Mike asked:
This one is curious - was it the crown that failed, the blades that bent, or the wheel that hit the downtube? \u2026
Many bikes, even heavy duty touring bikes, have used round blades with no ill effects.
And Kurt noted that:
I'd expect whether the fork blade sections are round or oval to be essentially immaterial to braking.
Mike, Kurt,
Both are correct in that the round vs. oval blades apparently didn\u2019t matter in this case.
The fork bent in the area of the crown itself \u2013 between the section where the steerer tube is brazed into the top of the crown and the section where the fork blades come up into the crown. The fork blades are not bent, and the hole for the brake wasn\u2019t near where the fork crown bent, so it wasn\u2019t weakened by the drilling \u2013 although this one was factory drilled. The flat sections at the top of the crown are no longer completely perpendicular to the steerer tube. Harvey Sachs helped me remove the crown race, and his opinion was that there just wasn\u2019t enough steel in the crown to make it strong enough. The fork was bent so that the wheel hit the downtube, resulting in my crash \u2013 and yes it\u2019s still bent. It wasn\u2019t just a momentary deflection due to very hard braking. I had used this bike for commuting for several years, so it had somewhat in excess of 15000 miles on it \u2013 but no rust.
Ben Sanford
Falls Church, VA
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