Carbon fiber seat posts and handle bars, are they safe? And what do I need to know?
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I am looking at a 27.2 seat post and and some flat bars with a built in riser.
What should I know,I am both new to and scared of carbon fiber.
What should I know,I am both new to and scared of carbon fiber.
Those handlebars are amazingly light.
Last edited by Jim from Boston; 04-03-16 at 05:28 PM.
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Big guy here, and dittoes to all the pro-carbon replies above. Last year I crashed and my bike handlebars landed hard on the right side. That drop then slightly flexed with weight on it. I continued to ride the handlebars for a couple days, around 10 miles, avoiding that right hand drop even though it continued to support my weight until I could get to a shop and get a replacement. See picture below.
Those handlebars are amazingly light.
Those handlebars are amazingly light.
I am starting to feel a little better about the possibility of using carbon fiber.
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Thank you, all
But special thanks to Clark W. Griswold Who I'm sure is on his way to Wally World, thanks for putting it in perspective for me, your absolutely right ,I am 210 pounds, and aluminum is fine.Almost Trick because I am nervous as heck about this stuff and would be inspecting every little scratch for cracking, asploding thanks for that Wheever!
I would not be able to enjoy riding.Sky dog 75 it is right loads of tensile strength, but not much shier strength. It is just to delicate for a big horse like me.
Thank you for really great advice all the posts where taken in and well thought through and I am not going the carbon road on anything structural.
But special thanks to Clark W. Griswold Who I'm sure is on his way to Wally World, thanks for putting it in perspective for me, your absolutely right ,I am 210 pounds, and aluminum is fine.Almost Trick because I am nervous as heck about this stuff and would be inspecting every little scratch for cracking, asploding thanks for that Wheever!
I would not be able to enjoy riding.Sky dog 75 it is right loads of tensile strength, but not much shier strength. It is just to delicate for a big horse like me.
Thank you for really great advice all the posts where taken in and well thought through and I am not going the carbon road on anything structural.
If there be an incident, un-involved to walking, that made some engravements to the sole. Will that take your confidence away?
There be cyclists have have more confidence in the Carbon Fiber of Cycling Shoes --- OVER -- the Carbon Fiber of Cycling Components.
#29
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There are carbon looking aluminum seat posts made wrapped with something resembling the woven fabric, get the look without the worry.
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Thank you, all
But special thanks to Clark W. Griswold Who I'm sure is on his way to Wally World, thanks for putting it in perspective for me, your absolutely right ,I am 210 pounds, and aluminum is fine.Almost Trick because I am nervous as heck about this stuff and would be inspecting every little scratch for cracking, asploding thanks for that Wheever!
I would not be able to enjoy riding.Sky dog 75 it is right loads of tensile strength, but not much shier strength. It is just to delicate for a big horse like me.
Thank you for really great advice all the posts where taken in and well thought through and I am not going the carbon road on anything structural.
But special thanks to Clark W. Griswold Who I'm sure is on his way to Wally World, thanks for putting it in perspective for me, your absolutely right ,I am 210 pounds, and aluminum is fine.Almost Trick because I am nervous as heck about this stuff and would be inspecting every little scratch for cracking, asploding thanks for that Wheever!
I would not be able to enjoy riding.Sky dog 75 it is right loads of tensile strength, but not much shier strength. It is just to delicate for a big horse like me.
Thank you for really great advice all the posts where taken in and well thought through and I am not going the carbon road on anything structural.
But a Carbon Fiber Seatpost is Geometrically centered: the human body is the SHIELD TO PROTECT the C-F Seatpost. All Around.
The C-F Seatpost is the 1ST C-F unit of all C-F that I invested in.
A "shock" absorber" to the bike.
You won't regret it, once you use it.
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Well I went to a local LBS and told them I wanted a carbon fiber fork, not the absolute lightest but the most indestructible, I have a pair of forks made for a cycle cross bike coming with V brake posts. They are well made and have an aluminum steer tube.
Here they are.
Comp Carbon Cross Fork | Ritchey
Here they are.
Comp Carbon Cross Fork | Ritchey
Last edited by goraman; 04-06-16 at 01:41 PM.
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Watch the end of a pro race when the big boys are sprinting ... and then tell me you're going to break lighweight, reputable brand carbon anything. Even you 200+ pounders aren't putting that much stress on your gear, I'd bet. Let alone us 150 - 175 pounders.
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When I got my all CF (frame, wheels, seat post, stem, handlebar) bike, I figured I'd wait to drop down to low 200s to start riding her. Well, I'm still 270 and riding her. Stiff as a cheapskate on tips... and I have no problems with the abuse she's taken. Took my aluminum bike out on a 50 mile ride once and thought she was gonna keel over from the abuse - chain skipping, odd creaking noises, even wheels were out of true. Not so with my carbon. A 50 with her with rough roads and fast corners and quick descents (not to mention heavy loaded cranks on the up), and she feels (and sounds) just as fresh as when I started.
Until something assplodes on me, I'm in the pro-CF camp. Don't over-torque and don't crash are good rules to abide by.
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+1
When I got my all CF (frame, wheels, seat post, stem, handlebar) bike, I figured I'd wait to drop down to low 200s to start riding her. Well, I'm still 270 and riding her. Stiff as a cheapskate on tips... and I have no problems with the abuse she's taken. Took my aluminum bike out on a 50 mile ride once and thought she was gonna keel over from the abuse - chain skipping, odd creaking noises, even wheels were out of true. Not so with my carbon. A 50 with her with rough roads and fast corners and quick descents (not to mention heavy loaded cranks on the up), and she feels (and sounds) just as fresh as when I started.
Until something assplodes on me, I'm in the pro-CF camp. Don't over-torque and don't crash are good rules to abide by.
When I got my all CF (frame, wheels, seat post, stem, handlebar) bike, I figured I'd wait to drop down to low 200s to start riding her. Well, I'm still 270 and riding her. Stiff as a cheapskate on tips... and I have no problems with the abuse she's taken. Took my aluminum bike out on a 50 mile ride once and thought she was gonna keel over from the abuse - chain skipping, odd creaking noises, even wheels were out of true. Not so with my carbon. A 50 with her with rough roads and fast corners and quick descents (not to mention heavy loaded cranks on the up), and she feels (and sounds) just as fresh as when I started.
Until something assplodes on me, I'm in the pro-CF camp. Don't over-torque and don't crash are good rules to abide by.
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Though many pros use alloy handlebars. For them, it's not too hard to get a bike under 15lbs which is below the UCI limit; bars are one of the first things they move to alloy to add weight if they have to.
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I'm just trying to get my Schwinn down to 22lbs.
I am 1 pound 10- 11 onces away depending on the scale used.
Carbon forks, carbon bars lighter grips and 4 Ti bolt kits and 1 Aluminum bolt kit and that should do it. total stainless steel bolts removed 30. 26 Ti bolts and 4 aluminum should make a difference.
I can go to a carbon seat post if I am 1.7 ounces short.
https://www.ninerbikes.com/carbonseatpost
End goal a 22 lb. Target Schwinn Trail way, crazy huh?
I am 1 pound 10- 11 onces away depending on the scale used.
Carbon forks, carbon bars lighter grips and 4 Ti bolt kits and 1 Aluminum bolt kit and that should do it. total stainless steel bolts removed 30. 26 Ti bolts and 4 aluminum should make a difference.
I can go to a carbon seat post if I am 1.7 ounces short.
https://www.ninerbikes.com/carbonseatpost
End goal a 22 lb. Target Schwinn Trail way, crazy huh?
Last edited by goraman; 04-07-16 at 09:36 AM.
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crazy huh?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/sp...rder.html?_r=0
PÉRIGUEUX, France — In terms of technology, Greg LeMond, the three-time Tour de France winner, was a pioneer. In an age when steel still dominated, LeMond rode bikes made of carbon-fiber composites, then an exotic material mostly used by the military.
At this year’s Tour, carbon fiber is the only material used for bikes, and it has also replaced aluminum in wheel rims. The strength, lightness and the design flexibility offered by carbon fiber have ensured its dominance. And its most extreme form, the special aerodynamic time-trial bicycle, was on display Saturday in the 20th stage.
But there has been a catch. Unlike steel or aluminum, carbon fiber does not bend in crashes. Rather the (carbon fiber) bikes and wheels frequently shatter, often hurling riders to the road and, many fear, increasing the severity of injuries.
“Anyone in a team who’s being honest with you will tell you how frequently their bikes are breaking; everybody knows,” said Mark Greve, a physician and assistant professor of sports medicine at Brown University who studied injuries to 3,500 competitive cyclists. “Few people in the public appreciate how many bikes a pro team will go through in a season, because they break for one reason or another. The bikes, they completely explode.”
Having conquered professionals, who ride frames that retail in the United States for $5,000 to $6,000 with forks, carbon fiber is making its way to increasingly affordable models available to the more casual riders.
Much as in what are now called cycling’s black years of doping, there is a code of silence among riders, even retired ones, and mechanics and team officials over the issue of carbon bike and wheel durability. The teams and riders exist, in part, to act as powerful marketing tools for bike-makers.
But when they spoke on the condition they not be identified, their stories emerged. Riders described landing on the top, horizontal tube of the bikes during crashes and ending up on the road after their frames splintered and collapsed. Small spills that used to mean, at best, straightening handlebars often require a bike change. Mechanics say they sometimes return the shattered remains of frames to manufacturers in bags intended to hold a single bicycle wheel.
“Would I be happy to use a carbon bike if I was still racing?” said Robert Millar, one of the first riders to ride carbon bikes, a former teammate of LeMond’s and a winner of the Tour de France’s best climber’s jersey. “Yes, but that would be a custom product designed to be as light, fast and strong enough to withstand the demands of racing. The cost would be irrelevant.”
Two major shifts have occurred since Millar, LeMond and others introduced carbon fiber to cycling. Initially the bikes mimicked steel-frame construction and used tubes that were cut and glued into aluminum lugs.
Today’s bikes are far more sophisticated. As its name suggests, carbon fiber is usually formed as thread and then woven into a fabric. Frames are now built in molds, enabling exotic and aerodynamic shapes within the limits set down by the International Cycling Union. By manipulating the carbon-fiber fabric used in different parts of the frames, manufacturers can stiffen it in some areas, such as around the cranks, while building in flexibility for rider comfort in areas where it will not affect performance.
Once the fabric is in place, it is coated with epoxy, effectively creating a carbon-reinforced plastic bicycle.
Bicycle manufacturing has largely moved to Taiwan and China, regardless of the country of origin of a brand name. While the American bike company Trek and Toronto-based Cervélo produce a comparatively small number of their highest-end frames in the United States, most of the bikes at the Tour were made in Asia and are identical to those available to any cyclist with enough money.
Michael Kaiser, the head of product development at Canyon, a German company that offers both carbon and aluminum bikes, and provides bikes to two teams at the Tour, said that with carbon, careful manufacturing was as important as design.
“To get exactly the right result is more demanding than with metals, as it requires a comparatively large degree of work by hand,” he wrote in an email. “Therefore the entire manufacturing process has to be incredibly precise with extensive quality controls in place to ensure there are no defects in the parts.”
To that end, Canyon has been using CT scanners to discover hidden defects in its forks, a potentially lethal point of failure, and will soon do so on frames.
Chris Riekert, a spokesman for Specialized, an American company that supplies bikes to three Tour teams, said in a statement, “Carbon gives our engineers the ability to produce much stronger and lighter products than traditional steel or alloy by letting us put more material in high stress areas to ensure performance and safety in real world riding conditions.”
Doug Perovic, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Toronto, said that carbon fiber was a bit like a diamond: strong while not being particularly tough.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes up for carbon’s lack of toughness by building up several layers of material, Perovic said. Bicycle makers go the other route and use its exceptional strength to make the bike’s structure as thin and thus as light as possible.
What results, Perovic said, is that when a (carbon) bike is stressed beyond its limits, it “fractures into many pieces while metals bend, the energy absorption is the bending.” While steel and aluminum bikes generally telegraph an impending failure by displaying cracks, carbon fiber generally fails without warning.
The International Cycling Union, concerned about the potential danger of ever lighter carbon bikes, imposed a minimum weight of 6.8 kilograms (about 15 pounds) in 2000 for bikes used in high-level races like the Tour. But that applies to the whole bicycle, including the wheels, leaving bicycle makers to continue a marketing battle to produce ever lighter frames. Professional teams simply add weight, sometimes pieces of chain, to a bike that doesn’t meet the minimum.
Before the Tour started, Trek launched the latest salvo in that war: the Émonda SLR 10, a frame that weighs 690 grams (about 24 ounces), making it, the company says, the world’s lightest bike. It sells as a complete bike for $15,750.
Greve and Perovic agreed that for consumers who are not constantly banging their bikes around on team vehicles and who are unlikely to be involved in crashes, the risks in buying a carbon bike made by a reputable company should be minimal. Greve said many riders had told him that the performance gains from superlight frames reached the point of diminishing returns long ago, and he questions the wisdom of consumers’ buying what are, in effect, very costly throwaway items if they crash.
The advantages of carbon, Kaiser said, mean that it will continue to be used more widely in bikes and continue to replace aluminum. Steel is now a niche element most commonly used by artisanal frame builders in, and a small number of companies also build titanium frames.
But, he added, that will happen only if “consumers have faith in the material.”
“We are aware that not everyone in the industry is as thorough or responsible when it comes to using carbon and checking the quality of their products,” he said.
#45
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This is the kind of stuff that scares me, having the front of my bike explode and being driven face first at 35 mph into the tarmac then hit by the car or truck behind me.
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If you buy carbon stuff that meets the much more demanding mountain bike standards and then only ride on the roads, it is pretty much unimaginable that you will have any problems.
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The Schwinn Target bike transformation is making progress.
Handle bars will be in Wednesday that's another 1/2 pound and I'm still waiting for several Ti bolt kits to total over 40 bolts that will go from SS to Ti.
It's pouring rain so I could only test ride and carbon dose smooth out the ride.
The shop removed some off the seat post it was still very long now it is about right.
I'm not sure this scale is right but it is possible.
Handle bars will be in Wednesday that's another 1/2 pound and I'm still waiting for several Ti bolt kits to total over 40 bolts that will go from SS to Ti.
It's pouring rain so I could only test ride and carbon dose smooth out the ride.
The shop removed some off the seat post it was still very long now it is about right.
I'm not sure this scale is right but it is possible.
Last edited by goraman; 04-09-16 at 03:04 PM.
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I just love the comment that CF aircraft stay aloft so it must be good line of crap, as if airplanes use the same carbon fiber bikes do...LOL!!!
There is already enough concerns with CF in aircraft that the industry is looking at going to aluminum alloy in future narrow body aircraft instead of CF; see: Will Aluminum-Lithium Beat Composites for Narrow Body Airliners? »
There is already enough concerns with CF in aircraft that the industry is looking at going to aluminum alloy in future narrow body aircraft instead of CF; see: Will Aluminum-Lithium Beat Composites for Narrow Body Airliners? »