carbon wheel comes apart on the track

[Veloo]

Not a recent upload so some may have already seen this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngv7Iu3y1o0

[ultraman6970]

If you listen, the front tubular or whatever they are using blows up, the aluminum outer rim gets off the wheel because is glued... then the rest is like in the cartoons... the front wheel disintegrates little by little. The guys got lucky tho... because if the accident happens in another way the fork would have send them flying 360 degrees over the handlebars.

[Netdewt]

They seem to just plow ahead as it is disintegrating.

[rustychisel]

They seem to just plow ahead as it is disintegrating.


errrr, riding the track... two riders, full gas, all that momentum. The tyre blowing would have been enough to throw most riders off the bike; that was both an incredibly lucky and skilful controlled crash.

[Veloo]

Reminds me of the Goggles Paesano episode of the Flintstones when Fred's wheels wear out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmQoWQb4tx0

[SlowPokePete]

Reminds me of the Goggles Paesano episode of the Flintstones when Fred's wheels wear out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmQoWQb4tx0

Brings me back...

SPP

[nooneline]

I can't even imagine the stresses on that system. You've got two big, muscular riders, going around a 45-degree banked turn at over 40mph. Full speed in a flying 200... that's a ton of stress on the tire.

[carpediemracing]

I can't even imagine the stresses on that system. You've got two big, muscular riders, going around a 45-degree banked turn at over 40mph. Full speed in a flying 200... that's a ton of stress on the tire.

+1

Add that no brakes, fixed gear, so a lot of the stuff I'd do to maintain balance when things get sketchy goes out the window. What's amazing is that the wheel didn't totally disintegrate immediately.

I've seen it before but this is the first time I watched it with sound. Holy smokes. I can't imagine being the stoker on the bike, like "We're gonna die!!!"

I was the stoker on a road tandem when we had a front tire blow out. It was me and another sprinter type racer (he was my boss at the bike shop, we both race for the shop team) just having fun so that basically meant going as fast as possible, recovering, then doing it again. We were sprinting on the flats and the downhills, just going as fast as we could, crawling whenever the terrain or wind wasn't nice, then we'd sprint when we could go really fast again. A good friend happened to drive by so he drove next to and with us for a number of miles, we were doing 40-45 mph much of the time, 50s on the slight downhills, recovering if we had to slow for traffic or stop for lights (Route 123 heading from South Salem, NY, into Norwalk, CT, slightly downhill rolling, very fast, we were on it to go fast). A lot of times I just put my head down and spun as fast as I could. I totally relied on the captain, a rider I trusted 100%, to do right by the bike.

btw the guy had a much better jump than me so I figure it had to be in the 1500-1700w peak range. My jump now is about 1200-1300w peak and back then I was realistically 20% faster in terms of top speed. So we were doing some huge efforts to launch the bike down a hill or whatever, it was a total blast.

On a similar Cannondale tandem, just with disc brakes instead of calipers, with my decidedly non-racing wife, we hit 45 mph on a flat road, both of us sprinting furiously.

Anyway on one ride we were flying down a short, steep hill and the road suddenly got bumpy. We started up the next hill and I was wondering what the heck the captain was doing since he wasn't shifting down and we'd get stuck on this ridiculously steep hill in the big ring. To my surprise he just came to a stop on the hill. The front tire had blown out on the descent and I didn't realize it, and he was struggling with the bike until he got it stopped on the uphill. I was blissfully unaware of what was happening while he was absolutely in a tizzy trying to hold the bars straight and keep his face and collarbone off the road. Ends up the road wasn't bumpy, it was the blown tire (a clincher) that was making the bike bump and shake.

[seanile]

they're probably luck they were on a tandem, that much weight spread out like that meant a much heavier lever, whereas if that happened to a single rider they'd have gone OTB.. much steeper fulcrum point.

[Netdewt]

errrr, riding the track... two riders, full gas, all that momentum. The tyre blowing would have been enough to throw most riders off the bike; that was both an incredibly lucky and skilful controlled crash.

Exactly. I would have freaked out and had a yard sale.

[Rebel_Biker]

It looks like the guy in the rear gets knocked out. His head snaps like a football player and his body goes limp.


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[11.4]

This was para-Olympics so the guy on the back was blind. Imagine feeling it and hearing your partner screaming "Oh, f..........." and not knowing what was going down.

Sadly, Mavic put together some ultralight versions of the Mavic Comete and they have had a serious habit of coming apart. Remember that Millar had one during a Tour time trial and it came apart coming right off the ramp? It's happened on the track with this series of rims quite regularly. The Comete is as bulletproof as it gets, but when it gets shaved by about 40% of its weight, it's nowhere near as strong. Plus, even in the original configuration, I don't think it says anywhere that it is made to handle a track tandem.

I used to race track tandems in the sprints. A lot. No matter who built the bike, or how they built it, it was a long lever arm and two strong riders and it simply twisted and torqued like crazy. You had to get used to it, and the instability of the bike under power was more of an issue to your riding than actually going fast on it.