steel or carbon fork?
#51
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Re: safety. Fork failure is fairly rare, regardless of the material. But CF and steel can't both be the same: One material or the other has to be even less likely to fail in a crash inducing manner than the other. How many people who have actually researched the topic can honestly say CF is less likely to fail than steel?
Even if small, why take unnecessary risk? To save a pound? On a loaded touring bike? Seems misguided to me.
#52
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... Personally, the only fork I've ever had break was a steel fork on an old Miyata touring bike. The fork blade cracked quite abruptly. Fortunately I had a front rack holding the thing together, so instead of getting a bunch of new teeth I spent a week wondering my front brakes had suddenly started vibrating the bike so badly. Yikes. ...
I try to ride better quality forks that won't fails soon, but that mode of failure is one I am comfortable with. Three forks on that bike's successor failed, all steel, all in hard frontal crashes and all three could have been straightened to continue a tour. To get the the point of this thread, that is why I will always tour on steel forks.
Ben
#53
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Re: safety. Fork failure is fairly rare, regardless of the material. But CF and steel can't both be the same: One material or the other has to be even less likely to fail in a crash inducing manner than the other. How many people who have actually researched the topic can honestly say CF is less likely to fail than steel?
Even if small, why take unnecessary risk? To save a pound? On a loaded touring bike? Seems misguided to me.
Even if small, why take unnecessary risk? To save a pound? On a loaded touring bike? Seems misguided to me.
Obviously, a silly example, and I'm not really trying to tell anyone they SHOULD use a carbon fork on a loaded touring bike. It doesn't really matter. Heck, if I were in the market for a loaded touring bike, I'm sure I would end up with a steel fork, because there are few alternatives even available and they're not worth the hassle. But then, I'm not really interested in loaded touring these days, I would rather do shorter trips and travel as light and fast as I reasonably can. Weight definitely does matter to me (loaded touring was ruinous on my knees), and light weight means I could just use my road or, more likely, my cyclocross bike. Both of which have carbon forks and neither of which concern me.
Except, as I already explained, the fork was held together entirely by the front rack of the bike. There was nothing gentle about the failure - the fork leg was cracked completely through. Maybe without the rack I would've noticed the vibration getting worse and figured out why before the fork failed completely. Or maybe the handling would've gone weird without the rack to keep the fork from twisting as it cracked, and that would've clued me in - or caused me to crash. Or maybe I would've assumed the same thing I did with the rack there, that the vibration was just brake shudder, and I would've ended up eating my own teeth. It's easy to be blase about something like this when it's someone else's bike and say "well, it's steel and you rode on it for a week so it's NBD," but I'm not blase about it at all. On the other hand, it's not like I'll never ride a steel fork again because that one broke. That's nuts. But it was a lesson that anything can break, especially if it's a used bike with a history not entirely known to you.
#54
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Grolby, very reasonable comments. It makes me think of the whole airline safety record thing, of the billions of flight miles vs accidents. There must be millions of carbon forks out there in Canada and the US and the vast vast majority live lives like my carbon fork, ridden and stored without impacts other than the specifically designed "hitting a pothole" sort of thing, and are fine.
Knowing my bike history and how it's ridden, even my rare case of a cf fork with low rider eyelets, really does come down to percentages, ie your shark example.
Knowing my bike history and how it's ridden, even my rare case of a cf fork with low rider eyelets, really does come down to percentages, ie your shark example.
#55
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non-related risk factors.
you might be a lower risk of shark attack in tennessee....assuming you stay out of
sea world type attraction....yes....you COULD fall into the shark pool. or you could
be one of the unfortunate few that travelled upstream. or you could be within the
kill zone of the military's new top secret killer robot land shark. but these are not
likely.
but you'll be substituting much more risk..........more risk of bear attack, packs of
wild raccoons in your favorite park, pestered by hordes of religious zealots, made
to squeel like a pig, or the ultimate terror....frau hillary moves in next door.
regardless, in case of any of these new threats, you're more likely to be able to
fight them off with a durable steel (even inferior LHT steel!) fork than with a
brittle carbon fjork.
#56
Senior Member
The problem with fighting off robo zombie sharks with a carbon fork isn't brittleness, it's the lack of weight! Hard to do any real damage with it. Here's a fun test - not super scientific, but fun. Take a discarded carbon fork, hold it by the steerer, and wail it on a solid object. Like a cinder block, or a boulder (wear eye and hand protection!). See if you can break it. I can pretty much promise you, you won't be able to do it. It doesn't prove a lot, but it does help demonstrate that carbon fiber isn't like pencil lead. It's a lot tougher than people think.
#57
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https://vimeo.com/106021360 - apologies if the video done been posted.
PS - yes, as I mentioned when I got into this thread - I do have a bike with a carbon fork! I'm ok with it. So much so it's my son's bike. It's like my second carbon fork and everything. Still not sure I'll use it for touring. But .... maybe!
Last edited by mrv; 02-25-16 at 09:10 PM.
#59
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The forks in the above video are skinny roadie ones, if you want strong carbon get MTB stuff!!!!
check out this carbon testing;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xreZdUBqpJs
check out this carbon testing;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xreZdUBqpJs
#60
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