Originally Posted by
bulldog1935
I think Calfee's carbon rando is beautiful and qualified - there's carbon and then there's carbon. Chinese imports is a different argument.
But I'll never be in the $10,000 bike market, never in the used carbon market.
If I'm going to buy a nice used bike, it's going to be steel. That's what I do.
and I took the tread off 5 tires in the past year.
You guys know anything about private planes? The class of people who own them are litigious - or their survivors are.
After he retired it, my friend sold his Apache for 4 times what he paid for it. It's because 75% of the price of a new plane these days is the manufacturer's liability insurance on the old planes they made.
I honestly believe we will eventually see Specialized taken down by next generation owners of used carbon bikes.
A lot of this post strikes me as complete non-sense to be blunt. Please provide some evidence that "75% of a plane's cost is liability insurance". This sounds like histrionic, agenda based hyperbole. I know squat about the industry, but I'm calling BS based on common sense.
Specialized survived next gen buys of aluminum and steel...and have survived existing used CF bikes on the market since the early 90s.
Have you ridden a CF specialized? Mine rides great, though the Shimano bits are another matter. I hate to break this to you...but you can make a quality bike in China, Taiwan, Japan, the US, Italy...etc. It might have less boutique appeal, but there's nothing wrong with commercial products in China unless they were made in a flawed manner/process. Sure...my tendency is to prefer boutique US production, but running down a commercial Chinese production frame isn't needed and isn't likely to be terribly accurate, those bikes have proven to be more than adequate for a lot of people.
As to a few prior assertions, the endurance limit you describe may be more theoretical than practical...steel bikes regularly see stress that places incremental weakness in excess of the endurance yield and aluminum/CF bikes are often over engineered to the point where the advantage is largely theoretical. Does endurance limit exist? Yes...I've talked to enough industry folks over the years to understand that the real world application is largely immaterial to the majority of users.
Bikes are tools...they all have a place, and even the wrong size screw driver can frequently turn a screw adequately enough.
That Calfee is absolutely beautiful...I'd rock that. Still, when/if the time comes for that kind of purchase, it'll either be Spectrum or Chapman. Barring Weigle having a free calendar.