testing, the wings were flexed up to 25 feet and passed the tests :? :?
    They are basically very strong Airfix models glued together!!

    Gary.

    I think all you lot are being very discriminatory against aquatic lifeforms.
    Ocean going yachts anybody? :D
    yes but you can only sink on a yatch, you can't fall out of the sky or do a headstand.

    More chance of getting eaten by sharks though at least you are going to be guarenteed to be on the seven tenths of the worlds surface covered by water.
  • bus_ter
    bus_ter Posts: 337
    nferrar wrote:
    Presumably there's no signs of that crack inside the tube is there? Also with the post out and pushing in that area does the opposing edges of the crack move much? I agree it's likely just the paint but that's an easy place to do a bit more investigating.
    As for carbon, it's fine, ofc people are entitled to their opinion otherwise, in the same way as people are entitled to wear tin foils hats or worry about the sky falling on them...

    Thanks for the reply. No there is no obvious sign of the crack inside the tube. The crack appears like a paint crack, and I can feel it with my nail. Pushing at one side of the crack doesn't make the other edge move. If this was an old metal bike I wouldn't be concerned by such a small crack. However as it's brand new (less than 30 miles ridden), my first carbon bike and I heard a cracking type sound I'm quite worried.

    I have emailed the company ' Ribble Cycles ' with the photos attached and I am awaiting their reply. I know they have a hit and miss record with customer service, but so far I have had no problems. I will of course keep this thread updated.
  • Lol, think i've been picked apart on this one, battered and bruised! :wink:

    Goes and has a look at the planet x carbon frames... :P
  • Monty Dog
    Monty Dog Posts: 20,614
    adwt2004 wrote:
    Lol, think i've been picked apart on this one, battered and bruised! :wink:

    Goes and has a look at the planet x carbon frames... :P

    Err, many of the Planet-X frames come from the same factory as Ribble - XPace Industrial in Xiamen, China.
    Make mine an Italian, with Campagnolo on the side..
  • bus_ter
    bus_ter Posts: 337
    OK. Still no reply from Ribble. I will give it a couple more days and follow up with a phone call next week.

    In the meantime I've taken another photo that might be relevant. The frame has a mold line (I'm guessing that's what it is?) that divides the frame in half. Where there is just gloss you can see this clearly on the carbon fibre. This line is underneath the gloss and I'm sure entirely normal and fine? Where there's colour, such as the white and red colours the level is raised 1-2mm. I'm not sure if this is just paint, or some sort of additional wrapping, or both. Anyway this is where the crack appears to have formed, and is right on the surface and can br felt with a nail. Also this crack appears directly above where the 'mold line' would be under the paint.

    crack3.jpg
  • b16 b3n
    b16 b3n Posts: 301
    It looks like paint flex too me. Nothing at all to worry about :D
    " GET BACK CROC "
  • bus_ter
    bus_ter Posts: 337
    Ok further update. I sent a second email this morning including the new photo. This time I had an email back within an hour and also a follow up phone call. I talked to someone called Ben who was very helpful. He believes it's just the paint moving from tightening up the seat clamp and purely cosmetic. Anyway he said to keep an eye on it and they would arrange to pickup the bike if it gets worse. I'm very happy with the customer service from Ribble at this point.

    I will update this thread in the future if anything else happens. So if you're reading this in 2013 and I haven't added to the thread you can assume all is well. :-)

    edit: Wonders if the b3n above is more than a coincidence..
  • rake
    rake Posts: 3,204
    how much seatpost sits in the frame. it helps to add strength with more in. if your tall with only a stub in there it greatly increases the prying force on the shorter length.
  • b16 b3n
    b16 b3n Posts: 301
    bus_ter wrote:
    Ok further update. I sent a second email this morning including the new photo. This time I had an email back within an hour and also a follow up phone call. I talked to someone called Ben who was very helpful. He believes it's just the paint moving from tightening up the seat clamp and purely cosmetic. Anyway he said to keep an eye on it and they would arrange to pickup the bike if it gets worse. I'm very happy with the customer service from Ribble at this point.

    I will update this thread in the future if anything else happens. So if you're reading this in 2013 and I haven't added to the thread you can assume all is well. :-)

    edit: Wonders if the b3n above is more than a coincidence..


    If your assuming I work for a bike company. Dont, even though I love bikes , I wouldnt be sad enough to work with them and talk to weirys all day that would be sad. Im just talking from experience. My cube did it
    " GET BACK CROC "
  • bus_ter
    bus_ter Posts: 337
    b16 b3n wrote:

    If your assuming I work for a bike company. Dont, even though I love bikes , I wouldnt be sad enough to work with them and talk to weirys all day that would be sad. Im just talking from experience. My cube did it

    My comment was in jest really :P . Thanks for the advice though. I've had my LBS, users on here, and most importantly Ribble suggest it's probably just the paint cracking. The customer service from Ribble has been great, and now that I've highlighted the problem if it gets worse in the months to come I can go back to them and say I highlighted the issue when the bike was brand new.

    rake wrote:
    how much seatpost sits in the frame. it helps to add strength with more in. if your tall with only a stub in there it greatly increases the prying force on the shorter length.

    That's a good point, and when you look at Pro riders you wonder just how much of the seat post is actually clamped in sometimes. Anyway it's a large bike (I don't like a big drop to the handlebars) and I would say about 2/3 of the post is in the frame. So in this respect it should be pretty strong. It's also oversized (31.6), adding to the strength of the post.
  • pliptrot
    pliptrot Posts: 582
    The debate over materials for bike frames usually ends up in the "composites are used in aerospace so they must be very good (sic)" cul-de-sac. The thing is, those guys get to buy a lot of the stuff, so they get the best and they get the support. Even Trekcialized are tiny bit players and get what's left. Now, aerospace users of composites get to test and inspect their materials in a way that cyclists never can, so they can accept some of the issues with longevity and durability. No-one would claim that aluminium is durable at all, it ages through fatigue as is well understood, but it is used extensively in aerospace, where weight really does matter. So they can put up with the limitations of the materials they use, and the adoption of composites by -for example- Boeing should not be used as an endorsement for quite different usage in, say, bikes. Dreamliners are unlikely to have impacts of the sort that are the normal concomitants of cycling, nor have pedals banged into them, and even BMW don't make a car with a boot big enough to throw a 787 in(even if you take off the wheels). Push anyone involved in carbon bikes hard enough and they'll admit that any composite structure designed to support something 100 times heavier than it is will have a finite life.
  • pliptrot
    pliptrot Posts: 582
    Bus_ter,

    do please keep us informed. I really, really, really, want a carbon frame, and Ribble's prices are too good to pass on, so I'd love to see this work out well for you. As posted above, my (no doubt poorly informed) opinion is that in the cycle industry we don't get the chance to buy the finest composites (please tell me someone, if I'm wrong) so CF is CF is CF, and so I'll buy on price. And Ribble seem hard to match in this respect.
  • Even Trekcialized are tiny bit players and get what's left.

    what? you mean they hang around outside the Boeing Factories looking in Skips? have you any evidence for this view? i ve read some tosh on here b4 but this takes the biscuit.
    I suppose McClaren F1 being even smaller get what Trek etc throw away?
  • keef66
    keef66 Posts: 13,123
    The recent reports of cracks in the wings of the Super Airbus turn out to be in certain L shaped alloy brackets. No mention of CF being involved.

    I'm off to give my alloy frame a good wash and inspection to check it's airworthiness.
  • pliptrot
    pliptrot Posts: 582
    Lookyhere,

    the bicycle industry uses a very small amount of composite material and as a result of this are neither important customers in terms of R and D nor in terms of price; small timers pay list price. Your literal interpretation of my previous comment, and your robust rebuttal suggest you know about these things. Good. So tell me, if I spend more than a month's UK average salary on a frame with some brand name stuck on it, what am I getting? The sort of stuff for which price is more or less no object (McClaren's F1 budget is, I'm sure, sufficient to overcome their volume disadvantage) or the sort of stuff which is just about good enough for a bike? Opinions are normally offered as points for useful debate, but that's forums for you; the level of detachment encourages rudeness.
  • bus_ter
    bus_ter Posts: 337
    pliptrot wrote:
    Bus_ter,

    do please keep us informed. I really, really, really, want a carbon frame, and Ribble's prices are too good to pass on, so I'd love to see this work out well for you. As posted above, my (no doubt poorly informed) opinion is that in the cycle industry we don't get the chance to buy the finest composites (please tell me someone, if I'm wrong) so CF is CF is CF, and so I'll buy on price. And Ribble seem hard to match in this respect.

    I certainly will keep this thread updated if there is anything to add. I hate it when you search through old threads and there's no updates or conclusion. So far I've only been out a couple of times since the paint crack appeared (I'm now pretty sure it's just paint/gloss) and it hasn't progressed. I put a tiny amount of clear coat paint over the crack to seal it and prevent any dirt ingress etc. Though a brand new bike shouldn't have any sort of is marks or cracks I'm not concerned as long as it's just cosmetic. I used a special close up camera/lens to take the photos so it looks bigger than it is. It's just a tiny 6mm hairline crack in reality.

    I wouldn't be put off carbon. It's very well tried and tested now, and current frames have been through several generations to iron out the kinks. They even make MTB bikes now out of Carbon without issues. My LBS says paint cracks can be more common in carbon frames because they tend to flex more than metal. The Ribble carbon frames offer excellent value for money IMHO. They're all the same frames as used by 'branded' manufacturers at much higher prices. You can also customize the bikes to just what you want. I have a strange body shape so was able to spec stem and handlebar sizes that wouldn't normally be available in the frame size I picked. All I would say is don't try to upspec the bike too much as the Value for money starts to diminsh. They charge the full price for upgrades rather than their cheap online prices for the parts. For example picking RS80 wheels added £300 to the price, but you can buy the wheels online for that price, so you might as well keep the wheels that come with the bike and then have the RS80's as extra for the same price. If you see what I mean.