Originally Posted by tigrrrtamer

I hear you, regarding your metallurgical theories...
do you own the latest Machinery Handbook by any chance?
Because I do... and this was part of my studies actually. So I hope you're just not shooting off without the actual knowledge. Don't mean to offend you or anything, serious, just that you get a lot of that.

"Facts" and "theory" aside, you can talk to any pro rider from the 80's, 90's, and old school expert, and they will ALL testify that steel frames DO fatigue. Not in the sense of aluminum where aluminum fails... but in the sense that it DOES flex more.

Yes, I know that structurally it is a pipe... hence it's not "logical"... but if you take a piece of steel and bend it back and forth enough, it eventually becomes softer. Don't tell me you've NEVER broken a paperclip this way or other metal pbject. Extrapolate, and it becomes possible that a pipe as well, eventually gets softer with time.

BTW, you can read up in vintage cycling print about this phenomena... in back issues of bicycling magazine, Bike Tech, and a whole bunch of other cycling publications. It's a general knowledge in the cycling industry... of course, with the pros riding carbon since a decade now, and before that aluminum or titanium, we haven't heard talk about that in a long time.