69chevy

I found your solution. A fixed gear bamboo bike.

Such a bike won the Red Hook Crit in 2014.

If you crash, you can grow a new one. No shifting to confuse you either.

Perfect!

Frenchman Reigns Over Red Hook - Peloton Magazine

PepeM

Everyone knows race bikes should only be used for training.

Dan333SP

The car analogies are tempting, but they're a bad comparison. I do get why the owner of an Enzo or 918 would rather take a Subaru STI or whatever to a trackday.

Burning out the brake rotors and tires on an Enzo, which can probably happen in one spirited day of lapping, would cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Also, the performance envelope of cars like that is so far beyond what the average driver, especially the average millionaire car collector, is even capable of exploiting that it's pointless. A slower car with lower grip/power and less expensive parts could be pushed to its limit much more safely and easily.

Bikes are different. Anyone can find the cornering limit of a set of tires, and anyone can push a bike as fast as their legs allow them to, and there is a negligible wear/tear difference between a Madone 6 series, for instance, and an aluminum race bike, especially if they're running the same group. It sounds like this is all just worry about frame failures due to wrecks.

I'm actually thinking it may be interesting to start a poll on the racing forum, to see how many people have actually had a carbon frame break in a race wreck. I've crashed twice in races with no frame damage, and I'm sure many others have as well. It's not as common as the anti-craybon crowd would have you believe.

CafeVelo

Id like to know as well. I know some people who have broken frames, but I wonder what a larger sample would say

merlinextraligh

For your poll, 2 crashes in races on a CF bike. No frame damage either time.

grwoolf

I get your point, but I don't think it's a terrible analogy. It's just a matter of perspective.

For some people, spending $4k+ on tires and brake pads for a weekend of fun on the track is totally normal. One big step above that is actual auto racing (actual racing, not "fun" track days). These guys will wreck (possibly total) a $50k+ Porsche 911 at a race and burn through thousands on tires and brakes constantly. I'm not talking about sponsored racing, this is amateur "hobbyist" racing. There is no insurance $ when you wreck your car in an actual race (unlike the "driver education" track days). These guys get upset when they wreck their cars, but they can cut a check for a new $50k race car easier than "normal" people can buy a new carbon bike frame.

I know that the vast majority of high end car owners treat their cars like garage queens, but there is also the small group that drive them hard and race them. For high end bikes, there is probably a larger percentage that race, but it's still a small percentage. I think the analogy is decent.

merlinextraligh

Track weekend in my car (991S) costs about $2000. Uses up about half the useful life of the tires (so 50% of $2000) Track specific insurance about $350. Brake pads are probably good for 3-4 track weekends so another several hundred there, and $250 or so for the entry fee.

More expensive than some hobbies, less expensive than others.

Now as you note, actually racing and you're into to a whole nother level of expense.

grwoolf

My "baby" is a 993s, definitely of the garage queen variety. It's certainly not the performance car that a 991 is, but still a blast to drive. I'll probably get it to the track some day, but life is busy with other priorities right now.

topflightpro

You forgot to factor in the speeding ticket you get when driving home from the track.


I've broken two frames in crashes in races. Both were RRs, not crits. My one crit crash resulted in no frame damage. Crits, IMO, are way less crash prone than RRs.

topslop1

I'd take a ferrari to both, preferably on the same day. but then again I like to break everything I own.

topslop1

Would put laser jammers in a car like that long before tracking it, but I do like to go fast on the streets.

kbarch

Why aluminum? If the idea is to get a rat bike to race crits, get a rat crabon bike!

StanSeven

I know a couple people that built crit bikes from the really old and super stiff Cannondales. They found them cheap on CL and like them because of the stiffness. One paid $300.

grolby

I think you could adjust, Gladys. Nonetheless, the correct answer is:

This.

spectastic

Yea that's what I don't really like about carbon. It's got much lower impact resistance than aluminum such that if you apply the impact in the right place, it could crack without much force. Many pros use alumonum handlebars for this reason.

rpenmanparker 

What's a Ferrari?

StanSeven

A company that teamed up with Colnago to make an expensive model

Bob Dopolina 

Duplicate post. Weird.

Bob Dopolina 

Spectastic, incorrect.

Carbon is more impact resistant than thin walled alloy or steel frames. See the video below.

Pros use alloy bars because of crashes. If you crash hard and your bars take a hit there is no way of knowing if there is underlying damage or not with carbon but the same level of damage is visible with alloy. So with alloy there is certainty.

This uncertainty is seen by riders (and management) as an increased risk that could have a potential impact on their careers. To remove that risk they choose alloy bars.

spectastic

I don't understand what the video is supposed to show. they all failed, so then are we supposed to judge them based on the degree of displacement (?). conventional cf did worse than the alloys. the cf composites that did super well were hybrids that were mixed with kevlar or reinforced by foam. Last time I checked, they're not stuffing cf tubes with foam yet. Also, the fact that carbon fiber can split just by the bike falling over tells me that it does a poor job distributing impact forces. I don't believe this type of stuff happens to aluminum frames and parts; if they do, then I haven't seen them.

Bob Dopolina 

This is destructive testing. EVERYTHING FAILS. That's the point. And it really fun.

Look at how the materials failed. Given the same focused impact, the deflection and unrivaled failure of all other materials was less than the kind of carbon used in bike frame.

If you search for the Pink Bike video where they are repeatedly smashing a USED and WELL ABUSED carbon frame against a concrete slab the idea that carbon is somehow fragile seems a difficult position to defend.

Now, if you use much cheaper polyester resins you do end up with a far more brittle frame. As far as I have seen no credible carbon factory uses these resins but, since they are cheaper, there are certainly some that must. Those do t fare as well with impacts.

Here, check these. The smashing bit is at the end.


This is rims:

[video]https://www.pinkbike.com/video/340887/[/ame]

spectastic

I remember seeing the santa cruz one, and I did see some version of the rim one, where a guy crushes an aluminum rim with his weight, but was unable to do it with a carbon rim.. it's all very impressive, and yet there seem to be many cases where carbon fails from small incidents like falling over. how would you explain this?

Bob Dopolina 

Obviously I can't explain every incident but I have had my alloy top tube dented by the corner of a fridge door when my bike fell over. I've seen lots of dented tubes over the years, as well. One possible explanation for some of the damaged carbon you mention is that it also would also have happened if the frame were made from another material.

Some manufacturers have gone too thin in an effort to save weight. This can be a problem, in some cases.

Some vendors use poly resins which are very brittle when baked. These tend to shatter when they fail. These are used in cheaper frames and perhaps in some of the knock off frames that have flooded the market as well.

And then there is just bad luck. The right amount of force, at the right angle and a random failure happens.

But if carbon was such an issue, after literally MILLIONS of carbon frames have been produced over the last 20 years (and even more carbon FORKS), the internet should be FLOODED with photos (yes, there are some but again, think in terms of the percentage of failures vs qty of production) and there should be a mountain of lawsuits.

But there isn't.

spectastic

what do you consider to be knock offs? vendors like farsports, dengfu, hongfu, yoleo, etc? they're known to sell things cheap. for a long time, I thought it was because they don't really invest in R&D, marketing, or retail, all of which add up to some pretty sizable mark ups. Because they generally have good reputations, I'm inclined to believe that they don't cut corners in manufacturing. But then again, I recall you mentioning that to look for quality products, look at Taiwanese manufacturers, not Chinese. Can you shed some light on that?

Bob Dopolina 

Not really. Things have changed pretty rapidly in the last few years. It's getting much harder to sort out who is doing due diligence and who is cutting corners.

The factors you mention do affect pricing and that is part of the explanation. Cheaper labour in China also helps on pricing but not to the degree it once did. Chinese labour, energy, trasportation and other fixed costs have increased rapidly and has taken away quite a bit of the pricing edge they once had.

Also, many of the "brands" selling carbon products on-line from China are NOT factories; They are trading companies, just like us. I can't "out" who is who as I need to work here and there are some I don't actually know much about beyond what I see on-line.

All in all it's still a crap shoot. Most of the carbon out there is pretty good. Some is amazing. A small amount is actually not as advertised. Telling them apart is impossible without destructive testing or direct knowledge with regards to production. It's even tough for us and we have experience and access.

We've now managed to hijack this thread.

I still think the OP should find a CAAD frame somewhere and build that up.