Carbon Forks and Gravel Roads
 

I have a ride I want to do that has a 10 mile stretch of dirt road in it. If I put 700X28c tires on my Roadie will the carbon forks be damaged from the rough road? A lot of the highways I ride on near my house are as rough or more so than some dirt roads I have ridden. How sturdy are CF forks? I have considered using my old beater but I like the gearing on my roadbike a lot better.

the pros ride paris-roubaix with their carbon forks.... i don't see what the big deal is.

speaking of which... sunday's ride had a 200 foot patch of cobblestone..... i was being rattled to death! It made me appreciate the tour de france riders even more... i can't believe they can keep that up for a whole day!

They dont keep it up all day as I think the cobbles are only in about 25 shortish sections, but taken at speed they must be real painful.

To get some good feedback from the carbon fork manufacturers go to www.velonews.com and then the bottom of the page. Click on "tech talk" and you will get to Lennard Zinn's Tech Q&A site. Go to the Dec 3 listing. It is all about carbon forks and just how amazingly rugged they are. Full of techical responses from the various fork manufacturers.

The Paris-Roubaix race was just this past Sunday with all the cobblestones. In a 256 km race there are just short of 50 km (~32 miles) of cobblestones. Most sections are relatively short, being a few hundred meters in length. But several are longer than a kilometer. Near the end of the race there is one section that is actually two sections separated by about 100 meters of pavement, and is just over two kilometers in length, total. Those guys that ride this race competitively are real animals. Wonder if they wear a mouth-piece to save their teeth?

Actually most of the teams use a steel fork for Paris-Roubaix
as it is more compliant than CF.

Marty

Fork strength probably won't be the least little bit of a problem, however carbon forks aren't known for tire room, prepare for any gravel that sticks to your tire getting shot out the front!

I think I'll give the tires a test run before I do the big ride. Thanks for the responses!

Specialized was testing thier new carbon fork with shock asorbing elstomers in Paris-Roubaix this year.

You think the pavé is bad in Paris-Roubaix, the Champs-Elyeese in Paris in paved with cobblestone as well. Just see how much the last stage of the Tour de France is ridden on that street.

Figure alot of CycloCross forks are made out of CF, so they must be able to take quite a bit of abuse.

if it's any news to you, i ran through a 3 mile stretch of hard pack/gravel on my aluminum road bike w/ carbon fork and 700x23 at 120 psi on sunday. quite rattling, but otherwise fine!