Gone and bought a carbon bike!

[Apollonius]

Good points, though I wonder how non-durable carbon fibre will prove to be. I think it will surprise us. My wife was helping ship upgrades to Harriers in the form of carbon fibre wings nearly 40 years ago. I believe the Dreamliner has a lot of carbon fibre in it. I don't imagine they are being ordered with an expected life of less than 20 years given the age of many passenger aircraft in service. OK aeroplanes don't get banged into things (well, we hope not) and bikes do, but my glass fibre sailing boat is still going strong after nearly 30 years of being raced, rallied and all too often banged into things.

I agree with a lot of what Pigman says. It is on the uphills that I notice the big difference. As my wife says, though, "You still have to pedal them."

 

[hamster]

The industry has gone (or is going) through a steep learning curve with Carbon fibre. The marine industry did the same 20 years ago and there were plenty of failures of over-aggressively light components and hulls. As experience grew these failures became rare. The same will happen in bikes, with stupidly light frames being discovered to be too fragile. There were plenty of breaks in early aluminum frames too; nowadays it is unusual.
Furthermore, full-on racing machines deliberately err on the side of reduced life to become lighter and are not a great example of durability.
I have raced on 20 year old carbon fibre hulled boats with carbon rigs. The loads are huge and they are fine. Don't blame the material simply because the designer under-engineered it. Anything will break if too thin. There is nothing inherently wrong with CF.

 

[Ian Raleigh]

Mate of mine got a modern Bianchi with a carbon frame for xmas :facepalm: !
Its only January 2nd and he has ridden just three times and a crack has appeared on the seat tube!! Not good.

 

[legrandefromage]

Working in a busy bike shop for six months saw many MTB failures at pivot points or stress points such as head tubes and BB.

Road bikes broke at head tubes and again, the BB area.

There were an alarming amount of failures from leaning bikes up against stuff - the bike would slip and crack the top tube against street furniture.

The other mechanic was a trained carbon laminater at a local motor racing firm. He would advise on the failures and whether they were warranty or wear & tear. Quite a few frames were delaminating, especially if the bike wasnt cleaned properly or grease had been used in the wrong areas. The paint would lift in a very similar way to oxidized aluminium with similar bubbling. These frames were considered scrap, often to the annoyance of the customer, as there was the slim possibility of the area failing and causing a nasty accident.

Times have moved on since 2011 so I would expect things to have got better. IF I were in the market, it would be from a proper company and not a no-name ebay brand. That way at least you can be sure of a decent warranty.

Talking of times moving on, indexed Hyperglide has been around 25 years or so with STi and SPD not far behind, THAT was the biggest jump in so called 'technology' to make you 'ride faster'.

I wouldnt say modern bikes are better, I now think they are just different. Chains still wear and snap, rings still wear down in a way that is recognizable to someone from thirty years ago. Cassettes still wear out on one or two favourite ratios rendering the whole thing useless. In fact, plonk a modern tourer down in front of a club cyclist from pre WWII and they would recognize it straight away and have no issues.

 

[matthew71]

Working in a busy bike shop for six months saw many MTB failures at pivot points or stress points such as head tubes and BB.

Road bikes broke at head tubes and again, the BB area.

There were an alarming amount of failures from leaning bikes up against stuff - the bike would slip and crack the top tube against street furniture.

The other mechanic was a trained carbon laminater at a local motor racing firm. He would advise on the failures and whether they were warranty or wear & tear. Quite a few frames were delaminating, especially if the bike wasnt cleaned properly or grease had been used in the wrong areas. The paint would lift in a very similar way to oxidized aluminium with similar bubbling. These frames were considered scrap, often to the annoyance of the customer, as there was the slim possibility of the area failing and causing a nasty accident.

Times have moved on since 2011 so I would expect things to have got better. IF I were in the market, it would be from a proper company and not a no-name ebay brand. That way at least you can be sure of a decent warranty.

Talking of times moving on, indexed Hyperglide has been around 25 years or so with STi and SPD not far behind, THAT was the biggest jump in so called 'technology' to make you 'ride faster'.

I wouldnt say modern bikes are better, I now think they are just different. Chains still wear and snap, rings still wear down in a way that is recognizable to someone from thirty years ago. Cassettes still wear out on one or two favourite ratios rendering the whole thing useless. In fact, plonk a modern tourer down in front of a club cyclist from pre WWII and they would recognize it straight away and have no issues.

what is the correct way to maintain a carbon frame,and would not washing it make it fail ? find this a little hard to believe after just reading hamster,s post of boat hulls being made from it for 30 years , I cannot think of a much more harsh environment than the sea.and do you have any advice on maintance on them.surely delaminating would be caused by the resin used being attacked in some way or bad manufacturing in the first place

 

[legrandefromage]

You can't really compare the two. Out on the roads there are contaminants from road tyres mixing with soot deposits making up all sorts of alkaloid compounds that react with various glues and resins. Somebody will be able to put it better than me!

It's not just carbon but any defect in manufacturing would leave any material open to corrosion. Look up pollution generated by vehicle tyres.

Nasty!

 

[hamster]

Exactly. Bikes have lots of horrible oils and solvents, sailing boats do not.

On the marine side, the big danger is sunlight. All the laminates have a coating of UV resistant varnish - repairing any chips and wear to it is critical.

One point - the boats that have lasted are ones that were considered a little conservative in their day. Boat classes have minimum weight requirements, which limited the arm race to silly low weights. However, unrestricted things like masts had lots of failures in the early days.

 

[Woz]

"Don't blame the material simply because the designer under-engineered it. Anything will break if too thin. There is nothing inherently wrong with CF."

This. But, and here is the big but, with a steel or Ti frame you can get the tube set material spec, wall thickness and diameters of every tube and get a reasonable estimation through comparisons and empirical means to gain an understanding of how the frame will fair on many fronts. You can also judge the construction quality to certain degree.

Now take CF - it's a relatively new material and the inner secrets of the frame (layers, bonders, weave, etc.) is largely unknown and unpublished unless it's marketing guff set-out to impress. As an example, in some top-end Rock Shox WC SID forks with CF crown and steerer tube I found the remains of a melted plastic bag down the steerer column. I removed this along with a good half handful of sand - obviously this bag of sand was used in the production process to maintain a cavity, but hey, it's out of sight so no harm done (if someone tells me it's some wonderful damping solution, then I have a good reason to go to the beach and top them up :facepalm: ). This is the scary part of a CF frame for me; it's a mystery inside and the price point is not sufficient proof of quality. As for ride quality, I've hired a few CF road bikes to try but they didn't give me a wow factor to buy one.

What get's my own goat up about the CF trend is the marketing guff of oversized this and that (more of a technical requirement to achieve something substantial with CF) is being overly applied to steel and Ti frames when there is no real need. Just look what's happened to head tubes and BB shells; it's gone berserk.

Some very good posts here.

 

[Deleted member 24574]

Exactly. Bikes have lots of horrible oils and solvents, sailing boats do not.

On the marine side, the big danger is sunlight. All the laminates have a coating of UV resistant varnish - repairing any chips and wear to it is critical.

One point - the boats that have lasted are ones that were considered a little conservative in their day. Boat classes have minimum weight requirements, which limited the arm race to silly low weights. However, unrestricted things like masts had lots of failures in the early days.

Very few boat were carbon 30 years ago and very few now. None pushed carbon anywhere near its limits. All very conservative in their use of carbon.

Early masts had a very bad reputation but modern ones are considered very durable.

 

[hamster]

Very few boat were carbon 30 years ago and very few now. None pushed carbon anywhere near its limits. All very conservative in their use of carbon.

Early masts had a very bad reputation but modern ones are considered very durable.

I was sailing International 14's and Moths, but these were boats built in the 90s (as I said it was 20 years ago). There were a few built in the 1980s, the first Int 14's went carbon when the class switched to twin wires and the big asymmetrics. The minimum weight limit on the 14 stopped them getting daft. However Moths certainly were crazy with no minimum limit! Mine weighed 25kg and was considered very heavy. If you think that an 11 foot boat weighing under 25kg including wings etc is not pushing the limits on carbon... :shock: