On Thursday, Mar 17, 2005, at 13:46 US/Pacific, gpvb1@comcast.net wrote:
> My informal CR survey last year turned up precisely zero vintage
> aluminum cranks (of any brand) that broke at the arm-to-spider
> junction. It actually surprised me a bit - I thought there would at
> least be *some* that broke there. Lots of cracks there, but no
> failures....
That must have been really informal because I've seen at least a dozen
completely broken. I had a completely broken crank and two right arms
with really long cracks that I drug around for years, but I recycled
them when I was getting ready to move to Belgium. None of these I
actually broke but were given to me as mementos. I also had a good
buddy of mine who knew I was a Mavic geek and passed me on a set of his
old cranks, upon installation prep I found both arms cracked and the
right one in two places. If you want to see a broken Campy crank at
the spider with your own eyes scroll down this page a bit.
http://pardo.net/
I think one of the reasons that you've never seen a completely broken crank could be that the Campy flaw has been long known. I remember hearing reports of cracking Campagnolo cranks 20+ years ago. I think riders knew to inspect their cranks and pulled the cranks before actual failure. Most of the actual failures I've seen were from folks who bought used bikes and didn't know about the history of the crank. best, Brandon"monkeyman"ives Cd'A, ID.