Had a failure of a rear disc brake adapter that caused movement of the rear caliper...locked up rotor...wheel....skid...almost pulled off a slideout until I slid into an erosion gully...instant high-side...so not really a Tomcat style front-brake lockup OTB, but at least it got the thread started.
I'll have first person video as soon as my friend uploads the videos of our trip two days ago. He was already stopping with the front brake, hit a bump, and tomcatted instantly. I guess the bump/rock made him squeeze the lever harder by accident and it meant instant tomcat. I still haven't seen the video but it has to be pretty funny.
Descending a narrow, rutted trail. Braking steadily to keep speed in check. Had to cross the rut and thought I could just roll it. Nope. It chocked the front wheel and stopped the bike. OTB I went, bounced off my head and shoulder, and flipped right into a trailside ditch where I landed on my feet.
Thought I was 100% OK at the time, but the next day realized I'd nearly separated my shoulder. Had to go easy on it for a couple of months while it healed.
Had a failure of a rear disc brake adapter that caused movement of the rear caliper...locked up rotor...wheel....skid...almost pulled off a slideout until I slid into an erosion gully
Was on a full suspension GT LTS-1 that handled the ruts just fine. I was using an A2Z DM-UNI brake adapter that was meant to give disc capability to non-disc frames, and a nice little group of failures of the adapter, bolt, and frame conspired to let everything move at an angle just a few millimeters...enough to lock the rotor in the caliper. It looks like the ruts are giving me hell...the rear of the bike was actually swinging around to the right of my point of view but the front wheel hit slightly sideways to the rut..the front suspension was compressed at this point and the wheel stopped, which resulted in the highside. Once going OTB I threw myself into a roll...tumbled on that crush rock surface quite a ways. Nasty skin loss and interior soft tissue damage. The camera was attached to my Camelbak shoulder strap with a Sony pack-strap mount, so all you see is the POV from just above the bars....too bad I didn't have something showing the rear view of the bike.
First of all, I am in no way taking away from the fact that this guy is a bad-ass and pretty damn tough, but I think it was irresponsible to waive him on to go hit a huge gap jump after very likely being concussed. Especially with the adrenaline still flowing. I think we've all had bad crashes where we just jumped back on the bike before even taking real inventory of the damage. Just my opinion.
I've only had one endo in my life. Every other time I went OTB it was a Tomcat. Faulty front brakes, Poorly designed forks, negligently maintained trails, and fluctuations in the gravitational field were the primary causes of the rest of my horrific crashes.
Escape a Tom-Cat my a$$, that was a full Tom-Cat if I've ever seen one. He must be very proud of those "too powerful" brakes. Kudos to your buddy escaping injury though.
1) Several years ago at Mammoth. It was my first time back on the DH bike after breaking my collarbone at Whistler, in fact I was wearing a fanny pack because the strap from a regular pack hurt my collarbone too much. Looking at Enduro(tm) these days, I guess I was just ahead of the times. But I digress. Anyway, I was riding down Bullit, when all of the sudden I heard this horrendous racket coming from the front wheel. I had just enough time to say "what the..." before the front wheel locked up completely and tomcatted my ass. Turns out, somehow the front brake caliper bolts had actually worked themselves loose. So the initial noise was the rotor digging a grove into the caliper itself until it finally wedged itself into place. I managed to come out unscathed, and even more amazingly I managed to find all the random bolts and washers that fell off. Bolted it back up and worked fine for another few years. Though the caliper did have this massive groove in it from where the rotor wore through it!
2) Recently picked up a set of new Saint brakes. After shortening the hose to the front brake line, I was having some problems where the brake would be fine, and then suddenly it would have basically zero power (side note, there's a big thread on Ridemonkey which while not specific to Saint brakes, is at least in large part inspired by issues people were having with inconsistent bite point with Saints; in my case, I think the issue was just a bad bleed). At the time, I thought the pads maybe had something on them, so I squirted some water on them and then did a series of hard stops to burn it off. On the last grab, that brake engaged with the full Saint force and tomcatted me into the street. Of course, I was doing this on the road right in front of the bike shop not even wearing a helmet...
Not really sure what happened 'cause I was sleepy and hungry after work but wanted to get a ride in. Endo'd at the bottom of the rooty section of Enchanted. I probably could have bailed if I wasn't clipped in so I went back to flats after that.
Thread resurrection! Let's update this legendary thread with new tomcats.
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