Originally Posted by froze
Well when you get over 200,000 mile on your CF tandem you let us know. I've seen CF frames and forks fail too, and they don't fail gradually like steel but suddenly resulting in very serious crashes.
There are warning signs youve just not learned to spot and hear them. Ive doen a little work with carbon fiber and kevlar layups with friends. What you will notice is a foggyness in the resins or hair line cracks all over it well before it fails. If its failing at a joint youll hear creaks and groans coming from the joint. This means its heading for failure. Now my experiance is limited to working with wings on a guys drag car who use to live near me. Im sure failure signs are the same though.
The visable signs are similar to old fishing poles and the cracks they develop but on carbon fiber its not as noticable.
With carbon fiber failures its typically not the fiber that fails its the resin that binds the carbon that does.
This is why if you catch it intime you can repair it. A coatign of new resin over the old will fix it right up returning about 90 to 100% of the original strength.