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Broken Foot-Rest; Communication w/ Triumph

15K views 90 replies 40 participants last post by  dikman 
#1 ·
Yet another broken Bonneville footpeg. I've attached my communication with Triumph customer service regarding the incident.

I believe it's an issue the manufacturer should take a little more seriously, but they are refusing to accept any responsibility whatsoever. I didn't actually expect them to replace my parts for free (see letter), but I am disappointed by their complete lack of accountability.

Has anyone else contacted Triumph regarding these failures? How did they respond?

LETTER said:
On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 12:04 PM, Viperject wrote:

To Whom It May Concern:

While riding in heavy traffic last night, I stood up on the footpegs of my Bonneville to cross a bump in the pavement. The bump was not a particularly large or rough one and I was traveling at less than 5 mph. Nonetheless, my right (brake-side) foot rest snapped, breaking completely free of the frame and nearly causing me to lose control of the motorcycle. I managed to pull the bike to the side of the road before wobbling into traffic or being hit from behind. I was able to retrieve the broken peg AFTER it had been crushed by several cars and trucks.

My bike has about 16,000 miles and has been well maintained. I do not live in a wet/corrosive climate. At 5-feet-8 and 175 pounds, I am not an excessively large/heavy rider. Prior to the failure, the peg was not loose. The bike has never been dropped on its right side, so there is no reason to believe it had any pre-existing damage prior to the failure.

Internet forums indicate this is, in fact, a very common failure. I have never experienced a similar failure on any other make or model of motorcycle in my 15+ years of riding, and upon inspection of my broken parts, it would appear that the peg's fastening arrangement is inadequate... and dangerous.

I used my VIN to search for safety recalls on Triumph's website, but no outstanding recalls exist for my machine. Have any safety recalls/bulletins been issued regarding these broken pegs that are not appearing on your website? If not, would you consider shipping a new peg assembly to replace my failed pieces? Honestly, I would feel most comfortable replacing both the right AND left peg assemblies; after this failure, the original left (shift-side) assembly makes me nervous as well.

I have attached the parts fiche for these items and their Triumph part numbers. I would like every piece from the mounting bracket to the peg itself (and everything in between). Since my assembly was run over by several cars after it left the bike, the parts are now deformed/compromised and I do not wish to re-use any of them.

Please let me know your thoughts. Had I actually crashed because of this failure, I feel we would have a much larger issue on our hands.

Thank you for your time.

Right Side:
Footrest, RH, Front. Triumph Logo Footrests - Part No. T2081014 - $78.64
Peg, Bank Angle - Part No. T2080990 - $11.91
Return Spring, Footrest - Part No. T2080819 - $4.67
Circlip, Ext, 8 x 1 - Part No. T3500210 - $3.63
Clevis Assy, Footrest - Part No. T2070876 - $21.63
Pivot Pin, Footrest - Part No. T2080721 - $3.80
Locknut, Flanged, M8 x 1.25 - Part No. T3350004 - $2.17

Left Side:
Footrest, LH, Front. Triumph Logo Footrests - Part No. T2081013 - $78.64
Peg, Bank Angle - Part No. T2080990 - $11.91
Return Spring, Footrest - Part No. T2080819 - $4.67
Circlip, Ext, 8 x 1 - Part No. T3500210 - $3.63
Clevis Assy, Footrest - Part No. T2070876 - $21.63
Pivot Pin, Footrest - Part No. T2080721 - $3.80
Locknut, Flanged, M8 x 1.25 - Part No. T3350004 - $2.17

>>>>>>>>>>

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 9:40 AM, Triumph After-Sales wrote:

Thank you for the email and for the feedback regarding your footrest. It is unfortunate that this has happened. I did make a check on your VIN, and can state that there are no open recalls on your bike. Any parts that you need to make the repairs to your bike can be ordered through your local Triumph dealer. If you need assistance finding the closest dealer, there is a list of our dealers on our website Triumphmotorcycles.com. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you,
After-Sales Team

>>>>>>>>>>

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 10:13 AM, Viperject wrote:

I am disappointed with Triumph's response to this issue.

Footpegs are not wear items. Riders should be confident that footpegs will safely last the life of their motorcycles, especially motorcycles that are not very old and have been properly maintained. Brakes, chains, even engine internals... these are wear items. Riders assume footpegs are solid and reliable attachments to their bikes' frames.

This is either a design flaw, a metallurgy problem, or both.

Google this issue and you will see that it has occurred to many Bonneville owners all over the world. This is the sort of failure that could literally kill a rider; I hope Triumph will take it more
seriously.

>>>>>>>>>>

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Triumph After-Sales wrote:

Thank you for the reply. Triumph takes all safety concerns seriously. We test our motorcycles at the factory with safety, and performance as paramount in our efforts. I can assure you that your model has passed all the tests, and we have not found any design issues with the Bonneville. I checked the system and determined that there are no open recalls for you motorcycle. We are confidant that the issue you are experiencing is not born from any manufactured defect, or flaw in the design. There has to have been some pre-event that generated this issue.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you,
After-Sales Team
 
#2 ·
Unfortunately it may take a death or maiming and a large lawsuit to make them take this seriously. With the amount of documentation about this issue it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to prove negligence. Until then beefing up the mounting as illustrated in forum threads is a good idea. You might want to inform Triumph that you're sending your emails to the NHTSA www.nhtsa.gov
 
#3 · (Edited)
It's obvious that the anonymous Mr After-sales team has a keyboard with a key marked "deny all responsibility", this generates a standard response.

Funny how corporations can get away with this. Me, as a small manufacturer, have to stand up and explain myself when one of my products fails. Customers demand full reports and can become a right PIA.
 
#5 ·
Starter idler gear boss, rear wheel spokes failure, Sprint ST and a few other 3cyl. head gasket failures, stator + R/R premature failures. But like BMW rear drive failures and a few other makes denying is part of the CYA that keeps them from having massive recalls. I love my Bonneville had have had 3 to date. If however this 13 shows signs of failure I'm dumping it never to return to Triumph again.
 
#6 ·
Not a good image. Misspellings should have been addressed "pre-event" of the email being sent.

For my fellow English majors, "We are confidant ('confident,' perhaps?) that the issue you are experiencing is not born ('borne' would do well here) from any manufactured defect, or flaw in the design. There has to have been some pre-event that generated this issue."

Pity.

Cheers

Richard
 
#10 ·
Interesting thread. If you still have the parts and do not plan on filing a report, I going to school at an engineering school and I know of a few classmates that would love to perform a failure analysis on this. PM me if you still have the parts.

Ultimately, a report should be filed, and chances are they will want the parts to analyze.
 
#11 ·
If someone has a peg break as you did and crashed and injured or killed them self, it could very well be written off as crash damage. I don't own one of these bikes, but I'm curious as to why the pegs break. It would be nice to see some close up pictures of the break, if some folks out there wouldn't mind. Maybe something could be done to make them safe ? This is so surprising to me because of all the years I've ridden dirt and ever broken a peg. Bent them, yes, but never a failure from a Husqvarna, Bultaco, Triumph, Benneli, BSA, Suzuki, Yamaha, or Honda. I broke an aftermarket Chinese peg off of my Ducati when I dropped it, but that's a different situation.
 
#13 ·
Damn you PopPop ............... I wish you would change that Avatar of yours!!


( As he finishes typing, he sets his Surface aside ........ and heads for the refrigerator )
 
#15 ·
"do you think Chevrolet would respond to the situation with a complete and utter lack of accountability? "

Unfortunately, history has shown that the answer to this is "yes". It's usually all about money. Until they feel the cost of settling lawsuits exceeds the costs of a recall, denial is the norm.
 
#16 ·
Definitely report it to regulators.

As an aside, a few months ago, I was checking over my 2001 Bonnie, and found that one of the footpeg mounting bolts was loose. If left in that condition, the exposed threads would eventually have corroded and the bolt might have broken. Worth keeping an eye on.
 
#21 ·
As an aside, a few months ago, I was checking over my 2001 Bonnie, and found that one of the footpeg mounting bolts was loose. If left in that condition, the exposed threads would eventually have corroded and the bolt might have broken. Worth keeping an eye on.
If you do a search here going back many years, IIRC most cases involved a loose bolt and/or dropping the bike on the peg at some earlier time.

At the least, check that the bolt/nut is tight periodically..., or do the mod suggested here with a larger bolt, etc.

There really isn't any way for Triumph to re-engineer this piece without leaving a door open for liability lawyers..., so they won't address it on the older series. Assume they know it works fine as long as the mount is tight and the peg isn't hanging by the bolt taking all the stress. Just my :2cents
 
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#22 ·
They were in production for what, 15 years? Now they are out of production. Seems to me the ship has sailed and the fat lady has sung and all the pie has been eaten and the story has been told and that's all there is to that. Could be wrong, but I made my NHTSA report, threw in a stronger bolt, and moved on with my life. Taking the outriggers off and torquing and/or changing those bolts may be an annual event for me.

Could be the design was bad, or more likely could have been better, but that's hardly the worst injustice in this world. Not going to think much more about it other than that.
 
#24 · (Edited)
I agree but they'll never admit there's a problem. No manufacturer does until someone gets killed or badly injured and even then they know that getting proof about a deficient component would be difficult. Car makers are a lot more conscious though, they'll issue a recall for all manner of seemingly trivial things and recall tens of thousands of cars for things like defective door child locks.

It's like in the decade of the 70's when we suffered disc brakes that didn't work in the wet. Everyone complained about it, riders, magazines, bike clubs, etc but manufacturers remained tight-lipped, never acknowledging there was a problem. Only Suzuki was honest enough to add a sticker to the front forks warning about the lack of effectiveness of the brake in the wet.

The problem was eventually solved by Honda with their slotted pads on the CX500 and Kawasaki with sintered pads. You'd think that they would have announced this great step forward in their advertising BS, yes?. Not a word. That would have been admitting there had been a problem and could have opened them to all sorts of lawsuits.
 
#25 ·
You'd think that they would have announced this great step forward in their advertising BS, yes?. Not a word. That would have been admitting there had been a problem and could have opened them to all sorts of lawsuits.
I work for a car company and can verify what you say. To give you an example, we can't say some feature has been "improved" because that admits what came before was somehow deficient. Instead, features are "enhanced" because that produces less liability. With that background, I'm totally not shocked Triumph didn't admit anything or do anything about the pegs.
 
#26 ·
I don't see where the OP said whether the peg itself broke, or the threaded mounting stud. It seems to be the stud, because he wants to replace the entire assembly.
 
#28 ·
The stud snapped. I'd like to replace the entire assembly because it was run over and crushed by several vehicles in the road before I was able to retrieve it.

That's why I'd like to see pics. There may be a way to make things safer. That seems to be more proactive at this point. Too bad someone hasn't come out with an Enhanced foot peg assembly.
There are several how-to write-ups like this floating around the Interwebs:

https://www.triumphindia.org/2015/06/bonneville-footpeg-problems-with-a3-and-t100/
 
#30 · (Edited)
There are at least two common failure modes for these pegs...the threaded flat head mounting bolt, welded to the mounting clevis, can shear off...likely due to corrosion weakening around the threaded section and perhaps being over stressed, particularly if the bolt is not to correct torque. A good fix seems to be to remove the bolt from the clevis...using a cold chisel between flat head and clevis seems to work, and replace with a much stronger bolt (stainless?) from an automotive store.

The other typical failure mode is the cast aluminum fork section of the peg itself. My buddy had this go recently on a 2010 T100, less than 10,000 KM's, never in salt bike. He stated he wasn't even putting much pressure on it when it went. His dealer replaced it, but with an exact same part....did not replace the other side. These are likely production flaws in the cast part...but may be result of dissimilar metal (bracket/pin are steel, peg is alu) galvanic corrosion or perhaps a old stress fracture that doesn't fail until much later.

I'm in the process of a search for a better designed replacement peg set and will do the bolt replacement shortly...for peace of mind.
 
#31 · (Edited)
If you read back through the endless threads about this unkown (to Triumph, yeah, right) issue, you'll find among the various cures the use of "unbrako" or similar, high-tensile allen hexagon bolts rather than the common welding stud used by the factory.

Guess what? looking through the new water-cooled models parts listings you'll find that's exactly the solution they seem to have adopted. No welded stud, but a separate high-tensile Allen bolt holding the clevis mounting, don't know for sure but I'll bet the tightening torque figure is a lot higher as well.
 
#33 ·
Guess what? looking through the new water-cooled models parts listings you'll find that's exactly the solution they seem to have adopted. No welded stud, but a separate high-tensile Allen bolt holding the clevis mounting, don't know for sure but I'll bet the tightening torque figure is a lot higher as well.
I dont know where to see the new foot rests but I wonder if they are interchangeable with other models?
 
#35 ·
I challenge the concerned to quantify the broken foot peg anchor bolts, versus the total number of bikes made..

I expect the ACTUAL percentage-of-failure/bikes-made is VERY low.

EVERYTHING can/will break or wear-out....... including us. ("US" breaking a little quicker, if the foot peg breaks in a bad scenario!)
 
#37 ·
Triumph probably sources out their foot pegs to the company selling them for 5 bucks (US dollars) a set on ebay.
 
#41 ·
They are Corporations, not a private little club. Your T Shirts, terrible jackets covered in logos and little pins and doo dads are all made in the same place and people buy them at 1000x's the cost and then advertise (and better yet try and Convince others to buy them too) for free. I bought a Bike, says Triumph on it, that's enough I dint buy stock in the Co so no free Adverts from me.
 
#43 ·
Last night I was the latest victim of FPF (foot peg failure). '13 T100, with less than 9,000 miles on the clock. Fortunately I was only going about 25 miles per hour when it happened. I briefly stood on the foot rest while going over a slight bump in the road. The peg failed and my foot dropped to the pavement, throwing off my balance. I definitely lost control and was lucky there were no cars close to me. Any faster and I would have been really screwed. When I got home, I came here to report it and saw dozens of similar stories and decided to add mine so this thread would move to the top and people not familiar with this issue could read about it and fix the issue before it happens to them. I will also file a report at https://www.nhtsa.gov/./


.
 
#44 ·
TB: Was it the welded bolt that sheared off or the cast peg at the fork?
I also have the '13 T100...now with 36k KM's. I did the up-armour on the bolts, using the next closest size up non-metric bolt with a shank. It's a straightforward upgrade...but will not improve the peg-failure aspect...need a different make of peg.
 
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