Boardman Carbon Road Bike

greg123 · January 2014

Hello Everyone,

I have recently had an accident on my Boardman carbon bike. I was riding along and suddenly and without warning the front wheel and handle bars came away as the forks/frame completely snapped causing me to injure myself.

The bike is about 3 years old and has been regularly serviced and "looked after" well so needless to say I was pretty shocked that this happened. The frame looks like it has a foreign substance within it. From the research I have carried out online this seems to be the bladder used during the carbon manufacturing process that is still present within the forks.

I was just wandering if anyone had ever come across this kind of thing happening before with Boardman bikes where the frame fails?, if this is a common thing that the bladder was left in during the manufacturing process, and whether this was a possible manufacturing defect or if I was just unlucky that it was left within my frame?.....or alternatively if this would have nothing to do with the frame snapping.

Comments appreciated to help out a novice.

ic. · January 2014

Have you contacted Boardman or the retailer? I've never heard anything like this before

dwanes · January 2014

You must have taken some photos.
Can you post them so we can make constructive comments, otherwise some will say it didn't happen.

Thanks.

mattv · January 2014

Boardman frames have a 2 year warranty I think. I suggest you get onto them ASAP and see what they say.

Bar Shaker · January 2014

Is this your first post here?

nickynoodles · January 2014

Surely a snapped frame should be under lifetime warranty!? If not it is like saying on the part of Boardman " We will guarantee your frame will not snap into pieces for 2 years, after that we just don't know.." Surely not!

mattv · January 2014

That's what it says on their website. 2 years on the frame. Spesh (and I think giant now) are lifetime.

greg123 · January 2014

Thank you for the replies.

I am looking into it with Halfords/Boardman and waiting to hear back from them but in the meantime just thought I would see if anyone had any previous experience/knowledge of a similar thing happening to them as the only thing I could think of was a possible manufacturing issue as wouldn't expect the frame to just snap for no apparent reason

Thanks again.

keef66 · January 2014

Do let us know what happens.

Bar Shaker · January 2014

Greg, the Boardman Team Carbon is one of the biggest selling carbon bikes in the UK. There are thousands of them in UK roads yet there has never been another report on here of such a failure. As you have had the bike for 3 years, it would be hard to dismiss accidental damage or shoddy maintenance (such as over tightening the head set) as the most likely cause. A manufacturing fault simply would not take this long to manifest itself, especially a fault that resulted in such sudden and catastrophic failure of the frame.

You say the bike has been well and regularly maintained but any crack in the headset would take some time to work its way through what is a large thick walled section of the frame. The start of such a crack would be spotted by anyone servicing your bike, if they did their job well. If a bike comes back from a service in anything other than pristine clean condition, then your frame has not been examined during the service.

It is a fallacy that carbon bikes are somehow weak, fragile or brittle. They are incredibly strong and catastrophic failures are almost unheard of, except after crash damage. There was a frame testing video floating around last year and the company testing their carbon frames said the most common cause of frame failure is from people driving cars into their garage and forgetting that their bike is still on the roof rack. These people normally send the bike back under warranty and say the frame has 'broken' at the headset. The failure cause is easy to spot because of the way the fibre tears when the frame fails at the headset. It would be much more enlightening if you could post up the photos you have of your broken frame. That way we could see exactly where the failure is and that may throw more light onto the likely cause, in your case.

If it clearly is a manufacturing fault, Boardman's after care service is exceptional and I am sure a time restriction on claims would be waived.

paulvinten · June 2014

From the sounds of it, this exact thing happened to me recently with the following results: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u1uyp63jkvlu ... 20injuries

I had the carbon pro bike at a cost of £1000 bought in spring 2010.

I was riding along coming off a roundabout and applied my brakes to slow down as a pedestrian crossing about 50m in front of me had gone red. Next thing I know I'm on the tarmac scrambling to get out of the road with about half a dozen people around me telling me not to move.

I can 100% say that I've never even so much as bumped a curb with this bike, and it's got less than 2500 miles on it...

It's currently with independent investigators into such things, and Halfords/ Boardman haven't had chance to examine it (although they are aware of the incident).

One thing that I have been told, however, is that the bladder being left in shouldn't make any difference and isn't considered a problem.

Incidently, this guy seems to have had the exact same failure as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLF0vFwh58

sungod · June 2014

strewth that's nasty, one of my nightmares is steerer failure, the one on youtube looks like it snapped in the same place

OP - can you post pics of the failure?

Aperezgorilla · November 2014

Hi did Boardman sort it out ? I have just sent back a 9.8TT frame as the alloy in the bottom push fit bracket has some large corrosion holes in, its only 2 yrs old and has a 3yr on warranty on the frame. Its only done 500-600miles and only is ridden in the dry summer conditions. I thought it was an open/shut case, after all it should happen but no they are refusing to replace it as the tube doesn't effect the frame structure !!!!!!

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

MatthewSimpson · January 2015

Hi, I had a carbon front fork failure on my Boardman Hyrbid Team in June this year. I rode it less than 500 miles and not strenuously. I also had no crashes, bumps etc. Always driven on clear roads o work and on sportives. Bike was 2 and 1/2 years old when the forks failed.

I was cycling uphill around a roundabout when the forks gave way and, like the main post, I was left sprawled in the road quickly scrambling to get out of the way of cars.

Halfords were initially great but an independent assesor was appointed by Boardman who eventually, after months of chasing them, told me that the failure was due to something getting caught in the spokes.

I would be grateful for your opinion here given that there was no damage to the wheel. One of the spokes was slightly bent but I cannot remember this being the case before i sent it to the assessor.

I'm at a loss now. I have paid £850 for the bike and now do not have a fit for purpose bike.

jgsi · January 2015

You need experts in Consumer Law, these cases are past fettling a la Workshop.
Any pictures of these bikes in their pomp before the disaster movie script kicked in?

diy · January 2015

If its a design or manufacturing defect then the warranty offered by the manufacturer doesn't really apply as consumer law trumps the warranty. In any case the claim is always against the retailer. In all these situations you need a personal injury lawyer to investigate your claim assuming it caused an injury.

I've had a 2009 team carbon and use it regularly - its been a truly great bike. Never the less I will be stripping it at the weekend to look

dilatory · January 2015

Why is there suddenly loads of new accounts in this thread?

holiver · January 2015

The power of Internet search engines!

Looks and sounds like there have been some truly nasty injuries. Hope everyone recovers perfectly.

Boardman Carbon Road Bike

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