Now that storytime is over, here’s the links:
http://www.fixed.org.au/forums/f42/my-alan-super-sport-detto-pietro-21211/
http://www.fixed.org.au/forums/f8/vitus-21645/index3.html
As for an aluminium fork being a deathtrap that will murder your granny, this isn’t exactly a brittle failure:
<a href=“http://www.cyclebucket.com/images/p10501yiy.jpg” target="_blank">
(This pic makes me think that the bike is doing the hokey pokey. You put your left leg out, you put your left leg in…)
Yeah, the much cooler, hipster approved zen-like steel fork failure is the way to go and far more preferable. <roll eyes>
Your light was too heavy.
So getting back to the OP, you would be completely happy to ride this Alan he has found in a secondhand shop? Or would you be doing some serious examination of the screw/lug/glue thingys, as well as any hairline cracks?
if they both fail catastrophically, it won’t make all that much difference…like being hit by a 1970 falcon or a 2010 holden at 60km/h, both are gonna cause a fair chunk of damage to what they hit.
(JP mentioned this earlier)
this is what you should be doing to anything you intend putting your life on the line for/in/on
Thanks for reminding me that I have to fit the replacement fork instead of the carbon place keeper that’s still fitted. I’m so lazy.
For the uninformed the Vitus fork in the above pic was bent in the middle of the fork leg after hitting a drunk pedestrian. Glancing off him twisted my bars/front wheel sideways at about 35-40km/h. The fork crown held together perfectly as did the dropouts (glued) and only the fork leg bent as my momentum focused all the weight on the now sideways wheel. I have no doubt a steel or carbon fork would have reacted similarly. Luckily I was OK and the frame still gets ridden regularly although the once NOS Mavic brake levers aren’t so pretty anymore.
No more or less than any other frame/material.
If alu frames were different races/religions you’d be Hitler.
There we have it ladies and gentlemen. Godwin’s Law invoked, thread is over!
Perhaps a little extreme, but I take your point.
Damn it’s been a day for TL:DR posts on my behalf
define failure 
I’m cool with any fork i’m riding made of any material failing if failure means some kind of permanent plastic deformation/debonding/change i geometry that renders it unfit for purpose but doesnt result in death or serious injury. I was just googling ALAN failures and there are heaps of personal accounts of tubes comming unglued etc but none i found involved any injury to the riders
Seriously though any fork that fails when JRA (as opposed to riding into a tree/truck/getting hit by a car) is going to have had a large crack (or disbondment in the case of bonded alu/carbon) in it so long as you can detect this problem before catastrophic failure occurs what does it matter. All bike frames no matter how they are made or how they are ridden will fail over a long enough time span
Me i ride steel cos it’s what i’ve got, i’m not a weight weenie, I can weld stuff to it (done this to the T(W)REK fork for dyno light mount) it’s got good ductility is stronger than alu for a given cross section (can hopefully sustain a larger crack before catastrophic failure) and because i have experiance in NDT methods used to detect cracking in steel also it rhymes with real. Also for a 1" steerer I’d prefer steel over alu or crabon for the steerer as it has higher modulus and therefore hopefully higher stiffness given that the steerer has to be 1" diameter and you can’t increase it to increase stiffness, however I ride a ~62~64cm frame and hence have a ludicrously long steerer.
Just highlighted for drama/emphasis 
If a frame is light … it’s more likely to fail one day.
If a frame is poorly made/designed … it’s more likely to fail one day.
If a frame is crashed/abused … it’s more likely to fail one day.
Irrespective of what it’s made of or when it was made it’s always good to check over a frame before riding it, especially if you don;t know anything of it’s history. If you can’t see it in person before purchasing it then it’s best to err on the side of caution.
What’s with all this sudden aluminium love? I thought this forum was always steel or nothing… you’ve all changed…
I have my Cannondale with 2.8 frame sitting at home with original Kinesis alu fork. So you mean I don’t need to be scared riding the thing?
Maybe not with a full on failure but in some situations the tougher material wins due to the fact you can re-bend it to get you rolling again.
Here’s my cool story…Bro…
Mid way through a 1 month tour of Scotland and Europe with the ol’ man we were riding through the German countryside when we had an incident at a T junction. Some old coldger drove into my dads front wheel at like a 45deg angle while he was stationary, bending the fork blades on the Orbit 531ST tourer back and to the side. We were miles from any bike shop that we could gather may or may not be in existence. The old tourer was barely ridable and upon stopping just a minute up the road under an old stone viaduct we found a raised manhole with all kinds of bracketry on the cover (we later found out these “manholes” were used during the cold war to blow up bridges and infrastructure at the press of a button incase of invading Russians). Utilising my krypto mini D, a cable, lumps of wood, clothes, the wheel still in the fork ends and my weight we managed to bend the forks back into a position satisfactory enough to ride the bike - you could ride straight with no hands. We completed the tour with the forks as they were and did the final straightening back in London, I then sold the bike.
I don’t have anything against Ali or Carbon but good luck doing that with an Ali or carbon fork.
Read up on CAAD9 (10), Gaulzetti, Spooky/FTW, Primus Mootry, Ahrens, Tiemeyer etc. There’s plenty of good aluminium. Early carbon was pretty average, I’m sure early steel frames were equally rubbish. Stand to reason that early aluminium wasn’t that great either.
Alan is considered ‘early’ aluminium right? Stands to reason…
It is the golden age of aluminium (race) frames right now. But jeez I’d love a Barra.
Barra rulz.
I dont know how long ago, we had a thread of “whats your ultimate bike”. People got angry with me for saying that Baum times 100 was a cr@p response. A (aluminium) Barra would probably still be my number one most favourite bike to have. I think (I have never seen or ridden a Barra) the Barra has some pretty solid advantges over current Al, the biggest one being “toughness” as in, they were apparently very hard to dent, another one being aesthetics… close ups of the forks on those things, and their nice front derailleur set ups… they really get me going.
Had an Alan SR for a few years, till I put it under a car. It came out in lots of pieces, but admittedly I did too. Lovely bike to ride, though it ‘wandered’ a bit when sprinting out of corners.
The Cannondale 2.8 that I had at the same time was eventually given to a friend. One of the cantilevered rear dropouts broke off a few months later.
My first Cannondale (first race Cannondale in the country) is still going strong, complete with original steel fork and ovalised (1" wide) seatstays. I once rode it home without a rear QR because a friend had broken his lightweight rear QR. The wheel stayed put, that rear end is so stiff.
My Cannondale tandem (first one in Oz) is in storage at the moment but it was raced in Belgium and Switzerland. I’ll have to find a stiffer fork for it but there isn’t much available for tandems with 1" steerers.