Nokon Brake Cable Failure

My front Nokon cable snapped at the race this Sunday. Thankfully it happened in the last stretches of the race so I was able to use both my brakes for the most part. Now this is a dangerous situation, especially if you're riding somewhere hilly. The front brakes are crucial. I think a fair share of good luck was with me.

Now I haven't paid too much attention to the cables, but I'll just presume that they started fraying around the clamp point, and the brakes were also not sufficiently adjusted closer to the rim. When that happens, you keep braking on and off with a larger travel and soon the cyclic tensioning snaps it at some point in time. The rear brake cable looks fine though.

I don't think this should have happened so early. I rode only 1200 miles this season so far. :(



Bontrager Tubular Spoke Failure

Another friend, a young 17 year old racer broke one of his spokes on his Bontrager tubulars. I wish I had a camera to catch it. This boy is pretty talented but the fact is, he's big.

I inspected it and it was a midsection fatigue failure. Fatigue is characteristic in that you can almost put the two broken pieces together at their snap point.

He needs to shed off some weight if he wants to reduce the radial forces on the wheel. Or he should go with a wheel built for his size, which I don't think many people pay attention to. The other obvious fact is to not abuse the wheel too much, as through bunny hopping or meeting every single road bump out there. I would also caution him to check his bike fit and see if he's putting more weight on the front end than he should be, because I think front spoke failures are rare. I guess its going to be an expensive fix for him since they were deep dish tubulars.