skywalkdontrun profile

And this is what I've been waiting for ever since Rocky's rebranding.  There have been a lot of swirling rumors about the precipitous drop in manufacturing quality in the most recent runs of Rockys Mountain bikes.  I'd be very surprised if this is the only model that will eventually be found to be defective.

Glad to hear it was helpful!  If there's one lesson I've learned from my crash, its its to aim for the spaces between the trees.  Who knew?

If you're breaking spokes at the cross point it generally means that your wheel has come out of tension enough to allow significant play between spokes under high torsion (like when you're smashing cutties).  One of the great things about carbon rims is that they're stiff, and they resist coming out of round/true better than aluminum, but that doesn't mean that they don't flex, and that your spokes can't still come out of tension.   This can lead to losing spoke tension without being able to see it, resulting in more spoke play, and hence, spoke abrasion resulting in failure.  A fatigued spoke breaks at its point of highest tension, generally the j-bend, sometimes the nipple, but not mid-shaft.  Hope that's helpful.  Also, really glad to hear you didn't get hurt in that crash.  I had a similar one a few years ago, was riding an aluminum rim, and the impact potato-chipped the rim, but left my fork unscathed.  Somehow I managed to not hit the tree with my body, and just had a nasty case of skier's thumb for a few months from the force of the impact blowing the bars out of my hands.

Hey man, sounds like we both are on approximately the same injury timeline.  I blew up my left AC two winters ago snowboarding.  Total Grade III, full tears of all three ligaments that hold the AC joint together.  Had about 1.5 cm of separation under x-ray, but no further separation under load (which I guess was lucky).  My doc was super disinterested, and just told me I'd be fine without surgery (more on that later).  I was lucky that I hurt my shoulder in the offseason, so there wasn't the immediate pressure to ride, but I definitely got back on the bike too soon.  I did a lot of rehab with bands and doing wall push-ups, building up slowly over the course of many weeks.  It took about ten months before I could do a normal pushup without pain, or bunnyhop a log without feeling a bunch of strain in my shoulder, but it seemed to be healed, even though I had a pretty sizable bump on my clavicle.  I rode with an EVS neoprene brace for most of the fall and through snowboard season, and thought I'd got out of it ok this past spring, but on my first mtb ride of the season in April I shoulder checked a tree and hit rewind on all my progress.  My shoulder definitely didn't respond as well to the second round of PT, and it was super frustrating.  I had decreased range of motion and pain any time I pushed outwards (pushups, holding bars, etc), until randomly one day in the summer I was throwing a suitcase up on a conveyor in the airport and felt a pop.  I thought at first that I'd torn everything again, until suddenly I realized that I had more range of motion and no more pain.  As best I can figure, that shoulder check moved my clavicle, and then the act of throwing the suitcase popped it back in.  Now it feels pretty damn good!  Not pre-first-injury good, but pretty damn good.  I can do pushups and lift without pain, and my shoulder doesn't bother me riding.  Best advice I can give you is to take time off, which sucks, but seriously is the only thing that's going to help, especially being so far removed from the original injury.  The collagen matrix that makes up your ligaments takes time to knit itself back together, and if you stress it while it's weak, it just takes longer and longer to heal completely.  I'm not sure if your shoulder will respond to PT at this point, but maybe using Kinesio tape or a brace will help give the joint the extra support it needs?  Good luck dude.