Broken seatpost

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I turned a corner last week at slow speed on my electric hybrid ....and felt the saddle suddenly swivel. Alarming! I got straight off, and found that the inner tube of my suspension seat post had snapped clean through, about 5cm below the clamp holding the post onto the frame. I cycled home very carefully.

It is a factory-fitted seatpost made by XLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dutch Accell group for their bikes which they market under different well-known names. My bike was made at their factory in Hungary, but I think XLC sources the posts in Taiwan. I bought the bike second-hand and am not complaining...though it is a little annoying that it was one month out of the manufacturer's warranty. On Dr Google I could not find the same fault on that model of post, so it may just be a one-off. These things happen; at least I wasn't injured, and I'm very glad the seatpost didn't snap at higher speed on my road bike.

As no local LBS's had a similar 31.6mm post I bought another brand-new XLC post on ebay for a bargain price and it arrived today. All good. Interestingly the inner tube on the new one is a much wider diameter so maybe they had noticed some problems.

In 1964 the steerer on my brother's brand new Moulton snapped just above the fork shoulder. Moultons were then very avant-garde, and a replacement was rapidly offered!

It's rare for a post to snap but they usually snap just above the clamp or just below the saddle. Any ideas why this one would snap where it did?
 
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cheys03

Veteran
i’d assume the simplest explanation - it snapped at the weakest point or place of greatest strain - or a combination
 
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