After only owning my Marin for 8 month (bought it brand new) and doing primarily XC and road riding, my seat tube and top tube ripped in two. I have put 1k miles on my bike in those 8 months and I am definitely on the heavier side of the MTBer, but this still feels absurd for someone not riding Enduro. I was very fortunate to literally just be riding down the road when it happened and it just locked up my back tire. My LBS has it now and is dealing with Marin for warranty, but I'm still upset and concerned about it. Especially cause the bottom snap was right where the internal routing hole for the dropper was drilled. Its gonna be something that lingers over my head from now on when riding it.
EDIT: I have added my trailfork ride data in the comments, since some people seem to think i am lying about how this happened. I do also carry my bike on the roof of my car, but i am not fortunate enough to have a garage i can park my vehicles in. I am simply just posting about it and now learning its apparently a weak spot on these frames. If i did goof up, why would i be lying and trying to shine light on the situation?
EDIT EDIT: just some more context. I was riding back home from a small 3 mile loop on a very very mild green walking trail by my house that I normally do because its close. I wish I had a cool story to go along with this. I had my seat slammed (back of my seat ate the tire for proof) and was standing up pedaling to get ready to go through shallow normal ditch that runs parallel with the road. Just got in the grass and it all fell apart.
Have a I ridden a lot harder in the past? Absolutely. But it's been a few weeks since I had been to a proper park in my area cause it's been wet.
by PlatypusRuleTheWorld
18 Comments
you totally broke the top tube and the seat tube at the same time. I feel like we’re missing something here.
Roof rack by chance?
I don’t think it is the whole for the cable. The failures are by the welds. Maybe the frame was not heat treated properly after welding.
JRA
Yes you did.
JRA? BS.
After 22 years working in the industry, hundreds of warranties, I can tell you I’ve NEVER seen someone completely snap a frame in two different places when they were “Just” riding down the road.
It looks a lot like “Roof Rackidis”
They have a tendency to do that
https://www.reddit.com/r/mountainbiking/comments/1edyaz6/alloy_frame_couldnt_handle_the_watts/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mountainbiking/comments/1j0kvcw/frame_snapped/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marinbikes/comments/1sfkuc9/rip_riftzone_1_you_lasted_me_only_few_months/
Yes that’s broke
So roof rack makes sense. I could not figure how in the holy fuck this was even possible otherwise.
Ive seen pictures of a couple broken rift zones on here in the last few years, they were all broken in that same spot.
It is a wierd spot, its like the seatpost is overstresing the seat tube. All i can think of is maybe tall people or people running alot of exposed seatpost could give it a longer lever to put that kind of force into a frame. Its just wierd, it seems like the rider would almost have to be seated for it to break there. The big impacts our bikes take are usually with the rider standing.
Regardless, bummer OP. Ive got a 2022, and i enjoy its non-brokenness alot, so i hope it stays that way.
I guess you found the rift zone(s).
Oh! That’s horrible. It looks like you found the rift zone.
Ouch
Its so weird how popular roof racks have become since this thread started.
I’m Clydesdale (6’3 and 260 lbs) and I cracked two rear triangles and one front triangle in the same place on the last gen rift zone between 2019-2021. I was lucky enough to catch all of the cracks before they became catastrophic, kind of shocked to see this has carried on over multiple generations though. For what it’s worth, Marin was good about replacements but it really turned me off the brand.
So are we saying we believe the OP had his bike secured on a roof rack and went under a low overpass/garage/etc and the impact is what destroyed the frame?
Or if the frame splitting is a “known issue” as many are stating — why hasn’t Marin done something to correct it, and wouldn’t Marin be held liable if this happened while you were simply “riding down the road” — like OP says he was doing?
I’ve MTBed for a few years, but unfortunately I don’t known enough about frames snapping in half to warrant an opinion. I’m curious because that seems like an incredibly low-quality frame and/or gross rider error for an 8-month old bike…
Here is the Trailforks data from the ride that the breaking happened on. The waypoint is where it happened, but i then had to keep walking the bike after to get back home.
[https://imgur.com/a/vTKOJE2](https://imgur.com/a/vTKOJE2)
I don’t know about y’all, but I have a intense primer 29 S and it had a slight bubble in the paint on the carbon and Intense gave me a whole new frame and paid for a LBS to switch everything over. I noticed the bubble when I first got it out of the box. It was around the head tube. Not only did they replace the whole frame without any questions asked they gave me the updated version which was a new color scheme and it was sick. I recommend a company like Intense. Thank you, Intense for kicking ass and taking care of a fellow mountain biker.
P.S… i’m actually kind of glad it happened because the mechanic at the LBS said that it was put together like crap. Everything was loose. There was no lube on anything. The bottom bracket was dry as a popcorn fart and my Chain had severe cracks in it on several links. Maybe I’ll post some pictures & the story in a future post. Bottom line is I will be an Intense customer for life for the way they handled everything.