We see SO many different examples of carbon fiber failure here at Ruckus, but few are as dramatic (and borderline explosive) as this Guru Chrono. What happens when you completely obliterate your ten year old custom bike from a company that no longer exists? Well, that’s where we come in. #remadeintheusa
The Customer’s Backstory, or JRA Gone Horribly Awry
It all started out as a normal, sunny day in Colorado as a father-son bike ride up and over Vail pass heading down into Copper mountain. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of riding it, the pass tops out at 10,600ft before rocketing down an absolutely beautiful descent. Honestly, our customer was lucky to make it out of this one with *just* a broken bike. He was chasing his son down to Copper when some oncoming bike traffic cut into his lane. At this point his only option was to veer off the road and barely avoid a head on collision with the other rider. The soft shoulder gobbled up his front wheel, completely arresting his forward motion, sending him somersaulting head over heels while still clipped in his pedals. He landed on his wheels, SOMEHOW, and the force of the impact then finally threw him from the bike and into a large bush. The bike tumbled for quite some distance, shattering the seat mast and both rims. It was a long walk back down to Copper, but at least he was still walking. We found out that this bike was his own custom geometry frame and he was not about to get rid of it. Thankfully, he came to us. 
This bike. Just look at it. Massive delamination and splintering like this mean an incredibly thorough investigation just to see how much more damage occurred. We had to take measurements of the seatpost angle and height prior to deconstruction in order to replicate the customer’s exact fit dimensions. Reattaching the seat mast (when we finally reached that step) was going to prove extremely difficult, because repairing the mast at an incorrect angle would allow the seatpost to contact the inside of the frame…a whole other problem in itself.
First, as is customary, we stripped all the paint and carbon to see the actual damage… which was massive. The seat mast literally separated from the frame! So, we had to get custom. For this repair we had to tool our own system to get the bike into the frame jig, and we were successful thanks to Brandon and Shawn’s careful measuring and machining.Stabilization of the fractured area was then the next step. This step is usually no sweat, but aero bikes have large areas of flat, non rounded tubes…so this can potentially be very difficult. It is also a tricky process because the repair itself needs to be firm enough to not crush under casting, but malleable enough to fold and mimic the shape of the bike. The frame then went through two separate casting cycles and still required body work before heading to our paint and graphics wizards.
Our goal here at Ruckus is to fix anything and everything that we can so that you can continue to ride on, friends. This frame was truly a labor of love for us, and we still can’t believe how amazing it turned out. Custom bikes can present custom challenges but none of them are too daunting for us to overcome. 