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Roubaix-Elite Specialized Frame defect

18K views 224 replies 34 participants last post by  Coolhand 
#1 · (Edited)
ALERT -Roubaix-Elite Specialized Frame defect

I want to alert anyone who owns a 1997-98 Roubaix-elite Road bike that they may have a serious stress flaw in the front fork. I purchased this bike new in the 90's and have ridden it for years on the road. Yesterday on a ten mile spin around my neighborhood I was nearly killed , All of a sudden once I left the smooth road and traveling over pavers in a roundabout circle the front fork broke and I went flying over the handlebars on to the pavement. The next thing I remember in waking up in the back of the ambulance on my way to the hospital. Luckily I did not sustain any broken bones but did some damage to my face and broke a tooth . I feel so fortunate today to be still alive that I felt compelled to alert any who has one of these road bikes . Their seems to be a manufacturing defect in the frame . It snapped like a twig and separated from the bike.
I would welcome any feedback from anyone who has more knowledge of this happening to anyone else or what you would do if this happened to you. Thanks
 
#2 ·
Contact Specialized with pics, and CC the CPSC.
 
#7 ·
Because after over 20 years in the industry I have come to the conclusion that there are no 20 year old warranty claims/recall issues. If something is an actual warranty issues or is deserving of a recall it will happen loooooooong before 20 years. I'm 99.9% sure there is more to this story and that it isn't an actual warranty issue. But that .1% is open to anything. That's why it's a problem for me.
 
#14 ·
ONE instance of a fork failure does NOT constitute a manufacturing defect.

Sudden failure is one of the unfortunate potential side effects of carbon forks. I'm not saying it WILL happen, but carbon forks, WHEN they fail, have a fast failure mode whereas steel forks will tend to bend well before they actually separate. I've had it happen twice with steel forks and had plenty of warning something was amiss.

That's why most manufacturers advise customers, in their owners' manuals, to regularly inspect their frames. But most owners seldom do.

I think the OP is over reacting to what happened, and likely failed to follow the recommendations in their owner's manual. Who does?

Ironically, we demand lighter and lighter bike parts and the manufacturers are more than happy to oblige us, but we don't want to pay the price of pushing the limits of weight vs. durability.
 
#16 ·
Yep, the price exacted by the gods of light weight. Curious to know where the two steel forks broke on you? I've seen them break at the steering tube welds, and right below the head lug. Now I'm seeing pictures of carbon forks breaking in the middle of the blades in crashes steel forks could handle easily! :shocked:

Perhaps OP will illuminate the issue with more details!
 
#19 ·
Thank You to everyone for your feedback. I need to make a correction after checking my records more closely my bike is a 2010 Roubaix-Elite Specialized . To clarify what happened . The fork completely snapped about a quarter of the way down. I want to be clear I am only looking to warn anyone who owns one of these bikes to get the front fork checked or replaced. I am the original owner of the bike and I checked and maintained the bike on a regular basis. In fact it had been in the shop the prior week for minor tune up. Let me be clear I could have been killed very easily had I been riding faster or had been n traffic. The fork simply snapped with no warning as I stood
to pedal. By the way I only weigh 165LBS. I hope that this post will save someone from serious injury. This is not about a warranty but safety.
 
#20 ·
Can you explain with greater clarity where the fork broke? Still not clear. 1/4 of the way down from where? Did the fork legs break? Did the steerer break? Did the crown break. One side first?

I am sorry to hear you were hurt and thank you for your public service to alert Roubaix owners. I own a late 2011 Roubaix SL3 Pro I ride almost daily.
Specialized as you know has had problematic forks in the past...two recalls of note. I believe it was SL4.Tarmacs and most recent redesigned Allez's for 2018..both with carbon steerers. If anybody has more precise information on Spesh recalls, please post.

Heal quickly and thanks again.
 
#21 ·
I want to alert anyone who owns a 1997-98 Roubaix-elite Road bike that they may have a serious stress flaw in the front fork. I purchased this bike new in the 90's and have ridden it for years on the road. Yesterday on a ten mile spin around my neighborhood I was nearly killed , All of a sudden once I left the smooth road and traveling over pavers in a roundabout circle the front fork broke and I went flying over the handlebars on to the pavement. The next thing I remember in waking up in the back of the ambulance on my way to the hospital. Luckily I did not sustain any broken bones but did some damage to my face and broke a tooth . I feel so fortunate today to be still alive that I felt compelled to alert any who has one of these road bikes . Their seems to be a manufacturing defect in the frame . It snapped like a twig and separated from the bike.
I would welcome any feedback from anyone who has more knowledge of this happening to anyone else or what you would do if this happened to you. Thanks
Thank You to everyone for your feedback. I need to make a correction after checking my records more closely my bike is a 2010 Roubaix-Elite Specialized . To clarify what happened . The fork completely snapped about a quarter of the way down. I want to be clear I am only looking to warn anyone who owns one of these bikes to get the front fork checked or replaced. I am the original owner of the bike and I checked and maintained the bike on a regular basis. In fact it had been in the shop the prior week for minor tune up. Let me be clear I could have been killed very easily had I been riding faster or had been n traffic. The fork simply snapped with no warning as I stood
to pedal. By the way I only weigh 165LBS. I hope that this post will save someone from serious injury. This is not about a warranty but safety.
So which is it? Has it ever been dropped or crashed or abused in any way? Did you inspect it regularly or did you count on the shop mechanics to inspect it when they performed your tune ups?

As much as I'm not a fan of Specialized, something breaking after 10 or maybe 20 years doesn't necessarily a flaw or a defect. Ever hit a pot hole or caught the wheel in a road fissure or crack? A lot of things can happen over the course of 10 or 20 years, I don't remember which, that can lead to a failure.
 
#26 ·
Here are pictures

I want to alert anyone who owns a 1997-98 Roubaix-elite Road bike that they may have a serious stress flaw in the front fork. I purchased this bike new in the 90's and have ridden it for years on the road. Yesterday on a ten mile spin around my neighborhood I was nearly killed , All of a sudden once I left the smooth road and traveling over pavers in a roundabout circle the front fork broke and I went flying over the handlebars on to the pavement. The next thing I remember in waking up in the back of the ambulance on my way to the hospital. Luckily I did not sustain any broken bones but did some damage to my face and broke a tooth . I feel so fortunate today to be still alive that I felt compelled to alert any who has one of these road bikes . Their seems to be a manufacturing defect in the frame . It snapped like a twig and separated from the bike.
I would welcome any feedback from anyone who has more knowledge of this happening to anyone else or what you would do if this happened to you. Thanks
Pictures
 

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#28 ·
here's the thing I see with all the confusions and expectations regarding the use of carbon forks (and frames for that matter). I'll just list my opinions, and not in any particular order of importance

1. at the very top level of composite R&D, it is the PhDs who are doing it. I'm talking about the PhDs working at the university labs and at the labs of the top companies, such as at Toray, Mitsubishi, Boeing, etc. Bicycle companies do not have anybody with this level of expertise in composite.

2. then down the rung of knowledge are the "BS" degree engineers. There are many level of engineers at this level. I suspect the top BS level guys are those working for a big aerospace or composite makers. I have a hard time that an aspiring budding BS guy would want to go work for Giant or Merida (that's just my opinion). The engineers working in the cycling industry are probably average composite engineers, or retired or close to retired aerospace guys looking for an easy job.

3. then down the rung are the technicians. These are the guys doing the grunt of the testing and QA. They are still very knowledgeable thru sheer experience.

4. then down the rung are the low-wage factory workers (many of whom are females) doing the laying up of the carbon prepeg sheets. They are just going thru the motion of a job. That's about it. But I'll wager that even these workers know more about carbon fiber than an average consumer.

5. at the bottom of the knowledge rung is your typical consumers. And here is where I see the issue lies. By the time you go from step 1 (PhD) to step 5 (consumer), there is now a big gap in knowledge. When you tell a consumer to check and inspect his carbon parts, what exactly are you asking him to check? What is he to look for? What equipment is he to use? What sort of knowledge is he expected to have while checking? So far, what I see, it's a lot of internet bro's telling each other what they should check for. And to add to the myth of check for failure, there is a lot of confusion/myth that carbon fiber is so stiff and strong (IF built right) that any failure is to suspected of user's error.

Can you imagine what sales of carbon bicycle would be like if there would be a big and bold sign listing out all the items that the potential buyer is expected to maintain. I'm pretty damn sure that if you put a sign that says "weight limit 200 lbs" or "check your fork on every ride or risk potential faceplant", the sales of carbon bikes will be lowered.

Now I'm not saying that aluminum or steel bikes won't fail. However, because checking for metal failure is usually easier than checking for composite failure, and in addition, metals usually gives signs before they go completely, from this stance, metal may be safer to operate?
 
#35 ·
hmm nope

the quality of the engineering at many bike mfrs is highly overstated. They are just not regulated and not following the strictest aviation protocols in carbon frame layup, guaranteeing no voids and weak points. It is the wild west, anyone can make a carbon frame and sell it despite varied or inadequate R&D.

this according to one aviation composites expert of Luescher Technic, one Raoul Luescher

https://youtu.be/-qsLYlVWkbQ
 
#39 ·
^This^.

You don't normally see both fork legs breaking in the same exact place/way w/o some kind of help. There's an industry term..."JRA", just riding along. It has been associated w/ issues like this forever. "I was just riding along and both fork legs exploded". Very rare for something like this to happen.
 
#37 ·
it's hard for me to tell what would cause such breakage. Did the fork initially develop a crack on one of the legs, causing the OP to lose control of the bike and then crash into some other object/curb that then resulted in what we see in the pics? Hard to say one way or another. OP was knock unconscious, probably he didn't recall a thing about how he crashed. I'm guessing it'd require some soft of crash forensic expert specializing in composite to analyze this issue. However, I don't see the OP blaming the bike industry, he's issuing a warning, and a fair one.
 
#45 ·
I'm with cxwrench on this one, the way it broke seems much more like the damage would be caused by some kind of impact either before (without your knowledge) or during the accident, but not a defect.

Nonetheless, thanks for the reminder for all of us riding on carbon parts that are getting old to give the old frames and forks a once over...

BTW it's pretty amazing what a wheel can survive when a frame gets munched... I destroyed a fork and cracked a frame via the old "drive the bike on your roof rack into a building" method, wheels were still perfecto...
 
#46 ·
looking at the upper part of the failure, the front of the fork looks like it's snapped, jagged, but clean, whereas the trailing edge of the fork looks like it been the end of the failure with stuff going everywhere and delamination up towards the crown. Like when it failed it failed backwards, folding under, like it hit something (and that something could be anything small or large) rather than just collapsing...
also the front tyre looks like it has a big mark on it, but hard to tell from the pic.
 
#47 ·
Good point, the direction of the fork travel upon failure could shed some light.

I would be under the assumption that a JRA failure would have the wheel going out ahead of bicycle where as a head-on impact failure would have the wheel collapsing into the bicycle.

So maybe the direction of the carbon fiber “tear” as it were could narrow the potential cause.

Then we could all sleep better!
 
#50 ·
About fifteen years ago I was riding with a friend and he ground into a curb (hitting the curb parallel) and he snapped his fork just like the one in the pic after he almost stopped with pronounced horizontal breaks opposite of the 'grain'. He had a carbon fork, but it had aluminum sleeves that went down from the crown to right about the OP's break point. It was easy to see how that could be the failure point for what he did.

I agree there's more to this JRA story. I can't tell that this bike has been ridden and put up wet, and I don't see the mark on the front tire. There's an identical long mark (label?) on the rear tire. But even with a trashed fork, I wouldn't lay it down on the DS.
 
#51 ·
If the OP is groggy on exactly what happened, it could have been a flat on the front tire, that led to a rolled tire and sudden crash. It's happened to me, I went down while turning on a tire with a slow leak and almost no pressure left. The front end went out like I was on ice.
 
#61 ·
When talking failure analysis, you really need to include the loads, and then the locations of greatest stress based on typical and then non-typical loads.

Under normal riding, the typical load is vertical to support the bike. A non-typical load would be running into an object like a brick wall, where the major load is in the horizontal plane, and greatest stress would be the cantilever point at the top of the fork crown. Failure would occur in that case at the weakest point closest to the highest stress point. Right about where this failure occurred.

And usually total failure comes from either one huge high stress event, or fatigue, where you get a small crack that then grows slowly with repeated reversing stress cycles. When the slow growing crack gets to a critical crack size, you get sudden failure. Hard to say which happened here, but usually you would see an external crack on close inspection.
Fully agree forks don't suddenly break under normal riding.
 
#63 ·
And usually total failure comes from either one huge high stress event, or fatigue, where you get a small crack that then grows slowly with repeated reversing stress cycles. When the slow growing crack gets to a critical crack size, you get sudden failure. Hard to say which happened here, but usually you would see an external crack on close inspection.
Fully agree forks don't suddenly break under normal riding.
You seem to be saying that forks do and do not suddenly fail. Which one is it?
 
#73 ·
found this article which has lots of good info
https://cyclingtips.com/2015/08/what-is-the-lifespan-of-a-carbon-frame/

The point I made about fatigue above applies mainly to metals like steel or alu. Carbon fiber is slightly different, but apparently still susceptible to failure after repeated stress reversal cycles, especially after damage where the resin matrix breaks down and then internal fibers are broken. Article says same thing can happen if defective from new.
 
#75 ·
found this article which has lots of good info
https://cyclingtips.com/2015/08/what-is-the-lifespan-of-a-carbon-frame/

The point I made about fatigue above applies mainly to metals like steel or alu. Carbon fiber is slightly different, but apparently still susceptible to failure after repeated stress reversal cycles, especially after damage where the resin matrix breaks down and then internal fibers are broken. Article says same thing can happen if defective from new.
Exactly.
 
#78 ·
Awrighti’mcallingoutkontactand11spdyoualljustquityourbanteringandbickeringyou’reruiningthewholebicycleforumforallofusjustdon’trespondtoeachotherandputtheotherpersononignoretherewasanearlierthreadonwhythisplaceisaghosttownandyouallwerecitedi’mgettingcompletelysickofthiscrapmyselfandidon’tthinkiwouldwanttogoonaridewitheitheroneofyou!!!!
 
#82 · (Edited)
Agree with you but here is something that goes over your head. It is always guys who never contribute a cogent thought that call out trolling when they aka you are the true trolls. Why? Because, no there will never be perfect unanimity of thought and will always be disagreement. Purpose or at least the idea is to flush out the truth as different posters provide their version of it. But what of substance have you contributed as perhaps a counterpoint to anything written here? Nothing of course, which is the very definition of a troll. You can complain about rancor all you like for those willing to put their thoughts out there but it is you who are truly the troll. Just for the record, I am absolutely certain you have nothing of substance to contribute and why you only contribute disdain. Makes sense doesn't it?
If I am wrong, make a cogent point.

My disagreements with Kontact are based upon what I believe to very oblique references he makes repeatedly which have no basis in truth or the scientific method. Off the wall supposition. The other guys in this thread however provided solid observations. I find Kontact in general to be obtuse and off point and hence why I speak up and then of course resulting subsequent devolvement.
Designing products is what I have done for a living since graduating from Engineering school. No, arguing with lay people, in particular those which no understand of fatigue, stress versus strain, moment of inertia and section modulus…all underpinning of strength of materials taught in junior level Engineering classes, they are the building blocks of design and root causing a failure mode such as this…not bizarre references to garage doors…lol.

But do agree that bickering is unnecessary. A scientist should never argue with a moron is the bottom line, but point, unlike others that have contributed good thoughts, you really aren’t part of the solution. Others in this thread have made cogent arguments whether they are engineers or not. Some just have better grasp than others but truth be told, you are trolling this thread bro.

All said, without a better understanding of the crash scenario and true history of the bike when the OP didn’t even really know what model year it is….there is no foundation for understanding the failure mode other than observing the obvious fork breakage.

There will be no warranty aka frame replacement for this bike aside from its age. The failure appears to be not JRA…but may have been JRA…but appears to be an impact failure to snap the fork....particularly with damage aka stress concentration to the tire. Or, the result of a history of harsh impact degradation due to how the bike is ridden perhaps in concert with a less than robust fork the way it was molded. This is called an adverse stack up of events. Un-provable and in light of better recollection from the owner which may not even matter to Spesh, I believe that will be Specialized’s assessment as well.

What matters all said, is the OP will heal and will be good to ride another day on a new bike or on his Roubaix with a replacement fork.

Suffice to say that Roubaix fork failures including all the Roubaix owners I know buttressed by owners on the web, I have never heard of another Roubaix fork failure. No doubt they exist but the history of any other failures maybe partly contributed by how the bike was treated. My Roubaix has been down twice with me on it bouncing off the pavement…but I don’t run it into short curbs like some do as a rule or hit pot holes at speed as a practice of riding either but have jumped my share.

I am out for the thread and have shared my thoughts.
 
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