So I've been looking all over the internet and it seems that carbon fiber is everywhere. From full frames to part of the frame to forks. I'm just curious, since it's been around for a while now does anyone have an opinion on how it compairs to steel in the durability department. The next bike I buy I would like to keep for as long as I want and not have to get rid of it becuase it has worn out or just broke. To me, steel and titanium are the way to go but I may have a chance at getting a new Trek carbon fiber for dirt cheap thus the reason I'm looking for input.

Thanks,
Bob

No man, stay away from carbon. It doesn't bend, it breaks. Regardless of the fact that there are dozens of manufacturers making frames with it and the fact that it's impossible to find more than a handful of articles questioning it's durability, you should definitely stay away from it.

I suggest that new material everybody is talking about - chrome.



55/Rad

Look on E Bay and see how many new, and in fine shape, carbon frames are for sale because of a scratch.

Now you're talking. A chrome frame would kick ass. You could start with a very flimsy steel frame and plate the hell out of it with chrome. You can get chrome plating up to a good fraction of an inch. That transparent shine would be unbeatable.

ok, im new here, i bought my bike from a bike shop owner on ebay (yes he had a real shop) and it had a small (about 1/8 the size of a penny scratch in the paint) which i color matched with some old model paint i had and it solved the problem nicely a crack however would be devistating so look at the bike completely before buying (on the bay), i absolutly love the ride it gives and would recomend carbon to anyone looking for cutting edge tech shaping, and a fast smooth ride, however if you are looking for the best durabliity go ti, i couldnt afford it at the time, or now either but my next ride will no doubt be of this material (im talking about a mtn bike now as i hope to keep the talon for many years) good luck shopping and do your homework, but most important get a good fit!

I don't have direct experience with CF bike frames and components but CF has been an aerospace mainstay for years. However, it did get some bad press from the Airbus Flight 587 crash in NY awhile back. It's now finding its way into the auto industry. For bike applications I'm sure there's the range of quality to be concerned about. But it should offer great benies over metal given a good design and good quality manufacturing. Those benies should include light weight, high stiffness, no corrosion..... They are more brittle than the metals so will they will tend to crack instead of bend for overload cases. But I'm not a sure a bent metal frame is worth much afterwards. From a bike designer's view point is offers much more flexibility in the design as evidenced by the new bikes. No need to stay with round tubing. No need for lugs, brazing or welding. Any cross-section is possible.

The bleeding edge is always scary, but exciting

I like my Giant TCR Composite. I noticed the Pro Racers crash them and get right up and back into the race. It seems that they are not so fragile?

I plan to purchase a Giant Full Carbon XTC MTB when available this year.

If a frame bends or breaks it's still the same, no one wants damaged equipment.

Nearly every road bicycle made these days has a carbon fork and that would be a bad place to have a failure. Yet I know of no failure within my community.

The fishing industry uses carbon. The same things were said of carbon flyrods. I have many old Carbon Flyfishing Rods; which flex all day as is the mechanics of Flyfishing and they are stronger than any other material. I am sure that the manufacturing and assembly process is much different but it is Carbon Fiber.

I've seen a carbon bike (trek) after a couple of 30+ mph crashes in crits and they looked fine.
As far a failure is concerned, the breaking thing is scary. If that happens, you figure any other material is going to fail as well.

A poorly built frame will be bad no matter what material it's made out of. They use glued carbon fiber joints to hold the wings onto jet fighters. The leading edge of the world's first SCRAMJET hypersonic airplane test-flown by NASA last year uses carbon (not carbon fiber, but carbon-carbon) for the leading edge, because it's the only thing strong enough to withstand the heat and stress of flying at 5000mph. Carbon fiber is used in INDY and F1 cars. Built PROPERLY the stuff is strong - and the joints are stronger than the material itself. Any crash that that is violent enough to crack a carbon fame will likely cause extremely serious damage to the rider as well, and you won't care what condition your frame is in. If you like the carbon bike and it's made by a reputable manufacturer just buy it - it'll last longer than you.

55/RAD,

Should I interpret your sarcasm as fully confident in carbon fiber?

There were some carbon failures way back in the day that caused alot of attention. The truth is that currently, any reputable manufacturer that makes carbon components are totally safe. I'm sure that an aluminium frame would crack at a weld far before a new carbon component would. They are used in F1 as SAB said as well as the blades on blackhawk helicopters. Lamborghini, Pagani, Ferrari, and more use carbon chassis in their road cars. Now think about this, F1 cars generate about 5 g's under braking, lap after lap, day after day, with no damage to the chassis at all. Granted, it is more reinforced than a road bike but do you ever even approach .5 g? No.
Get carbon, any other material is far less optimum for road bikes (for racing anyways). If you brake it, you have FAR more to worry about than a mangled bike.

I have broken just about every bike I have owned, Except the Bontrager that I am not converting into a 3 speed.(muhahahaa)
But I own,love and trust my TCR.

I think I have read a few times in 55's comments that he doesnt like TCR's or Carbon in general.
I could be wrong but sounds like a good old Retro-Grouching

XOXOX
Nicco

Yea baby. Carbon = good stuff.

55/Rad

I could tell 55/rad was ok with carbon by looking at his signature....

great question, good discussion..

I had a trek 5500 that rocked until I got hit by a car end of bike... broke the frame. Im in the market now for a kestrel evoke (i think.)

BALSA WOOD is the bike material of the future. Can't find anything lighter.

I figure I can make a bike around 5 lbs with balsa wood, and use big rubber bands around the balsa rims for tires.

However, I weigh 175#, and need to lose about 170# in order for the bike to hold my weight. Well, I better start dieting....

Nobody here has discussed the differences in what happens when the frame actually fails. Well, somebody mentioned that carbon cracks while metals will bend. True, and the bike is possibly a goner either way. But if a metal frame crashes and bends it is less likely to puncture your skin than a cracked carbon/epoxy frame.

Two guys riding with a Wednesday night speedy ride in the Orlando area were going about 30 mph through a relatively low traffic rural neighborhood a couple of years ago. One guy had a Serotta steel bike and the other had a Trek OCLV. Suddenly a guy in a pickup truck turned right in front of the group. Since they were in the front of the pack, they both crashed into the truck almost simultaneously. The guy on the steel Serotta got banged up pretty bad and needed his lip stitched up. Damage to the bike - one little ding hardly worth mentioning. The guy with the OCLV had his frame shatter to bits. It was held together only by the cables. He was taken to the hospital with a broken arm and pucture wounds to his knee. They reportedly spent hours pulling the carbon splinters out of his knee. Carbon splinters are supposedly quite painful. Just something to consider when shopping for a bike.

A couple of years ago, they pulled all the Rolf tubular wheels out of the TdF because a crash made a rim crack with a jagged edge, vs. most rims, which are designed to bend when they fail. Yet everyone knows that when a carbon component fails, it will also leave a sharp jagged edge. Why the difference in treatment?

That being said, I do ride bikes with carbon forks - calculated risk I guess. I work in the aerospace industry and have designed parts of carbon/epoxy. I trust the material under normal circumstances but the failure mode is what scares me. I have dozens of friends that have ridden carbon bikes for many, many years without incident so I am not trying to be an alarmist. Just trying to share some pertinent information.

I currently ride a 1990 Allez Epic carbon fiber bike which I bought new while I was a sales rep for Specialized. It has 10's of thousands of miles on it with no sign of letting up.

A few technical facts about carbon fiber: on the engineering tables that compare relative strength/weight of materials, carbon fiber is rated the strongest, titanium second, steel third and aluminum dead last.

Common sense should tell you that if carbon fiber is the material of choice in cutting edge state of the art aerospace (Stealth Bomber), automobile (Formula One, Ferarri, etc.), recreation (golf shafts, tennis, cycling) designs, it should be obvious that this material has passed the scrutiny of many brilliant engineers and product designers with respect to overall performance which would of course, include durability.
Besides strength, carbon fiber offers great vibration damping and the ability to be formed in a great variety of shapes to achieve the best performing design.

Top athletes, be they TDF cyclists, pro golfers or tennis players would not be using equipment incorporating carbon fiber if it did not perform. They simply do not want to take the chance of jeopardizing their results with the possibility of untimely failure. This is not to say that there is never breakage. In this year's TDF, there was handlebar/stem breakage. I'm sure those designs and/or the quality control in the manufacturing process will undergo rigorous re-working.

Carbon fiber is here to stay, it will get more affordable and even more reliable regardless of the few negative opinions emanating from the "steel is real" school.

Steel is a great material as well, durable and at this point cheaper. It is unlikely that it will dissapear soon.

It is certain however that it is already gone at the highest levels where performance is the ultimate litmus test.

I read a book by Carrol Smith on racecar engineering and materials science, Engineer to Win maybe, or Design to Win (both highly relevant to bikes, and bibles for racecars), and he says something in it like:

"The fact that to me carbon composite materials are exotic will seem as strange to the next generation as the fact that to my father, aluminum was an exotic material."

Only a generation ago, Aluminum was as exotic as CF.

I asked a similar question to my LBS guy when buying my Roubaix. He said the only time he's ever seen a CF frame break, the rider also broke his femur. It's good stuff, made properly. If there were real issues, lawyers would have it off the market faster than you can blink.

did

didn't tyler hamilton's carbon fiber handlebars break mid tour or something this year causing him to crash? or was it that he crashed and had to have the cf handlebars unwrapped and inspected before he could keep going?

melloboy

Not sure about Tyler, but there was a rider on the Davitamin team who had a TIME stem failure.
I'm sure that the TIME folks will be reviewing how this stem is designed as well as the quality control present in the manufacturing process. Failures of this type are exceedingly rare, but regardless of material be it carbon fiber, ti, steel or aluminum, given human error in design or manufacturing once in awhile something breaks...

I believe what you are actually thinking about is that the crash that did Tyler was supposedly cause by a broken set of handle bars. But I believe that no one really knows since it happened where the cameras were really not. One of the bikes that "caused" the crash had a set of broken handle bars when everything was sorted out. There were a couple of other incidents were handlebars broke. Keep in mind that you can break a set of aluminum bars too. Steel bars would be very hard to break since they can take a huge amount of energy and be ruined but in one peice just not the same shape. Also those guys are riding superlite carbon fiber composites put more miles in then I could hope too and oh yeah they crash at 25 to 40 mph. The big crash was at the 1km kite which means people are pushing some big gears and everyone was proably working in the 35 mph range. I don't know about you but that would have to be a decending crash for me and I would expect something other then my handlebars to be broken ie me.

Yeah. THere really is a bike with chrome frame. It's called the Bianchi Pista. Looks awesome!

I went down hard on my 30 year old steel bike and dented the top tube slightly (against the raised curb), scraped up the handlebars, right pedal, and myself pretty good. Had that been a carbon fiber frame, I think it would have been toast.

Everyone wants lighter, lighter, lighter... but really how light of a bike do you need. 20 lbs is plenty light. We're not pros - most of us are not racing. You're supposed to be exercising anyway.