Thursday, August 5, 2010

Another Broken Carbon Crankset

I have broken the following in order over the past several years.

Ritchey WCS ISIS splined Crankset
FSA K Force ISIS splined Crankset
FSA K Force 2nd generation Crankset
Easton EC90 Crankset
FSA K Force 2nd generation Crankset
Easton EC90 Crankset

All are carbon. The interesting thing is that only the Ritchey had a carbon failure. All of the others is was a bond or some metal piece that failed. This time the Easton EC90 Crankset spindle came loose from the driveside arm where it is bonded. It doesn't spin totally free, it just moves a bit as you go through a crankarm revolution. It is very noticable on the road, but off road because of all the bumps it is not nearly so. This is why I raced with it on my Cernitz Buttercup singlespeed without realizing that there was an issue. And then when I did notice, I thought it was the Crank Brothers Eggbeaters which also have a reputation for breaking. (Speaking of that, I broke an Eggbeater pedal last night at cyclocross practice)

Anyway, a little research on the web and I found that this has become a common problem for these cranksets. In fact, Easton is not selling them anymore. And instead of giving me a new one, they are sending me a check for what I paid for them. Cool. So I am getting another Shimano Dura Ace crankset, which is pretty much exactly what I am getting back from Easton. That leaves me with only a 3 year old Campagnolo Record carbon crankset that was actually last produced about 5 years ago. It has an old style square taper bottom bracket. It currently resides on my commutter bike. It get more abuse than all of my other cranksets and has more miles on it than all of my other cranksets combined and multiplied by 2.

The FSA cranksets each lasted about 1500 miles. The Eastons each made it about 150 miles total. The first one was improperly manufactured so that one couldn't torque down adequately and I have already stated what went wrong this time.

Sigh....

No carbon cranks for me. I am not sure what I do, but I am Kryptonite to them. Maybe I should get a job doing product testing for these companies, because if there is a flaw, I'll find it.

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