This crack has been on the bike for a few years, and it's slowly spreading. If I continue to ride it despite this, what will happen when it breaks? Will the seat post fall over? Will my bike fold in on itself? Will I be flung forward? Or could this shear completely without me noticing?
by Correct-Arm-8539
10 Comments
A few ***years***?
You’re already riding on borrowed time.
When this breaks, your bike will go to heaven and you’ll reincarnate as a smart person.
Just maybe maybe five minutes before it snaps catastrohpically , a little flag will appear with a tooting alarm, giving you ample time to dismount.
Depending on various factors, you will die!
It will crack in half, leading you into a catastrophic fall where the bottom half will impale your thigh. You will die from bleeding out in 2 minutes. Femoral artera.
Death is imminent
So there’s stress in the frame that is causing that crack to grow, so something _will_ happen when the material offers too little opposition to whatever force is causing it to propagate.
My guess is that the seat tube will probably snap at the top, which isn’t great as that part should definitely be attached to the rest of the bike.
Any sort of sudden change in balance when riding is bad, and it’s that sort of thing that can precipitate a bad crash.
My thought is that the bike has obviously given you years of faithful service & that you don’t want to be remembered as that guy who died under a bus with a bike frame stuck in his butt, so maybe the right course of action is to track down a new bike, or seek out your local bicycle collective & negotiate to have your parts moved across to a less destroyed frame.
Small crack might develop slowly, but once it reaches a tipping point. Things could happen quickly!
What happens then could depend on how much seatpost tube is in the frame. Likely a bad situation either way.
The frame splits, you probably crash, possibly ending up underneath a vehicle.
Once the seatpost snaps when you’re riding at 75km/hr speed in a downhill, you’ll end up losing all your balance probably even losing grip of the handlebars entirely and when that happens any of the following things could happen:
1. Bike moves sideways and you fall off the cliff and get absolutely shattered
2. Get hit by upcoming traffic and get thrown 20ft in the air, swirling like a fidget and getting struck to the earth and splattered like a watermelon.
3. Let go off the bike and jump to the side and get meatcrayoned.