MSR Spoiler...read the play by play on CyclingNews first

[mjb266]

Wow. that guy can really read a race better than the others. His team isn't the strongest and it's not really built around him but he still manages to win huge races by being perfectly positioned. You'd think that teams would start having a caboose on their lead out trains.

discuss

[pdxmech13]

Eternal Zabel, led out Pettachi and still finishes in front of him.
I will truly miss him when he retires, but in the mean time im hoping for a larger palmares.

[AgilisMerlin]

Pettachi seems to have lost that old shot in the arm of past glory days :D

Zabel is all class.........................with a capital Z

Alan Davis..............good gawd damn ride

def. watching this tomorrow.....................

boonen is going to get spanked this spring........................ :banana:

[pdxmech13]

Boonen..........I wouldn't count them chicks quite yet.

[mjb266]

My question is, what would Zabel have been able to do if Pettachi led him out?

[pdxmech13]

ah more broken bits. just another thing SBI dosn't want to see.

[Grant McLean]

ah more broken bits. just another thing SBI dosn't want to see.

?

Actually, that's exactly what's supposed to happen.
Remember what happened to George Hincape in Roubaix?
The aluminum in his fork didn't fail correctly, and that's
what's really dangerous. Designers spend a lot of time
making sure parts break correctly.

Same thing should happen when an F1 car hits the wall.

g

[pdxmech13]

G
i understand how cars take impacts and its good for them to fail in that way.
but what good does a fork breaking at the bonding point haave for a rider.

[Big Dan]

At least it was light.....

while it lasted.

Listen to the coach.

:p

[goonster]

?
Same thing should happen when an F1 car hits the wall.


Edit: I see what Grant is saying, i.e. it is safer for the fork legs to snap off than for the steerer to fail. Neither should happen while JRA, but that's the preferred sequence.

Can't really disagree with that, but I disagree with the F1 car analogy. On the car, everything can get sheared off in a shunt, but the monocoque must remain intact.

The scariest gear failure in recent history, for me, is still Rene Haselbacher's broken (aluminum) handlebars in the Tour, coupla years ago.

[Grant McLean]

G
i understand how cars take impacts and its good for them to fail in that way.
but what good does a fork breaking at the bonding point haave for a rider.

I highly doubt the rider was on board at the time!

There is no "bonding point", the fork is a 1 piece monocoque, with fibers
that run the entire length of the fork. In an impact (that one must have been
crazy severe, likely 60 to 0 in no time flat!) when a fork reaches the overload
point, the energy has to go somewhere. Since carbon doesn't bend, the
crumple sequence needs to be controlled, exactly the way that fork demonstrated.

g

[Grant McLean]

Edit: I see what Grant is saying, i.e. it is safer for the fork legs to snap off than for the steerer to fail. Neither should happen while JRA, but that's the preferred sequence.

Can't really disagree with that, but I disagree with the F1 car analogy. On the car, everything can get sheared off in a shunt, but the monocoque must remain intact.

The scariest gear failure in recent history, for me, is still Rene Haselbacher's broken (aluminum) handlebars in the Tour, coupla years ago.


OK, it's not a perfect analogy. But the frame is intact, likely not even
damaged. You could easily make a carbon frame and fork that would
be virtually impossible to break in 100 km/h crashes, and it'd weigh
about 3.5 lbs. But riders want 800 gram frames, so they have to
balance the impact strength with weight.

More than i can say for this steel car chassis, at 1/3 the speed of the average
F1 crash a driver walks away from....

g

[goonster]

More than i can say for this steel car chassis, at 1/3 the speed of the average
F1 crash a driver walks away from....


Nope, not fair. Carbon fiber does improve safety for racecar drivers, but this picture does not illustrate why.

That Czech Seat submarined an overhanging barrier. The F1 driver would have been decapitated just the same.

I also disagree with your assertion that Wegmann's fork failure demonstrates a "crumple sequence". It didn't crumple, it snapped, and it absorbed very little energy in the process.

[MikeM]

Although it looks nasty I know I haven't heard what happened to him - judging from the rider he walked away with only some road rash. The only time I've seen forks break in that way is when colliding with a solid object and at race pace I doubt he'd be walking away in too much of a hurry!

I would have thought it far mor likely that he went down and then a race vehicle drove over his front wheel.

[Grant McLean]

Nope, not fair. ....

I also disagree with your assertion that Wegmann's fork failure demonstrates a "crumple sequence". It didn't crumple, it snapped, and it absorbed very little energy in the process.

I didn't mean the fork coming off being part of a crumple zone, as in
energy dissipation, I mean the "failure sequence", in that it's designed
to break in a particular order, or sequence.

Forks should break like the F1 cars suspension pieces, they just snap off,
it's irrelevent to the energy of the crash. What do people want? Carbon
forks so strong they rip the head tube off the frame?

Some people look at a broken bike part and point "look it broke, it's bad!"
That's the "not fair" comment. The frame did it's job!

g

[learlove]

when will they learn????

all I can say is, GOT LUGGED STEEL.

[Grant McLean]

when will they learn????

all I can say is, GOT LUGGED STEEL.


http://www.metacafe.com/watch/197738/broken_fork/

g