Originally Posted by daoswald

Aluminum does fatigue, I'll give you that. Though the mast on my 35 year old sailboat is aluminum, and I don't think it's going to fail this year or next. Imagine the stresses that thing endures on a 27 foot 8000 pound boat. I've seen a few aluminum masts fail, and it's almost always attributed to the failure of a stainless steel shroud (the stays that keep the mast upright), or a stainless steel turnbuckle or other fitting.

But my real question is this: How many carbon frames have been around for the 15-20 years it would take to know that they've got a longer average life than aluminum? ...just wondering.