Had a really off day today both on and of the bike and ended the day by driving my wifes Canyon CF SLX bike into the garage while on the roof rack

The bike was in a Thule roof rack, where you put the fork into a quick release thing. Impact was on the seatpost, which broke clean of. Roof rack moved about 5 cm and was bend a little. Now I am of course nervous if something else may have happened to the bike. Impact was on the seatpost, but the roof rack was moved due to the connection via the fork. I took the fork of and inspected it wery carefully and also the area around the head tube and seattube. Nothing to see. No play in the headset or anything.

What do you say, were I lucky that only the seatpost broke or is there a big risk that carbon structure in the frame or fork or something else have been damaged?

I know I should have it inspected by Canyon, but it will take weeks to sent it to them and we need the bike, so any advice would be appreciated

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Bring the mountains to Denmark!!

hopefully the post gave way before too much load could be applied to the frame. fork damage is unlikely- it's mostly the dropouts trying to slip upward out of the mount.
i'd reinspect the seat tube, including inside where the post goes. also, the force pushing the post back tries to compress the stays. did the wheel tray bend down where the wheel sits? if so, you can get an idea of the load applied by seeing how much force it takes to bend the tray by hand.
good luck.

I'd be cautious about riding the frame without some sort of testing first. Or I'd check with the manufacturer about some sort of crash replacement policy (clearly this won't be covered by warranty).

The thing with damage to carbon is that it may not always be detectible upon "visual inspection", plus driving into a garage is a very general statement. We don't know what angle, at what speed it happened, and whether the frame suffered any other damage after the initial hit.

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After a visual inspection, start with the "coin test". Tap it all over with a coin, lightly, and listen to the noise. Dead spots are damaged. If there is no visible damage and you don't hear any dead spots, that's at least a good sign. But if you find a dead spot, then you know it's bad. It's a test that won't tell you for certain it's ok, but it can identify some invisible problems. It's not enough to say "certainly safe", but if you find a problem then you know it's certainly unsafe.

That said, I'd be terrified to ride it without a professional looking at it. And I don't know about you and your wife, but there's no way on earth that I would let my wife on that bike until I knew it was safe.

I ran my bike into the garage 3 times

first time i did it the frame was fine. Front carbon rim, right shifter, handlebars and saddle were broken.
second time ripped the down tube into two, front carbon rim again, front brake calliper, crankset and rear derailleur damaged.
third time ripped the down tube into two, front carbon rim again, front brake calliper and front hub bearings.

The only way to be sure is to get an ultrasound test done on the carbon frame/fork.

it's very rare to have carbon damage without it damaging the paint work in some kind of way.

no damage to garage door

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2012 Scott Foil Premium

After a very very thorough inspection I found 2 small hairline cracks. One where the alu end of the fork is joint with the carbon and one at where the chain stay joins the bottom bracket area. I took the bike to the LBS and they also made an inspection and found that the hairlines had nothing to do with hidding the garage, but are from the joints settling when the frame was made. They did some different test on the frame and also explained that the seat post is significantly weaker than the frame and by breaking has absorbed most of the force.

They don't have a scanner, but the regular do these kind of assesment for insurrance companies, when people have crashed, so they have a lot of experience and the verdict was that the frame is fine.

I will however be keeping an eye with the hairlines just to be sure. Thanks for the advice.

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Bring the mountains to Denmark!!

It's your wifes bike... you'll be fine... ride on...

Check out this cool app so you never forget that your bikes are on top of your car when pulling into your garage - http://www.bikesavr.com. Just thought it might be worth sharing

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Steve loves cycling but when his bike rack fell off heading down the highway along with 4 family bikes, he’s since got a bit geeky about bike rack essentials!

He writes about his obsession here:
http://www.bestbikerackreviewsite.com

Nobody here can help you...


Take the bike to the shop and have them inspect it for you starting at all of the drop-outs. Pull the fork apart completely and have them inspect all of the steering parts as well...

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

Sorry, but I laughed a lot about your post

How could you do it 3 times, oh my!

Sunstroke and a few beers,very easily I would imagine.