DaveWC

I did none of those things. I had no trouble decoding your friend's letter. In fact I quoted him and you suggested that I was making up stories. You misrepresented what the Colnago lawyer said and then attributed what you think he said about Colnago bikes to all carbon bikes. I do believe that CF fails, as does steel, aluminum, titanium etc. You also believed the CF failed and had a limited life of 2 years. You said that 10 years ago & continued to ride carbon until you crashed twice due to what you believe is a failure of carbon. I don't suggest that you don't know how to ride. I do state that you blame a carbon failure on your inability to ride downhill at 35mph after hitting what your friend called a large bump. All we have to go by from you is your admittedly failing memory and your magical ability to determine that a seam in a carbon fork caused your accident. So if anything I say that you don't know how to objectively assess the cause of the accident.

mapeiboy

I am not going to send you my Colnage EP even though its over 2 years old .

joejack951

You probably shouldn't. It'll just end up parked with my 2004 LOOK KG386 and 2009 Pedal Force CX1 (both full carbon fiber bikes). A third carbon fiber frame in the rotation will surely cause my immediate demise.

rekmeyata

And exclusively CF MTB's are full suspension bikes, thus the suspensions takes a lot of the pounding and twisting forces off the CF frame, and a good top of the line MTB like the Niner RIP 9 RDO 5 Star, which is a $6,500 mtb, weighs 26.5 pounds with a frame dimension that is smaller than a road bike, which only means of course that the frame is built heavy for taking punishment, plus the suspension system takes a lot of the forces off the frame. I can't find any information on how often a professional enduro downhill race bike is replaced, but if it's anything like a road bike I would assume after a season of use.

Maelochs

Again, comparing how the pros treat their bikes and how casual riders do is worthless. Completely different dynamics, and having nothing to do with safety.

I am pretty sure that if I gave you a brand-new bike a couple times a year and paid you to ride it, you'd get rid of whatever you were riding, even if it was only a couple weeks old---particularly if you wouldn't get paid if you didn't.

If we were all rational adults, we'd look at the various facts presented here, ignore the nonsense, and be content to make our own choices and let others make theirs. However .....

FullGas

occasionally still ride my '92 Epic Allez carbon bike, including 45 mph descents.

living on the edge...

badger1

Really? Are they? That would be news to Giant and many other manufacturers.

https://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-us...es/off.road/8/

FeltF2Tarmac

I like how everything is in Italian except Attorny at Law at top of page. Non professional look could mean something.

I learned a long time ago the shop teacher missing digits is not the guy I want to learn from. I also don't want to take advice about my safety from a guy that gets his foot under a running lawn mower or two wrecks on a bike made of a material now deemed dangerous by said self appointed safety focal. I really question the ops ability to give advice since not anything I have read states the bike looked and checked out upon my regular inspections. I look my crossover regularly, like my cars and anything else I may trust my life to the safe operation of. Maybe you should have considered the fact your friend suggested you hit the same bump he did and got a bike inspection. Those pictures look rough but I also think this was caused by a not so insignificant impact and not just riding along. The tubes took the lug they fit in with them, it did not just come apart from bad bonding.

kbobb1

Dissa make-a me pee fromma my eye!

1989Pre

Good call, but you should have destroyed it, in case anyone else may try to use it.

Trsnrtr

I'm not going to read through all this crap because I've seen it before but I will say that I'm surprised that Colnago's attorney doesn't use paragraphs.

wphamilton

To me it means that likely this 24 year old guy just recently passed his bar exam or whatever the bar is in Italy, hung his shingle up as a one-man shop on the internet by hiring the neighbor's kid to build his webpage, and hawked his gimmick of re-writing user manuals to put in vague disclaimers, hoping to convince the small business owner who hopefully couldn't be expected to know better that it eliminates their potential liability. But that's just my opinion.

FrozenK

Niner, the brand he mentioned, sells the Air 9 RDO a 1.2 (2lb, 10oz) carbon frame that is often built with Niner's own Carbon rigid fork -Niner used to offer that build but they don't anymore.

And pretty much everybody else sells carbon hardtails, Scott's Scale is sub-1,000 gram. I have yet to hear of anyone saying "front suspension" required.

While hardtail frames are indeed heavier than road frames, they also see a lot rougher riding conditions. And then we have cyclocross bikes, that see a lot of rough terrain, crashes, harsh remounts... and have been made out of carbon for years. They don't come with an expiration date.

rekmeyata

That was a poor choice of words on my part, but most are on the professional enduro circuit.

Ball Bearing

This thread has convinced me to avoid buying a Colnago.

Scarbo

This is an interesting topic. I don't know what to make of it all other than to relate my own experience with carbon fiber frames. I am still riding a 2007 Time VXR ProTeam, which--oh, I'd guess has about a good 75K miles on it. I love that bike and it has never given me a moment's trouble at all. I used to live in the San Francisco bay area and I'm intimately familiar with the roads that the OP mentioned in his initial posting (Redwood Road, which goes from Castro Valley to Moraga used to be a favorite route of mine, in fact, as were the Mt. Diablo and Morgan Territory climbs).

In addition to the Time, I have another bike (2001 Serotta) with an F1 carbon fork; and this bike, too, has always been 100% reliable for me. Both of these bikes I have ridden on some hair raising, technical descents, in various environments, without incidence; and I would not hesitate to continue riding them well into the future.

However, my positive experiences notwithstanding, I have often thought about this issue. I wish it was possible to gather more hard data on these types of failures (relating to all materials). Another thing that I wonder about is what, if any, bearing a rider's weight has on any purported CF frame failures. I'm a pretty light, svelte guy. I see some really big men and women riding around on carbon fiber frames and have often wondered if this had a negative impact on the longevity of such frames. I don't know the answer to that question, though. Moreover, riding style would play into this as well, I'd think. There is such a thing as hitting a pothole, for example, with full force and weight; and there is such a thing as hitting the same pothole, and minimizing the impact by getting off the saddle, being light on the bars, and so forth. Anyway, additional food for thought.

StanSeven

The thing is Colnago is a big business that's been going for many years. I think they produce (including overseas subcontracting) 10,000 frames annually. You don't get that way using Taiwan production, Italian headquarters, and major distributors worldwide with extensive and experienced legal support. Just dealing with all the international customs and importing/exporting issues might keep an attorney busy full time alone. I would really be surprised to hear this email is legit.

rekmeyata

OK, I wrote Canyon factory enduro team folks about how often they replace team members bikes and here is what they said:

Canyon Factory Enduro Team
July 25 at 11:34pm

Hey Rekmeyata. Every rider has two bikes a year and they will be updated with fresh parts for racing from our partners constantly over the year then replaced. Cheers

So this tells us that they don't trust the CF bikes to handle more then a year worth of racing, which goes along with the road racing side of the world. And then since enduro racing is hard on parts they are constantly replacing parts which isn't really important for our discussion unless some of those parts are CF parts which I can't determine from the letter.

CliffordK

Having a spare bike for all team members isn't surprising.
How quickly do designs change? Paint Schemes?
Scratches?

I'm not at all surprised to hear some pro teams would use all 2016 model year bikes. They are showcasing the bikes for the manufacturers... It would just look cheap to have their pro teams riding last year's model bikes... or perhaps from a few years ago. And, have no doubt that someone will notice.

Want to be the only pro rider still on 9s? Equipment incompatible with "neutral support"?

There may be many reasons to choose to upgrade rather than maintain old.

Maelochs

No sir, that is what You, with your extreme bias, Want it to mean.

What it means is, every year riders (who are often also changed every season---does this mean Canyon thinks riders can't stand up to the rigors of racing more than a season?) is that Canyon supplies teams with its latest models every season.

The squads riding Canyons at the 2016 TdF weren't riding 2014 0r 2015 models, because the teams get the latest and greatest, the newest and the best---and because Canyon wants to promote the newest and latest bikes.

Unless you can categorically prove that no teams ever rode new bikes each year back when steel and then aluminum were the standard, all you have proven here is that you are not an honest man.

Yes, CF can be more fragile than metal. Anyone can see that. But that doesn't mean CF is so fragile that it is unsafe as a frame material or even unsafe after a year or two of hard use. That is an idea invented by dishonest and biased posters who are twisting evidence to make an unproven point.

Funniest thing is that once this thread is laid to rest, another one will start about how aluminum bikes are unsafe after a couple years as well, because of their poor response to fatigue cycles---and all the folks posting here riding aluminum bikes will be frustrated by posts where the poster blatantly and deliberately misinterprets information to make an incorrect point. We have all seen it before ... I am pretty sure we will see it again.

Rekmyata----why don't you actually ask the question you want to ask: Ask the guys at Canyon if their bikes are unsafe to be ridden after the end of the season. See what they say then.

CliffordK

Hmmm...
Maybe you've solved the mystery why the paint scheme on my old steel Colnago appears to be just a couple of years newer than the lugwork on the bike.

PepeM

Froome last Saturday (stage 20):



Froome last Sunday (stage 21):



This clearly tells us that Sky doesn't trust their CF bikes to last more than one day. I recommend any of you riding CF bikes to dispose them after one day of use.

PepeM

Not only Sky, Tinkoff too!

PepeM

Actually, if I recall correctly, Greipel changed bikes two times during the last stage. I guess Lotto only trusts their bikes to last a few hours. I recommend all of you carbon fanboys do the same.

jefnvk

Heck, if we want to use racing as an example, I should probably only use every water bottle for one fill too, right? They obviously don't trust them to last more than that 24oz worth of liquid, or they wouldn't just toss them on the side of the road!