Brooks Cambium Fail

[FlashUNC]

Something ain't right. The first photo on Brooks own Cambium saddle page is, yup, a muddy cross racer:

http://www.brooksengland.com/cambium/

[cfox]

How does your t'aint look??

[Cicli]

Originally Posted by cfox

How does your t'aint look??

No photo necessary.

[Ken Robb]

It's probably because I'm so old but I have to wonder what effect this pounding had on your "parts".

[benford]

Originally Posted by Tihsepa

No photo necessary.

I'll spare you guys the after photos

[benford]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

Were you racing cross? I had a customer who broke 2 Selle Italia saddles..after he broke the warranty replacement, I asked him what the fook was he doing? Cross mounts(not racing cross)...they warrantied the second one but wouldn't have done a third.

I raced a cross race or two. But was mainly using it for work, couriering. Just seems sill that they advertise it for cross but it can't quite handle long term use in those terms.

Also, if anyone out there buys a Cambium in the near future, apparently if you go on Brooks website you can extend the warranty from 2 years to the usual 10 years!

[benb]

It's all about marketing... SRAM marketed their products for racing back when they hit the road in 2007 hard and sponsored pro teams and all that.. but at least those first few years any racing at all voided the warranty. Maybe the Brooks saddles are intended to make you feel like a racer but they don't expect you to actually race. (I know that seems to make little sense since they seemingly started these saddles as an invite-only thing and put them under racers butts to make everyone think they were super cool.)

[christian]

Sorry, but I think that cross is well outside the scope of expected usage for a bicycle saddle. I'm happy if my saddles for cross last a season. Warrantying a saddle used for cross seems like complaining that your car racing tires wear out in 140 miles...

[Lovetoclimb]

Originally Posted by benford

I raced a cross race or two. But was mainly using it for work, couriering. Just seems sill that they advertise it for cross but it can't quite handle long term use in those terms.

Also, if anyone out there buys a Cambium in the near future, apparently if you go on Brooks website you can extend the warranty from 2 years to the usual 10 years!

The cambium I bought recently came with literature in the box explicitly stating the warranty was for 10 years. Did not know I had to do anything to activate it for that duration ...

[benb]

Originally Posted by christian

Sorry, but I think that cross is well outside the scope of expected usage for a bicycle saddle. I'm happy if my saddles for cross last a season. Warrantying a saddle used for cross seems like complaining that your car racing tires wear out in 140 miles...

Not saying you should get to warranty them but most don't break, and these are expensive right? Cross mounts aren't that rough or the rider would get hurt. Cross is riding a bike and getting on and off it. It's hard to argue that's "well outside the scope of expected usage for a bike saddle."

[JMacII]

Originally Posted by benb

Not saying you should get to warranty them but most don't break, and these are expensive right? Cross mounts aren't that rough or the rider would get hurt. Cross is riding a bike and getting on and off it. It's hard to argue that's "well outside the scope of expected usage for a bike saddle."

Yeah, but in fairness you said you were using "it for work" as a courier. So you could be putting more wear on the saddle in a week than most people would do in a year. Especially mounting hard. Kind of like running a residential lawn mower in commercial service. A commercial outfit might put 60 hours on a mower in a good summer week. Most homeowners will put 25 hours on a tractor a year. So yeah, if you use the saddle that hard you might break it.

[merckx]

Originally Posted by JMacII

Yeah, but in fairness you said you were using "it for work" as a courier. So you could be putting more wear on the saddle in a week than most people would do in a year. Especially mounting hard. Kind of like running a residential lawn mower in commercial service. A commercial outfit might put 60 hours on a mower in a good summer week. Most homeowners will put 25 hours on a tractor a year. So yeah, if you use the saddle that hard you might break it.

Professional cyclists use their equipment for work too, and have expectations that their kit will get them to the end of the day.

[Cicli]

Originally Posted by merckx

Professional cyclists use their equipment for work too, and have expectations that their kit will get them to the end of the day.

Yeah, and if it makes it to dinner time, it has met the expectation for them.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by Tihsepa

Yeah, and if it makes it to dinner time, it has met the expectation for them.

Agreed.

How often during a Grand Tour is a given bike's chain swapped out for a new one? Probably a bit more often than we change ours.

[JMacII]

Originally Posted by merckx

Professional cyclists use their equipment for work too, and have expectations that their kit will get them to the end of the day.

Every material has a fatigue life. Some uses essentially put no fatigue on the part. Think of an aircraft in straight and level flight. Almost zero fatigue on the main structure. But, put the same airframe into a 7G turn and fatigue builds fast. One minute at 7G might put more wear on a component than 1000 hours straight and level. And one hard mount might put more strain on a saddle than 100 or a 1000 regular mounts. So multiply that across a working courier mounting and I mounting dozens of times a day and I can see how that leads to failure. I don't think it's a product defect, it's just an unusual amount of hard use on the product that is cycling it past its normal range and causing failure.