It looks a lot like what Mark Hickey described happened to his friend on Mark's bike in last month's thread (except the bike is not a Habanero).
I wonder what that fork is aluminum or carbon?
In the earlier thread some opined that a soft squirrel was not capable of causing this type of accident. I still think that there is enough substance to a squirrel to stop the front wheel. These photos look authentic enough and I would love to learn the details.
For me, the really cool thing in these pictures is the broken fork. Since the tire will skid when the friction coefficient is exceeded, there must be a vertical force in excess of the combined rider and bike weight. I can't tell if it is carbon or not. If it is carbon, carbon forks often take 800 lbs or so to break when loaded at the dropout. If the force is applied to the tire contact patch, the moment arm is roughly doubled and it requires a force on the order of 400 lbs to break the fork (some forks may be stronger or weaker). John Forester proposes how this might happen here: http://www.johnforester.com/Articles/BicycleEng/forkbend.htm I have looked at this type of failure before and tried to figure out the dynamics. I think it can occur but is very rare. I am not sure but a ductile (e.g steel) fork may perform better in this scenario than a more brittle (e.g carbon fiber) fork.
Check me here Centrifugal force flings squirrel to the rim and as he goes limp, beyond the rim on either side. Carcass wedges between the tire and side of the rim and the crown of the fork. That would cause a jam far more severe than something as soft as a dead or dying squirrel being caught between spoke and fork blade.
I recently had my finger jammed in between the tire and crown of my commuter. That stopped me instantly and shaved off a good bit of skin, too.
And on further consideration, I begin to wonder if this isn't yet another (admittedly tenuous) reason to avoid the low-count paired-spoke wheels, since the space between each of the 36 spokes on a more conventional wheel should presumably act to prevent the squirrel from having such an easy time getting itself into this predicament...
FWIW, my buddy who experienced the same fate was running Campy Shamal wheels (don't recall if they were the 12 or 16 spoke version though). Seems to be a common thread.
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ran into a squirrel yesterday. was holding a nut he was and headed toward the trees when i hove too and lo! if the criiter didn't stop turn around and run straight under the front and expletiuve deleted stop there: amazing
Nah, the problem is that there were too many spokes. Had there been fewer, the squirrel might have passed through unscathed. 🙂
