They appeared on my 2019 Giant Trinity Advanced Pro bike due to turning the handlebar too much. The cracks are on either side of the frame. Bike is riding fine. Should I be concerned or just keep having fun with the bike? Should I cover them with a bit of tape?
by douglashv
4 Comments
You need to have that repaired by a professional carbon fiber frame repair guy .
It may well be safe to ride but I wouldn’t ride it in that condition.
I’d stop riding it and get that repaired.
That’s a fault in the frame design, similar to the cannondale supersix evo gen 4? that came out in 2020. If you turned the bars too severely, the fork crown area would contact the lower bearing area of the head tube. In your case, it’s the upper bearing area of the head tube. Anyways, it wasn’t likely to happen unless dropping or crashing on the bike where the bars swing 90 degrees into the top tube, causing an extreme bar angle and thus hitting the head tube junction. I kinda doubt this was caused by just turning, you don’t often ever turn with such an extreme bar angle or you’d easily loose front wheel traction and fall. For that to really contact the head tube, you’d have to turn very severely which you never really do, especially on a TT bike like that. It’s more likely probably cause when working on the bike on the stand, the bars swing quite wide left and right causing friction and delaminating the head tube. This looks delaminated, would definitely have it checked out. Is it safe to ride? I wouldn’t ride it, especially knowing that it’s affecting the frontal area of the bike, responsible for steering and keeping your head and body upright from hitting the ground…
You could have a guy look at it in person. I’d be inclined to go ahead and ride. If a booboo that deep was in the middle of a tube, it would be different, but the layup in that area is massive.