rydabent

FB

Proof? You harp on my dislike for pot use and Colo. Have you read current news events that there are far more young people that are now homeless in Colo. since pot became legal?? How about a thread that compares pot heads to an increase in CF bikes? Or maybe a trifecta---a pot head from New York on a CF bike!!!!!

BTW if you dont like my opinions, just put me on ignore. Other wise have a nice day.

yak

This is how Santa Cruz tested some of its frames

spare_wheel

downcycling is not recycling? well i guess that plastic bench i sat on in the park blocks was just a figment of my imagination.



and i personally have recycled multiple pieces of carbon at my lbs (i cut several bars down). it's my understanding that both specialized and trek have graciously decided to recycle carbon fiber from any source as a service to the cycling community.

kickstart

Does it really matter if CF bicycles are recyclable? They represent a statistically irrelevant volume, its not harmful, and has little if any beneficial post consumer use. It seems to be mostly an excuse for those who are looking for reasons to not like them.
My brother has a high end CF bike, I ride steel, they both have advantages and disadvantages, the important thing is we have chosen what fits our wants and needs best.

spare_wheel

Boeing has begun using recycled carbon fiber in non-structural components (e.g. panels/furniture/containers). There is definitely demand for cheap and light weight non-structural cf.

CharleyGnarly

Yak in post #52
Bingo! I was going to reference that video.
Was interesting. Looks like steel will bend, bend, bend, then collapse.
Aluminum will bend, bend, crack/snap.
CF takes a bunch of pressure, then when it does go it is catastrophic.
I have ridden and raced steel and aluminum BMX bikes. Never broke steel, but did break aluminum. Could have been a design flaw, but knew a few people that broke aluminum, and fewer that broke steel (usually at a weld.)
CF on the other hand, I have never even ridden. I think that the average joe would have a tough time breaking one unless it sustained a decent nick or something. And if that happened...look out. That's where the problem lies in situations like TDF. In one of those pile ups there may be some minor damage done that may be ok for a bit, but then fails totally later.

pvillemasher

Then there's also this one.

Steel Shaft Vs Carbon Fiber Shaft - YouTube

Keith99

I watched over half. Same for me, except I think there were possibly more broken bikes, but it is hard to tell. One wheel bent means replace on the road as getting a bent wheel out is not time effective.

Nothing close to shattered.

Pibber

Durrr, I forgot to translate that to 41. Stupid stupid me!

Coal Buster

If someone refuses to buy a CF bike because they believe it harms the environment, why should you doubt their sincerity? Every person's ecological choices are insignificant in the big picture. That's not an excuse for doing nothing.

yugyug

No, it doesn't restore the original form or properties of the material. Compare to metals or glass which can be re-melted into a liquid and re-poured into the same original moulds if desired.


Thats reuse, not recycling.

I know that may sound pedantic, but greater awareness of the differences between such things as reuse, repair and recycling improves knowledge of the products we buy (and make).

gecho

I don't believe any plastic food containers are ever turned back into food grade plastics. Polyester fleece seems to be the primary example of what used pop bottles get turned into. Still better than just ending up in a landfill.

I guess that's where old fashion metal and glass containers remain superior. Mixing colored and clear glass was a problem when you wanted to create clear glass again. Recent advances in computerized sorting uses jets of air to separate out any colored pieces so they don't have to rely on strict segregation of clear glass from recycled sources. Interesting video here: Video: How A Used Bottle Becomes A New Bottle : Planet Money : NPR

shipwreck

See, its the way you present things that make you to entertaining to put on ignore. Hyperbolic reactionary fear mongering, generally baseless, but still rather engaging. No offense.

"there are far more young people that are now homeless in Colo. since pot became legal" The way you put it, infers that scads of fine young Coloradians, previously simply bursting with potential, have been rendered so helpless against the sweet siren call of the legal daemon weed, that they done spent all the rent money on zig zags and a quarter of Rocky Mountain High, so have to now spend the nights and days panhandling and terrorizing tax paying citizens.
Totally unlike before legalization, when the streets of Denver were clear of any of that longhaired unwashed nonsense.

Probably there are several deadbeats from your hometown that are now farther away from your lawn, due to the fact that they decided to be useless human beings in Boulder or Co. Springs. You should be happy! I doubt that they were a boon to Lincoln before they left.

And on topic, if someone wants to buy carbon bikes, good on them. After it catastrophically fails from being ridden by some middle aged guy on the sunday no drop ride into a homeless kid stoned on newly legal Marijaywahna standing in the bike lane, it can be cross cycled into ultralight homeless shelters, ready to be emergency airdropped into whatever new state sells its soul by legalizing a drug everyone has fairly easy access to anyway.

yugyug

I have no idea how this thread got so derailed, but I have no doubt in my mind that if everyone smoked more pot there would be less supply and demand for carbon fibre bikes.

spare_wheel

exactly. and a large percentage of recycled glass is used as a filler, aggregate, or abrasive agent for a variety of construction and manufacturing processes.

rydabent

While I thing CF bikes are over priced and over rated, the tangent about recycling them is laughable. The ultra tiny amount of material from a CF bike in a land fill is like a fly fart in a hurricane. Besides they for the most part do not degrade, therefor they do no harm to the enviroment.

mconlonx

Probably I'm one of those two or three or twenty people...

You don't give logical reasons why your position is better, why do you expect the same from others? There's a difference between a personal attack and people refuting and challenging your opinions.

This.

...and here, you definitively prove FB's point.

mconlonx

Thing is, as far as reported in the 2010 carbon recycling source referenced earlier, this is all manufacturing-sourced recycling, not post consumer waste recycling.

It would be like Trek recycling their CF bike production cutaways and castoffs as computer bar mounts or water bottle cages. Not accepting CF frames back into the production flow as post consumer recycling.

Good that they are doing it, great that more CF recycling processes are in development, but still an industry in its infancy, a far cry from being able to leave your broken CF frame or component out in the recycling bin by the side of the road...

Agent Cooper

Have to agree here. I watched a good bit of the Tour this year as well. It seemed to me there were more falls and crashes than usual, maybe due to the bad weather. (?)

But I didn't see any bikes breaking apart.

spare_wheel

i agree. i think manufacturing-sourced recycling is the biggest issue to resolve.

Coal Buster

One more data point to add to the ecological discussion is that CF bikes actually sequester carbon and apparently for a long, long time. I don't know where that carbon comes from but if it came from the atmosphere in the form of living plant matter, it could be a net gain ecologically.

Jseis 

Nice to know that F1 drivers are regularly testing CF's limits to keep you'all safe.

mr_bill

2007 in Montreal - 300 kph, Kubica was taken to hospital with a "mild" concussion and sprained ankle - released the next day.
(They don't regularly test carbon fiber that way btw.)

My crabon fared far better there, plodding along an order of magnitude slower, 100 meters further along the circuit at turn 10:


-mr. bill

spare_wheel

LCA shows that carbon generally uses less energy and releases less GHG than aluminum and titanium. when it comes to steel vs crabon...it depends. a number of startups are working on commercial-scale production of carbon fiber from sustainable plant matter.

El Cid

I do that whenever I eat at Taco Bell.