Originally Posted by
cyclintom
Quite to the contrary - there are FAR more steel bikes in use than any other material by a wide margin. Do you think people are going to commute on a Trek Madone? Hell, try and buy a Schwinn Voyager off of Ebay. You can pick them up for a song and dance. And they are a hell of a lot less likely to get stolen or the U-lock sawed off. The bike messengers I've seen in San Francisco are riding steel single speeds. The rental bikes are all aluminum built so heavy that they might has well be steel.
Sure there are a lot of old steel bikes still floating around out there and a certain percentage of bikes sold each year are steel but nonsteel bikes have made up a huge percentage of the market since the early to mid-90s. Over 25 years, the number of nonsteel bikes has grown larger than the number of steel bikes.
People tend to ride new bikes more than old bikes and the part of the market that is dominated steel bikes...the BigBox Store bike...don't get ridden as much when new as higher quality bikes. Since they get ridden more, they tend to wear out, get damaged and break. It happened even during the age of mostly steel bikes. The material in highest use will tend to be the material that has the highest failure rate.
As to your other points, we aren't discussing theft or weight.
Originally Posted by
cyclintom
You show one photo with the guy saying that the Specialized (which at the time was a cheapo brand)broke in the center of the downtube away from the lug when you could plainly see it broke at the lug of the steering tube. Then you can also see that the failed "unknown make" bike had been a long time out in the rain and with that cheap headset had allowed water into the steering tube where it rusted the lug/steering tube out. And why don't you see any braze in the joint? Cheaply built bikes of any material will have a short lifetime and that bike judging from the components was both cheap and I would guess 35 years old and not 25 as they guess. If you shatter a CF bike you generally are carried to the hospital. That broken 583 frame probably would not even dump you and could be ridden albeit carefully home.
Specialized has never been a "cheapo brand". Nor did the frame break the lug. It broke below the lug.
As for the other two breaks, lugs are
supposed to be stronger and resist breaking. That lug obviously failed. Even if the lug broke because of corrosion, that points out one of the problems with steel bikes...they are prone to corrosion problems that nonsteel materials don't experience.
The broken seat tube is no more ridable than any broken aluminum or carbon frame with a break in the same area would be. Frankly, I wouldn't ride any of them.
My point, which you missed entirely is that broken frames
of any material are just as likely to be unrideable as any other material.
Originally Posted by
cyclintom
If you've broken FOUR metal frames you had better tell us the circumstances and the makes and models of each before you imply for one second that CF is in any way safer.
I'm not implying that carbon fiber is safer than other materials. I'm saying that no material is any better at resisting breakage than any other. I'm also saying that the failure modes of carbon and aluminum aren't like those of glass. That old horse is trotted out anytime a new material comes along that isn't steel.
In my experience, failure of aluminum frames and parts isn't sudden and catastrophic. It's a long process that is accompanied by a lot of warning.
Steel, on the other hand,
is sudden and catastrophic and, more importantly, it fails without warning. It doesn't bend gently. It doesn't creak and groan before it fails. It just shears kind of like people think aluminum breaks.
As for carbon fiber, I haven't experienced a carbon failure yet. I've seen some failures and they all seem to be rather slow events as well. I only have a couple of carbon parts...forks actually...and haven't had any problems with them including a fork that is about 10 years old and has 17,000+ miles on it.
Originally Posted by
cyclintom
By all means - after you've broken four metal frames be sure and continue riding a carbon fiber bike. Might I suggest a Ghost? You will soon have a lot in common.
I don't ride carbon. It just hasn't appealed to me. I'm just saying that it doesn't break like you think it does.