Originally Posted by 79pmooney

I shy away from carbon fiber for a reason few talk about. Failure mode. Aluminum frames and forks for the same reason. I have lived through an aluminum fork failure. (If something of that magnitude were to happen again, I pray I won't live. Once is plenty. So I ride steel and titanium frames. (The titanium ones built by builders I know and have been doing it a long time. TiCycles. Been in the game almost as long as Merlin and Lightspeed.) Steel forks, steel steerers, always.

I make no claim these parts won't fail. I do have some belief, based on experience, that those failures are very likely not to be physically costly to me. I have had two steel frames break on me while riding (a right chainstay and a seattube at the BB, two forks; a blade midway and both blades at the crown. (Yes, that last one was scary. We, myself, the builder and the metal plater made a series of decisions that almost worked out very badly. I descended 2000' on those blades that barely got me home. I replaced that fork with a good ol' - brand new - 531 fork with a deeply scalloped crown ... and paint. It's going nowhere in my lifetime!)

I will never race and haven't since I hung up my numbers a year after my head injury. I now have NFL "loose brain syndrome". Spending a lot of time on wheels is not being very smart. So I absolutely do not need the speed advantage of CF. I do love climbing but for me, the pure joy of it happens when the bike fits perfectly; it and me form a smooth machine. Weight and speed really don't matter much.

Rode yesterday about 35 miles on my old Mooney. Fancier materials wouldn't have made the ride any better. (Now less wind would have. Aero wheels would have helped, But being blown around more, well, maybe not. The rest of the aero was all about the long, low back and frame material makes zero difference there!)

Ben