WSB racing: privateer's wheel disintegrates mid-race

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

Article here, which includes a YouTube video.

 

Looks like his wheel came apart: hub stayed with bike, rim+tire ran off as a wedded couple. Yikes.

 

[UberXY]

Here is a photo of the wheel back in the pits after the race. OZ magnesium.

 

 

 

 

 

[Paul Mihalka]

That is scary!

OTOH the races were real good with a lot of fighting and passing.

[Danny caddyshack Noonan]

Soooo, I'm guessing the structural analysis might have been just a wee bit off. That or the fracture propagation wasn't as well characterized as they thought.

 

Or, the frangit nut on the muffler bearing broke.

[UberXY]

That is scary!

OTOH the races were real good with a lot of fighting and passing.

 

By fighting I assume you mean when Biaggi slapped Melandri in the face?

[ltljohn]

What I find amazing is that the rider in his hip pocket didn't wreck too.

[ghaverkamp]

Wonderfully covered by Speed, which immediately cut to a commercial break.

[Whip]

Wonderfully covered by Speed, which immediately cut to a commercial break.

 

Exactly....WTF.

 

 

[CoarsegoldKid]

Hey, at least the folks feeding the race coverage to Speed had a camera on Melandri's bike and they used it to broadcast about 33 seconds of action. If they would only get the sound right on Steve Martin's mic that would be great.

 

Oh! the wheel. Back to the drawing board.

[kmac]

Couple of good points in that deal

1) Slow hairpin turn

2) Just at initial throttle not well into the straight

3) Single-sided swingarm, so the wheel didnt get lodged in the swingarm and stick wierd and kisk him highside.

4) He got up and walked away

5) Hopefully the wheel manufacturers will remedie this flaw before someone does this at high speed and dies.

[ShovelStrokeEd]

May not be a flaw at all. Magnesium is funny stuff. It is not very good at impact damage and that wheel may have been stressed previously. Who knows its history? Perhaps a previous high side put a side impact on the thing that only now manifested.

 

Wheels are fragile things to begin with and race wheels even more so. Light weight being one of the prime factors in design, almost, it would appear here, to the detriment of structural integrity.

[Antimatter]

May not be a flaw at all. Magnesium is funny stuff. It is not very good at impact damage and that wheel may have been stressed previously. Who knows its history? Perhaps a previous high side put a side impact on the thing that only now manifested.

 

Wheels are fragile things to begin with and race wheels even more so. Light weight being one of the prime factors in design, almost, it would appear here, to the detriment of structural integrity.

 

That was my thought as well. A previous accident or perhaps even a ham-handed tire change might have stressed the rim enough to cause the faiure.

 

I've always been afraid of owning a set of magnesium or carbon-fiber rims for just that reason. One slip of a tire iron and it's goodbye big bucks.

[dhanson]

I wished they would have shown the cleanup crew or not after the kawasaki tossed all the pea gravel on the track. They kept racing, well maybe 80% on that gravel.

[Dennis Andress]

In the video, the wheel woobles a little before it let go. In the picture, spoke #1 is missing a chunk. I think that it let go and the rest gave in and followed.