Peter_B

As to the "core" of what GP is saying, look at all the photos of bicyclists riding helmet-less via the slideshow on his home page. More head injuries by cyclists riding with carbon forks or riding without helmets? I don't have the data but I think we all know. Where's his screed about injuries from riding helmetless? His concern about carbon forks rings false...

Ragooch

What do guys who ride their bikes in sandals know from breaking parts?

tcs

If you've been familiar with the Rivendell aesthetic for that long, you probably share my amusement in Grant now offering a straight blade fork.

tcs

bigbossman 

I popped into Rivendell just this afternoon to buy a pair of crochet-back gloves. Nice folks, but if they're not all burning hemp they sure do look the part.

robatsu

Amused as well as a bit sad - like watching a relative who has always been lovably eccentric starting to go completely off their rocker in their old age. I dunno, any day now I expect GP to start touting Depends as the Riv alternative to padded biking shorts. And suggesting that one then go off for a ride in them, get lost, and not be able to find one's way home until the cops help out.

But seriously, back in the day, I thought Rambouillet/Romulus were da bomb. But now, anyone my height and under has gotta ride 650b if they wanna ride Riv. Double top tubes? Sorry, I'm not delivering machine parts or refrigerators in potholed 3rd world back alleys. And the Hilsen? 2k for the frame for a relatively heavy, sturdy bike w/lotsa clearance, stretched out, relaxed geometry w/a good dose of straight gauge cro-moly? Heck, I got that in my fully built 1980 Fuji Gran Tourer, virtually NOS (about 50 miles on the bike) for 200 bux a couple of years ago. And that was on Ebay, so the price represented full freight.

I emailed GP discussing this last question - if you do go for the Riv aesthetic/philosophy, shouldn't that lead a fair amount of those people, especially ones handy with a wrench, to throw down 100/200 dollars for old steel rather than pony up for new Riv? Maybe if the price differential was only 2-5x, yeah, it is worth the convenience/service of buying new, but you start talking 15-20x more expensive?

To his credit, he took some pains to answer my question, although not to my satisfaction. Unfortunately, for enquiring minds, he didn't want to be quoted and I'm going to respect that wish.

love2pedal.com

Grant's rant surely scared me enough to immediately remove my carbon fork. Unfortunately, his steel replacement won't be available until August.

So until then my 6 mile commute to work just became more challenging

Peter_B

AND you're riding without a helmet I see. So riding without a carbon fork and riding without a helmet, means you really fit in withthe Rivendell scene now....

KtotheF

my biggest issue with carbon forks is that they're painted black, looks terrible on pretty much any color frame, except black. I'm glad manufacturers have finally started painting forks to match the frames, sheesh.

That being said, chrome forks are allowed to not match the frame, if this were a chrome fork I was trading in my carbon for, I might consider it

Kommisar89

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! I love it!

Kommisar89

Grant is entitled to his opinion but I'm in full agreement with the guys who are pointing out that if carbon forks failed as often and catostrophically as he indicates the manufacturers would have been sued out of business years ago.

KonAaron Snake 

That's exactly what I don't understand either. Why buy a $1,000-$2,000 dedication to a frame that sells for a tenth of that on the current market? You can easily get a Reynolds 531 or Columbus SL frame for under $300 if you know what you're looking for, and I assume anyone interested in steel enough to buy a Riv does know what they're looking for. If one of the advantages of steel is that it lasts safely, there doesn't seem to be much need for buying a new steel bike at that price.

I understand what Soma and Surly do...it makes sense. You can get a new bike, with all the bells and whistles, at a reasonable complete price made of a material you like. I understand the market on custom bikes...you get a bike that fits you exactly and that is tailored to your exact riding style and preferences. I do not understand the market for Rivendell.

KonAaron Snake 

This bike is a '99.

tcs

I remember back in the mid-1990s reading the gospel according to Rivendell about how one couldn't buy a useful bike with heads-up geometry and plenty-o-tire clearance without going to a custom, boutique builder. Okay, but out in my garage was my Trek 750: heads-up geometry, 38x622 tires, double butted chromoly, frame mounts for racks and fenders, inexpensively available in probably half the bike shops in the country.

Part of Grant's gospel has always been exclusively for those who want to believe.

tcs

cudak888 

The market for Rivendell is for people who believe that old = inherently bad.

-Kurt

khatfull

Interesting thread.

I agree, it's an unavoidable truth that carbon's failure mode is quite simply much more unforgiving than most any other structural material. In a previous life I flew RC sailplanes. Many guys reinforced the spars in their wings with CF scrim. Launching is done on a powered winch (I won't go through the details, suffice it to say that the launch is the most stressful part of the flight profile). I have seen many wings simply explode during launch, gunshot explode....and almost all of those catastrophic failures were wings with some sort of CF reinforcement. Wings would literally get back to the ground being bags of balsa and CF toothpicks....all wrapped up in the heat shrink plastic covering used to cover the wings.

That said, I do have a carbon fork on my modern Cannondale. And I'm even more a glutton I suppose, I have a used CF fork. I wanted a specific Cannondale fork that's no longer produced and waited a long time to find one and from a seller I could gauge. When i got the fork I inspected it with a jeweler's loupe externally and I pushed cotton balls down the steerer tube, the thought being any internal delamination would catch the cotton and I'd feel it. I found nothing so I use the fork and have about 1000 trouble free miles on it now.

Would I have a carbon fork on a commuter (man, I wish I could commute...)? Not on your life. The very nature of commuting lends itself to steel and it's resiliency. Carbon has its place, steel has it's place....ALL materials have their place. But to reject a material out of hand simply indicates an understanding of where, how, and when to use it effectively and safely.

unprintable

Don't mean to play devil's advocate or anything, and I'm no "cult of Rivendell" fanboy; never bought a thing from them. But I think some of you are really missing the point here. Although he does at times in the article make it sound as though it happens somewhat frequently, the point is really that WHEN it does fail, it happens suddenly and catastrophically, not that it happens MORE than other materials. I personally have no experience with carbon fiber so I don't know anything about the truth of that assertion, but it seems like a lot of you are up in arms about the wrong thing.

robatsu

That is a central part of the paradox for me. One of the core tenets of Rivendell stuff is that a lot of the old ways are good - the usual stuff about clearances, lugs, that sort of thing. But somehow, you then have to sell the idea that it is worth paying a lot more for the new manifestations of the old designs.

Back when Riv was starting off, this actually made more economic sense. Sure, there were still cheap old bikes like there are now. But there was no ebay, craigslist, etc. So there was a lot more overhead in finding what you specifically needed in a used bike example - you'd basically have to travel to see the bike, spend a lot of afternoons at garage sales, and so forth. For those who don't particularly enjoy that sort of thing, that is a formidable barrier, spending a month of Sundays with no assurance that you'll hit paydirt.

I think that the emergence of these technologies that make buying an old bike much easier & more of a sure bet have had a lot to do with where Riv's products have gone. Back then, Riv's bikes really were much more faithful replicas of 70's road bikes than they are now becoming. But now, the originals are literally available at your fingertips - if I weren't really picky about brands, at any moment I can probably browse at least 100 bikes on CL/ebay that fit me and are along the lines of what I'm looking for.

Hence Riv's move into esoterica like 650b, double top tubes, unusual stuff that really isn't widely available anywhere. Communications technology has really forced them to move beyond selling new renditions of the old. Up to a point, buying new commands a premium, and the makers of these frames can capitalize on that so long as they stay, I dunno, I'm just pulling a figure out of my hat, maybe around 1k. Custom ones can go higher for the fact that they are custom. Riv was selling boatloads of Bleriots for $750, but for whatever reasons they abandoned that.

And that, folks, is ultimately why the Internet was invented. No, not to put Riv out of business, but to make it easy to buy old bikes.

luker

I have had a carbon frame fail. It happened slowly, over the course of two years, until the noise that the crack made was annoying enough to look the frame over with a loupe and find the crack (along the top tube behind the head tube). When carbon fails, it CAN fail suddenly. So can steel. So can Aluminum. But none of those materials have a favorite failure mode.

If a fork breaks (of any material) you are going to go over the bars. Bad crash. When a stem breaks, you'll probably go over the bars. When you hit a bad pothole, you'll probably go over the bars. When you hit a large dog, you'll go over the bars. Intrestingly, if a chain breaks and stops the back wheel, you'll probably go over the bars (been there...). My point is that there are a hundred and thirty one ways to crash like this, all of 'em bad.

Why the inordinate amount of fear about any particular one way?

repechage

No, he would go Bamboo, made in an underprivliged country where the $ would be of human benefit. Or something like that.
For him the admission that business has been challenging is quite honest.
But it is not to be said that business can be found in this economy, VeloOrange with admittedly less overhead, is expanding...maybe GP is burned out?

Grand Bois

It's ridiculous to say that about a company that has always made a specialty of selling parts to make old racing bikes more comfortable for non-racers.

Grand Bois

Got a problem with that?

Sirrus Rider

Heck, I can personally vouch that you will somersault if you hit a small dog..

robatsu

With apologies to Paul Simon:

Get hit from the back, Jack
Go over the bars, Lars
Crumple a rim, Jim
....

and so forth. The possibilities are are endless.

Loose Chain

I am an A&P and work in the aviation industry. I also have Level III NDI training and various other training in composite manufacturing and more importantly inspection. There are problem with inspection of composite structures and engineers have great difficulty specifying inspection procedures and more importantly criteria for rejection of a component from inevitable damage.

It is very difficult to inspect composite structures. Metal is, speaking as an actual expert, much easier to inspect. This is in part because metal tends to fail from a visible defect or stress riser and it fails in a predictable manner of which we have hundreds of years behind us and good, reliable methods of inspection. Composite does not have this "field experience" but it is developing.

Composite material have fantastic properties, can be very strong and durable and have huge life cycles. We just have to get better at inspection and to inspect a material we have to have some way of quantifying the degradation. Therein lies the issue, carbon fiber tends to fail, bam, all at once. One inspection method the part, when new is mapped using XXXXXX (I removed this info on edit).

The bicycle industry needs an inspection procedure for highly stressed, damage prone parts like cf forks, bars, stems, seat posts etc.

I am a steel guy, aluminum as well, these are well understood materials. Steel and aluminum can be recycled and with a bicycle can be built in a manner which has huge life cycle duration and low potential for catastrophic failure, cf is just not quite there yet and IMO should remain a material for those seeking the ultimate performance knowing full well the life cycle is limited, ultimate performance comes at a price that is not just measured in dollars. But, as I said, slowly we will learn to build and inspect these new materials.

mike047

That was choice, I got a great laugh.