The quotes are from a number of manufacturers direct. I realize they are trying to sell carbon forks, but don't think they are giving erroneous statements about material properties, considering if jives with all the research I have done.

You talk about your weight weenie tenancies, but look at the savings as a percent of the bike wgt + gear and body weight The money spent to save 1# starts to look ludicrous. I think your inner weight weenie will be more impressed by culling through the gear you are carrying. Reduce weight and cost at once.

Marc

Wasn't doing what it was designed to do. I don't get the resistance to carbon fiber. It isn't a miracle material any more than a metal alloy. (You can bet that a great many more steel frames been destroyed by mishaps than carbon fiber.)

I have had my share of crashes on both. I don't think I ever felt that one material felt weaker than the other. Sometimes you just crash badly and sometimes less so.

I think that carbon fiber is uniquely suitable for the fork. I wouldn't hesitate to put one on a steel frame. Carbon forks are, in my experience, very stiff and strong (when subject to forces for which it was designed) .

Buying a steel fork on the basis of speculative damage is too much of belt and suspenders approach for me.

This is what everyone should see. It's more "real world" testing, that this Santa Cruz slow machine crap. Every day situations are way more dynamic in every possible way. People are stepping on their bikes, falling on them, hitting curbs, trees, walls, lamp posts when parking it...

...stepping on an unsupported rear triangle? Dropping heavy dumbbell weights directly on them from 2 feet off the ground? Going at them with an angle grinder? That's not real world testing.

I've toured some, back in college, and mostly I've ridden and raced road bikes over the last several years. A couple notes on that. Racing is much harder on equipment, in my experience, than touring. You have a lot more things that break from traumatic stress, as opposed to prolonged fatigue. Though the miles a well-trained racer needs to put in means a lot of fatigue failure as well. For the day to day knockabout stuff - as you cited, stepping on bikes, hitting curbs, lamp posts, whatever - that a road or race bike is subjected to, carbon fiber is well-proven to be more than durable enough. It does have some specific weak points, which are pretty easy to exploit if you want to make a video to scare people away from it, but those weak points are mostly not relevant to what a bicycle is actually subjected to. If you regularly park your bike in an angle grinder factory, I guess steel would be safer, but when I see broken carbon fiber it is usually because it's been involved in a violent crash. That's a bummer, sure, but my steel race bike has a dent in the top tube from a fairly mild crash where the bars swung around and hit it. I've seen worse crashes that left carbon bikes unscathed. The carbon fork on my race bike has never been a problem. I did have a steel fork fail from fatigue and rust, once. What does that prove? Almost nothing - it was an old bike. Except that steel certainly isn't invincible. Give anything enough time and enough stress, and it will break. Some things sooner than others.

I don't think touring puts identical stresses on equipment, but my experience is that it's just not as hard on a bike as racing is. My biggest concern would have to do with contact with the fork. That is, while I would be okay with clamping a rack to a steel fork without mid-fork eyelets, I wouldn't recommend this with a carbon fork. But a carbon fork with mid-fork eyelets wouldn't cause me to bat an eyelid. I've ridden the carbon fork on my road bike very hard for thousands of miles over all kinds of surfaces in all kinds of conditions. Carbon fiber is more than safe enough to handle touring. A fork designed specifically to mount a front rack in particular.

Regarding whether or not paring down weight by 1 lb is worthwhile: if the original fork was undamaged, maybe not. But the OP should probably replace the fork regardless. The additional cost to go with carbon fiber isn't outrageous, and reducing weight by choosing lighter parts on the bicycle can go along with reducing weight by packing lighter. They aren't mutually exclusive, and every pound saved counts.

Ok...As I see it, we are both right in our own ways. Also, I think that both "tests" are extreme. But nobody can argue that carbon fiber can fail in an explosive way, and you have to be way more careful with it than with any other material.
I also have to remind you that I posted above that I'm around 275lbs. Just that is above what bike manufacturers suggest as a maximum recommended weight. Add all the gear and it's not only too much for most frames or wheels, but also for most carbon fiber forks.
I'm not against carbon fiber, but I just don't think it's a good bicycle material. When I was riding on steel frames, I never even looked if bike is ok after crash. I'm older now and I don't crash, but when my bike falls or hits something - I check the frame quickly for any damage before riding again. I feel I would be spending way too much time checking carbon fiber frame after each little mishap.
I'm glad there are many folks who enjoy carbon fiber forks and bikes. I wish you all safe riding, and please post pictures of damage frames and forks when it happen ;-)

In my experience this has not been the case. My touring bikes take much more abuse than my competition bikes ever did.

+1 on the Nashbar cyclocross fork. I have about 3000 touring miles on mine and it still looks brand new. It may psycholgical, but I think it provides a smoother ride than steel.

As for durability, the around-the-world touring record was set on carbon frame, fork and wheels. I have no qualms about touring with carbon.

I'm hoping to ride to Argentina in 2016 and will replace almost all the parts before I leave, but will probably keep the old Nashbar fork on the bike.

Same darn thing happened to my race skis once while flying to the National Championships. Logan Airport in Boston. Broke the tip of my Slalom skis.

skimaxpower, I'm looking forward to a review on that Columbus fork.

Brad

I agree with most of that, but not the part about looking at the savings "as a percent of the bike wgt + gear and body weight". I look at it this way there are scores of little decisions that all add up. Applying that metric, the majority of the choices I made in reducing my total bike/gear/person weight were insignificant and yet those ounces here and there were a big part of what in total was a dramatic reduction. I advise looking at every item and weight choice as important and making each decision with that mindset even where it is a matter of ounces or even tenths of ounces.

Ultimately all of the decisions WRT weight sums up as bike + rider + cargo.

The OP isn't going to save a great amount of weight with just a lighter fork and if I were on a campaign to reduce the bicycle's weight, that would be only one of many items. I do like to upgrade broken or damaged bits when possible, which maybe the case in this thread. However, with so little real world data available about using a CF trekking/touring fork I don't know if the OP is actually upgrading, other than the weight reduction, but it is an interesting option.

Brad

Already done (although this is always a work in progress.) I thru-hiked the 3,000 mile CDT with a base pack weight under 12 pounds, so believe me when I say that I've already culled the extraneous weight. I'm the guy who literally cuts the tags off my underwear.

I'd like to reach a point where I can tour with ONLY front panniers when lightweight solo touring, and with front/back when casual touring with groups or family.

Yes, it is worth noting that I am 125 lbs, even a couple pounds less when I am in peak racing trim, so I can afford to hammer on things a bit more. That said: I have ridden carbon forks on all kinds of surfaces with no problem, and seen full carbon bikes ridden by people much heavier than me subjected to the same treatment. No problems. And I've had my share of damage to poorer-quality parts. Just for example, even at my weight, I've had poor experiences with the durability of Velocity rims. I just don't think the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) is really warranted. Remember, most of the broken carbon you've seen is lightly built to begin with, since most of it is aimed at competitive or sporting-focused riders where weight is a major priority in design. A carbon fork designed specifically for touring would probably be built a bit more heavily and wouldn't cause me to lose any sleep at all.

It is true that carbon is more likely to break when subjected to traumatic stresses like a heavy impact. From everything I've seen, this almost always happens as a result of a wreck, rather than causing one. Of course other failures happen, but I've also seen failures in metal parts that led to accidents. From my perspective, the fact that carbon might be more likely to break in a big crash is more of a financial concern than a safety issue. Once you're wrecking hard enough to break a carbon bike, you've got bigger problems. And I would really recommend that you check over ANY bike that you crash on, whatever it is made out of. Even steel can break under hard enough impacts. It's even more likely with cheaper frames and forks that might have flaws in the welds or brazing, or with high-end thin-walled steels.

Well I don't think it's surprising that different people would have different experiences. I put a lot more miles into training and racing than I ever did into touring - we're talking an order of magnitude here, maybe more. The message I'm trying to send is that carbon fiber is perfectly capable of taking the abuse that most any rider can throw at it. I say this as a guy who rides and races on steel frames with carbon forks.

That doesn't mean I'm saying you all should go replace your steel touring bikes with carbon fiber. But I think a carbon touring fork is probably just fine.

I generally agree, except the part in bold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xreZdUBqpJs

Excluding MTB's, if anybody wants to see the durability of a Carbon 'road' type bike, go watch UCI CX race, bunnyhops, gnarly descents, crashes, etc. Much more intense that what a touring bike would see IMHO. I think a touring bike sees a higher constant stress, but as far as maximal stress is concerned, I think a cross bike has everything beat when ridden by a high level rider.

As an example of how overbuilt carbon parts 'CAN BE', many guys use carbon tubular ROAD wheels, before the CX specific stuff was in vogue. The DuraAce tubulars Sven Nys uses are low spoke count and he raced on them for YEARS with no problems.....it's a road wheel, not designed for bunnyhops or offroad riding but held up great and was considered a go-to wheel for many A racers.

ENVE forks are certified for up to 350 lbs FYI.

I tend to think road racing crashes are generally harder on the bike, but CX crashes are a lot more spectacular. Regardless, any crash is not good for your bike.

Men's National Maters


Portland's Cross Crusade Series

In thirty years of working with carbon fiber I've never seen a fatigue caused failure. Bonding, improper design or damage induced yes.
Cheers,
David in Alaska

All of my touring bikes are steel. No Campy components and I follow the KISS principle to ensure reliability and relatively easy-to-fix situations should the need arise hence, I ditched my Bob Ibex and am now looking at the Extrawheel approach. I will "collect empirical data" on my next tour...

Barton park, that if a fun section, full speed off the top double track with no brakes.

Yup! It is a great spot for photos. You can shoot CX or mud wrestling from the same spot

Well, when I say break, I mean "snap." I've seen carbon forks snapped and bikes snapped from traumatic impacts. I haven't seen that with steel. That does NOT mean that the steel wouldn't fail from the same crash! Only that it would bend. Some people make a big deal out of this, like bending is somehow way safer than breaking. But like I said earlier, when you're crashing hard at 30mph, the failure mode of your bike is the least of your problems.

So what I'm saying is I agree with you 100%. As someone who has toured and who currently races road and cyclocross, my experience aligns with what you're saying - maybe touring is worse in terms of constant low-level stress, but racing bikes are subjected to far more severe shocks, and short of actually hitting an immovable object, hold up to it just fine. Carbon fiber rims are a great example - they're a lot stiffer and stay true more readily than a lot of 32-spoke aluminum rims would. Cyclocross is such a great case study of how tough carbon fiber really is. Now, that's tough on a fork - but full-carbon forks are almost totally ubiquitous, even on steel or aluminum frames.

Steel gives me peace of mind. I would not want to be stranded because the wind blew my bike over and put a hole in the carbon.

I think that is were steel really shines, 'puncture' resistance against sharp objects.