Reeks of aged cotton duck
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 1,176
Likes: 5
From: Middle Georgia, USA
Bikes: 2008 Kogswell PR mkII, 1976 Raleigh Professional, 1996 Serotta Atlanta, 1984 Trek 520, 1979 Raleigh Comp GS
Chef,
Anyone who really knows much about carbon fiber will never give you an answer over the interwebz. If anyone does, you should probably ignore them. Like Ultraman said... "It's up to you."
My take:
I've been an engineer dealing with aircraft for 30 years, and I know one thing. We would never use a material like carbon fiber as a structural material in an aircraft because of its failure mode. When carbon fiber fails, it does so suddenly and often without warning. The aircraft industry had the same problems with titanium when we first started using it in aircraft because titanium is lightweight and brittle. It tends to snap instead of bend. Sound familiar? It took a lot of research and work to figure out how to improve titanium and where we should use it. Other materials like aluminum or steel tend to fail more... errr... gently. And carbon fiber cannot take very much punishment before it cracks.
That's the main reason that I don't buy carbon fiber bikes... they're simply not durable enough for me. My brother is really into racing, and he bought a very expensive CF racing frame. He built it up with the best gruppo... and rode it for less than 6 months. Then one afternoon at a water stop he dropped the bike on its side and cracked the top tube in half. The simple mistake of dropping his bike while dismounted cost him a $4500 frame. He replaced that frame with another, and now he's afraid to ride the bike. That $4500 hurt badly.
So in the end, only you can make the decicion on whether your frame is safe to ride.