[CR]RE Filing Cranks....

(Example: Framebuilders:Masi)

From: "B&J Bainbridge" <gotfleas@earthlink.net>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 15:40:26 -0800
Thread-Index: AcPumwf+XIxuJWegScmy9eypyL3dWQ==
Subject: [CR]RE Filing Cranks....

If you all can take one more comment on this thread..

Jerry Wrote:

"The harder Campy alloy was also more brittle, so they suffered brittle stress cracking, notably at the junction of spider and right arm or at the pedal hole. This type of failure is almost unheard of with the softer Stronglight or TA

cranks."

I'm not sure that this is 100% accurate. In the early 80's I worked for a distributor who at that time was the largest Campy distributor in the US and also distributed TA & Sugino. I made it a point to review the returns daily and indeed there were plenty of broken campy cranks (mainly pedal eyes, but also splits at the taper holes and many fractures at the spider) We DID see TA failures, which were nearly all at the pedal eye and some split taper holes. It is no secret that Campy did have a serious stress riser on the spider web, but TA's did break. From what I saw volume was in proportion to sales, but with a nod to TA, which lacked the failures at the spider but did exhibit the other two failures. One item of note was the heavy use of TA in the early mountain bike days, which may have resulted in greater failures due to the frequency of unplanned 'bush inspection' during downhill rides.

-Bryant Bainbridge

Portland Oregon