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Old January 11th 17, 04:53 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
JBeattie
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Default New Carbon Fiber Information

On Tuesday, January 10, 2017 at 1:11:45 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Tuesday, January 10, 2017 at 6:48:20 AM UTC-8, wrote:
A friend who speaks Italian spoke with a bike builder in Italy who spoke to Ernesto Colnago. He verified that the problem with Carbon Fiber aside from possible manufacturing defects is that the resins grow more and more brittle with age. After two years or so they can grow so brittle that the ultra-lights can fail at any second. This is why Colnago will only give two year warranties and why they build their "light" bikes considerably heavier than other manufacturers.

Have a good ride on your CF when you can get the same weight with an aluminum frame.


I don't know how many of you besides Joerge make a habit of hard climbs. But light bikes do NOT make hard climbs much easier. In fact they add a lot of problems. Once the grade gets up to 18% you can't use low gears because on the light bikes it will lift the front wheel off of the ground. The bike will then pivot around the rear wheel and if you're ready for that you can lay the bike over before it turns down hill.

The way professional climbers get away with this is that they use LARGE gears. Then you don't have the leverage to lift the front wheel.

I haven't heard anyone here talking as if they were pro racers so again and again I am wondering what you would do with these super-light and very unreliable bikes. I'm sure you guys are using ultra-low gears to climb with. I'm not that good of a climber but I can run down most of the best around here if I'm in the mood. I can even give them a quarter mile lead on a hard climb.

FSA carbon cranks - one dealer says that he has had two failures just in his shop
Campy Carbon cranks - three failures in the same shop
Carbon seat posts - the most unreliable part on a carbon bike.
Carbon stems/bar combinations - I have seen these failures myself
Carbon bars - also unreliable
Carbon forks - I have had three of them break. One I spotted before total failure. One permanently injured me. The third just crashed me in a high speed downhill.
Carbon frames - I have point out several cracks in major high end manufacturers to their owners.
Carbon saddles - my brother who is 8" shorter than me and 40 lbs lighter was breaking them every six months but he wanted "the lightest".


What was the failure mode of your CF forks? It sounds like you had serious injuries, and if there were a design or manufacturing defect, you should make a claim -- really.

-- Jay Beattie.
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