Shimano issues global review of its cranksets after injury and malfunction reports
The world's largest cycling manufacturer, Shimano, has launched a global review of one of its most popular bike parts after widespread reports of malfunction and injury. It could force the company to replace more than 2.8 million cranksets across the globe, but with Shimano having known about the problem for years, some riders say it's too little to late.
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00:00 Cyclist Henry Strong has been training for an upcoming triathlon, but a global bicycle
00:07 defect means his season could be over before it begins.
00:11 I'm starting to see a slight defect here in the connection between the crank arm spider
00:15 and the chain ring.
00:17 His bike is one of thousands affected by one of the biggest replacement programs in cycling's
00:21 history, as manufacturing giant Shimano gears up to inspect hundreds of thousands of faulty
00:27 crank sets across the world.
00:30 For the better part of a decade, the company's Holotech 2 model has been the subject of
00:35 more than 4,500 reports that it splits under pressure.
00:40 The feeling that you might actually have faulty equipment when you're doing 75 or 80 k's an
00:45 hour, it is, yeah, it's quite terrifying.
00:48 Online forums and social media pages have been dedicated to the problem.
00:53 They've consistently denied that it's a manufacturing defect.
00:56 An investigation by the United States Product Safety Commission, which found the fault potentially
01:02 contributed to a serious accident by an American rider, has finally been the trigger for action.
01:08 Shimano dealers are bracing for an influx of customers demanding inspections.
01:13 It affects potentially thousands and thousands of people.
01:17 But there are still questions about who pays to fix the problem.
01:21 Well, I don't believe that it should be the customer.
01:23 It's probably going to have to fall back on Shimano in that regard.
01:27 But how they're going to do that, I don't know.
01:29 The company has apologised to its customers, saying it's deeply sorry that any riders have
01:34 been affected by the issue.
01:36 Too little, too late, if you ask me, because you've already had thousands of people that
01:39 have had incidents, many broken bones.
01:42 Riders are being directed to dealers to assess their replacements.
01:45 I don't feel particularly safe using this equipment.
01:49 But still optimistic that the race can go on.
01:52 [BLANK_AUDIO]