Are CF frames really safe?

On Sun, 21 May 2017 19:58:37 -0000 (UTC), Duane
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
So, if you're going to buy into the CF club, and operate on the bitter
edge of mechanical failure to save a few grams, perhaps it might be
useful to find some inspection equipment and use it. It's much like
backing up a computah hard disk drive. Nobody expects it to fail, but
when it does, it can be catastrophic, happen without warning, and be
very expensive.

My club has 359 members this year and 80% have CF frames. I've been in
the club 6 years and membership fluctuates between 325 and 400 with a
fairly constant CF presence. The only CF frame or fork damage, not caused
by a crash that I've seen is one seat post that cracked forcing the rider
to do the last 20k of a century standing up.

Any idea how many of your club members either had their CF frames
repaired or purchased a replacement frame after noticing that
something was not quite right or after they were informed that the
frame was about to fail?

Assuming 1 bicycle per club member, and that everyone rides equal
distances per year, you have one chance in 400 of experiencing a CF
failure (not caused by a crash or impact) over a 6 year period. Or,
if you prefer, 1 chance in 2400 (or 0.042%) per year. If you add up
the total mileage for the club per year and divide that by 2400, that
would provide you with the number of miles you need to ride before you
might expect a mechanical failure. I don't have any numbers handy,
but my guess(tm) that's about the same as the odds of having a wheel
fall off.

So, what does this tell me about your club? They probably spend lots
of money on CF bicycles and therefore probably take care of them. They
probably ride as a group and are therefore unlikely to encounter
inclement weather, commuter road hazards, of airborne mountain bikes.
You probably have available to you some expertise from the other
members, and probably from an LBS (local bike shop). In other words,
your members are more likely to buy better quality bicycles and
probably do a better job of maintenance. I would expect a much lower
failure rate than among the GUM (great unwashed masses).

I've seen a couple frames
cracked but both were hit by cars, one from the rear and one T-Boned.

Those are obvious failures that justify a replacement frame. But what
about minor impacts that leave no visible damage? I know of one CF
frame that fell off a bicycle carrier on the back of an SUV. That's a
drop of about 2-3 ft. About 6 weeks later, the frame suddenly cracked
where the top tube connects to the head tube. The failure occurred at
a very slow speed, so there were no injuries. It was repaired by the
builder. I don't recall the name.

The lesson here is that it takes time for a crack to propagate. If
you happen to be going fast at the time, or are in an awkward
position, having the frame disassemble itself is going to cause some
injuries. It's perfectly ok to believe in luck. Just, don't rely on
it. Another way to look at this is the odds versus the risks. Even
if the odds are tiny, and the likelihood of injury are very small, a
frame or fork failure is just too dangerous too risk.

Why would I buy expensive equipment to test my frame?

Probably the same thing that was probably told to PG&E management
before San Bruno blew up in a giant natural gas explosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
PG&E had reduced their pipeline inspection frequency to the point of
not doing inspections because their statistics showed that the
likelihood of a major incident was insignificant. So, why bother
inspecting when nothing has happened so far? As a result of the
incident, PG&E paid a huge settlement to the victims families, fired a
few senior executives, retired the president, did their best to do
damage control, and went on a pipeline inspection frenzy that found
numerous problems just waiting to do a repeat performance of San
Bruno. I'm sure PG&E would have preferred to have spent the money on
inspections and thus prevented the explosion, than to deal with the
after effects and repercussions. Incidentally, the main high pressure
gas pipeline for the area is under the roadway in front of my palatial
office.

So, so you want to take your chances that everything is perfect and
that nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, (...) go wrong? Or
would you think it might be better to avoid a prolonged medical
disaster and properly inspect your frame for potential problems?

And I back up my hard drives weekly.

I do mine monthly with incremental backups in between. However,
there's a problem. I have NOT automated the process. Therefore, it
is subject to human error, just like CF fabric and resin assembly is
prone to human error.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

There is no reason for people to not buy CF except because they have a higher rate of failure than other materials. I have been riding for 40 years and have never heard of a good steel bike having a catastrophic failure. And I haven't heard of ANY aluminum bikes having catastrophic failures.

After I said that a person sent me a youtube reference of an "aluminum" frame failure. Indeed it was a catastrophic failure but it wasn't an aluminum frame but an Australian department store MTB. The entire headtube tore off the bike at the welds.

The construction appeared, from what I could see by stopping the video, to be pretty substandard. About what you would expect from K-Mart or Target. Sears and such are much better materials and techniques.

But why would there be so many videos around about CF failures and so few about other materials? Do you think that it's a conspiracy?

On Sun, 21 May 2017 13:45:44 -0700, sms
wrote:

On 5/21/2017 12:58 PM, Duane wrote:

Why would I buy expensive equipment to test my frame? And I back up my
hard drives weekly.

Good idea.

A month ago my daughter's Thinkpad's drive crashed. Yesterday my son's
Thinkpad's drive crashed. I think I need to start replacing drives every
three years.

The average laptop HD lifetime I'm seeing is about 5 years. However,
I do see some failing much earlier.

Crashed, or did they fail to install a monstrous Windoze update
"rollup"? I'm seeing some of that since Microsloth started pushing
"rollups". It looks like a malware problem, where the machine doesn't
boot, or some service fails (like BITS and crypto), but it is really
the result of a failed update. My guess(tm) is MS doesn't bother
testing anything these days, preferring to use the Windoze 10 method
of having the customers do the testing, and reporting back to the
mothership using "telemetry".

Anyway, I suggest an SSD instead of an HD for Win 7 and up. XP with
SSD seem to be a problem for me. Be prepared to tweak the BIOS and
registry for SSD specific settings. I've been installing Samsung 850
EVO drives. Zero failures and no new errors on about 40 drives for
about a year so far.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147372

For image backups, I use Acronis True Image 2017, Macrium Reflect
Free, and Clonezilla. Incidentally, I just did an image of a Win 8.1
Sony i5 laptop using Acronis. 115GB in 30 mins or about 3.8
GBytes/min backup speed to a Seagate USB 3.0 drive. I've seen up to 8
GB/min but that's on faster hardware.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sun, 21 May 2017 14:16:42 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

There is no reason for people to not buy CF except because they have a higher rate of failure than other materials. I have been riding for 40 years and have never heard of a good steel bike having a catastrophic failure. And I haven't heard of ANY aluminum bikes having catastrophic failures.

After I said that a person sent me a youtube reference of an "aluminum" frame failure. Indeed it was a catastrophic failure but it wasn't an aluminum frame but an Australian department store MTB. The entire headtube tore off the bike at the welds.

The construction appeared, from what I could see by stopping the video, to be pretty substandard. About what you would expect from K-Mart or Target. Sears and such are much better materials and techniques.

Google images usually finds some good examples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=aluminum+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=steel+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+fiber+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=is ch
I learn quite a bit looking at failure photos.

But why would there be so many videos around about CF failures and
so few about other materials? Do you think that it's a conspiracy?

Everything is a conspiracy.

In this case, it might be that CF is considered a high price product
which would not be expected to break. CF is also far more expensive
to fix than steel or aluminum. I might also guess(tm) that
self-disassembly of a CF frame at speed might cause more expensive
injuries. Looking at the photos, the CF frames seem to come apart
breaking two or more tubes in the process, while aluminum and steel
just bend or break in one place.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sunday, May 21, 2017 at 2:41:28 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 21 May 2017 14:16:42 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

There is no reason for people to not buy CF except because they have a higher rate of failure than other materials. I have been riding for 40 years and have never heard of a good steel bike having a catastrophic failure. And I haven't heard of ANY aluminum bikes having catastrophic failures.

After I said that a person sent me a youtube reference of an "aluminum" frame failure. Indeed it was a catastrophic failure but it wasn't an aluminum frame but an Australian department store MTB. The entire headtube tore off the bike at the welds.

The construction appeared, from what I could see by stopping the video, to be pretty substandard. About what you would expect from K-Mart or Target.. Sears and such are much better materials and techniques.

Google images usually finds some good examples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=aluminum+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=steel+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+fiber+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=is ch
I learn quite a bit looking at failure photos.

But why would there be so many videos around about CF failures and
so few about other materials? Do you think that it's a conspiracy?

Everything is a conspiracy.

In this case, it might be that CF is considered a high price product
which would not be expected to break. CF is also far more expensive
to fix than steel or aluminum. I might also guess(tm) that
self-disassembly of a CF frame at speed might cause more expensive
injuries. Looking at the photos, the CF frames seem to come apart
breaking two or more tubes in the process, while aluminum and steel
just bend or break in one place.

Jeff - remember I was speaking of catastrophic failures. And while second grade steel and aluminum bikes indeed fail a catastrophic failure is rare. The one's pictures appear to have been at worst ALMOST catastrophic. There's a difference between "Oh**** put the brakes on" and "Hey Charlie - call an ambulance for Tom.

And as we discussed - steel and aluminum bikes in the highest quality are also those least likely to break. Whereas it is just the opposite with CF.

I'm sure that there are exceptions - I have been very impressed with the top end Giant brand. Their construction technique is superb. If you tap a vibrating fork and hold it to the frame and listen to it though the joints they all appear to be all of one piece. Many other CF bikes sound really odd in these areas. The Giants are really light without appearing to be dangerous since they increase joint strength through oversize tubing rather than adding more material to smaller tubes.

I suppose that you can make CF bikes as safe as any other material. But I don't think you can make them reasonably priced and safe at the same time, yet.

And the ride of steel is fantastic in comparison to other materials.

On 5/21/2017 2:25 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 21 May 2017 13:45:44 -0700, sms
wrote:

On 5/21/2017 12:58 PM, Duane wrote:

Why would I buy expensive equipment to test my frame? And I back up my
hard drives weekly.

Good idea.

A month ago my daughter's Thinkpad's drive crashed. Yesterday my son's
Thinkpad's drive crashed. I think I need to start replacing drives every
three years.

The average laptop HD lifetime I'm seeing is about 5 years. However,
I do see some failing much earlier.

Crashed, or did they fail to install a monstrous Windoze update
"rollup"?

First the system got really slow, and hard disk activity was at 100%.

Then it started giving "There has been a signature failure." messages on
the screen. Then it would do nothing. Running diagnostics, that are
apparently not on the drive, resulted in all the drive tests failing,
except the one where it reads the drive information from the drive
controller.

Fry's has a good deal on a 750GB, 7200RPM, 5 year warranty, retail box,
laptop drive, for $49 with promo code, except they don't actually have
any http://www.frys.com/product/8295426. I ordered one on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSUTX3O for same-day delivery, even
though it was more expensive than Fry's (reminds me of the old joke,
"when we're out of chicken we also charge less").

snip

For image backups, I use Acronis True Image 2017, Macrium Reflect
Free, and Clonezilla.

I may try Clonezilla on the drive since often Linux can read a failing
drive when Windows can't), or I will reinstall Windows 10 from scratch.
On my daughter's machine, the hard drive was unreadable with the "click
of death."

Before it completely failed I tried to do a System Restore but there
were no restore points.

On 5/21/2017 4:16 PM, wrote:
There is no reason for people to not buy CF except because they have a higher rate of failure than other materials. I have been riding for 40 years and have never heard of a good steel bike having a catastrophic failure. And I haven't heard of ANY aluminum bikes having catastrophic failures.

After I said that a person sent me a youtube reference of an "aluminum" frame failure. Indeed it was a catastrophic failure but it wasn't an aluminum frame but an Australian department store MTB. The entire headtube tore off the bike at the welds.

The construction appeared, from what I could see by stopping the video, to be pretty substandard. About what you would expect from K-Mart or Target. Sears and such are much better materials and techniques.

But why would there be so many videos around about CF failures and so few about other materials? Do you think that it's a conspiracy?


Jay Beattie said it correctly- everything breaks.

Please review Frame and Fork sections he
http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-001/000.html

extra credit:
http://www.yellowjersey.org/paint.html

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 21 May 2017 19:58:37 -0000 (UTC), Duane
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
So, if you're going to buy into the CF club, and operate on the bitter
edge of mechanical failure to save a few grams, perhaps it might be
useful to find some inspection equipment and use it. It's much like
backing up a computah hard disk drive. Nobody expects it to fail, but
when it does, it can be catastrophic, happen without warning, and be
very expensive.

My club has 359 members this year and 80% have CF frames. I've been in
the club 6 years and membership fluctuates between 325 and 400 with a
fairly constant CF presence. The only CF frame or fork damage, not caused
by a crash that I've seen is one seat post that cracked forcing the rider
to do the last 20k of a century standing up.

Any idea how many of your club members either had their CF frames
repaired or purchased a replacement frame after noticing that
something was not quite right or after they were informed that the
frame was about to fail?

Assuming 1 bicycle per club member, and that everyone rides equal
distances per year, you have one chance in 400 of experiencing a CF
failure (not caused by a crash or impact) over a 6 year period. Or,
if you prefer, 1 chance in 2400 (or 0.042%) per year. If you add up
the total mileage for the club per year and divide that by 2400, that
would provide you with the number of miles you need to ride before you
might expect a mechanical failure. I don't have any numbers handy,
but my guess(tm) that's about the same as the odds of having a wheel
fall off.

So, what does this tell me about your club? They probably spend lots
of money on CF bicycles and therefore probably take care of them. They
probably ride as a group and are therefore unlikely to encounter
inclement weather, commuter road hazards, of airborne mountain bikes.
You probably have available to you some expertise from the other
members, and probably from an LBS (local bike shop). In other words,
your members are more likely to buy better quality bicycles and
probably do a better job of maintenance. I would expect a much lower
failure rate than among the GUM (great unwashed masses).

I've seen a couple frames
cracked but both were hit by cars, one from the rear and one T-Boned.

Those are obvious failures that justify a replacement frame. But what
about minor impacts that leave no visible damage? I know of one CF
frame that fell off a bicycle carrier on the back of an SUV. That's a
drop of about 2-3 ft. About 6 weeks later, the frame suddenly cracked
where the top tube connects to the head tube. The failure occurred at
a very slow speed, so there were no injuries. It was repaired by the
builder. I don't recall the name.

The lesson here is that it takes time for a crack to propagate. If
you happen to be going fast at the time, or are in an awkward
position, having the frame disassemble itself is going to cause some
injuries. It's perfectly ok to believe in luck. Just, don't rely on
it. Another way to look at this is the odds versus the risks. Even
if the odds are tiny, and the likelihood of injury are very small, a
frame or fork failure is just too dangerous too risk.

Why would I buy expensive equipment to test my frame?

Probably the same thing that was probably told to PG&E management
before San Bruno blew up in a giant natural gas explosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
PG&E had reduced their pipeline inspection frequency to the point of
not doing inspections because their statistics showed that the
likelihood of a major incident was insignificant. So, why bother
inspecting when nothing has happened so far? As a result of the
incident, PG&E paid a huge settlement to the victims families, fired a
few senior executives, retired the president, did their best to do
damage control, and went on a pipeline inspection frenzy that found
numerous problems just waiting to do a repeat performance of San
Bruno. I'm sure PG&E would have preferred to have spent the money on
inspections and thus prevented the explosion, than to deal with the
after effects and repercussions. Incidentally, the main high pressure
gas pipeline for the area is under the roadway in front of my palatial
office.

So, so you want to take your chances that everything is perfect and
that nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, (...) go wrong? Or
would you think it might be better to avoid a prolonged medical
disaster and properly inspect your frame for potential problems?

And I back up my hard drives weekly.

I do mine monthly with incremental backups in between. However,
there's a problem. I have NOT automated the process. Therefore, it
is subject to human error, just like CF fabric and resin assembly is
prone to human error.



Well your probably right about the type of riding, the quality or the bikes
and subsequently the care taken with them.

As for the crashes, I had a couple of pretty hard crashes with my last
bike. After both I brought it to the shop to be checked out. They didn't
use any specific equipment, mostly just a thorough inspection. I had
about 30,000 km on it when I traded it in for my current bike. Nothing
fell apart.

I don't doubt what you say about the bike falling off the rack and cracking
later. I just don't think it's a common thing. As Jay reports, bikes
break. I've broken an aluminum fork myself. No reason that CF bikes
wouldn't break.

Automating backups is the best way to deal with data protection.

--
duane

On 5/21/2017 5:02 PM, wrote:
On Sunday, May 21, 2017 at 2:41:28 PM UTC-7, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sun, 21 May 2017 14:16:42 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

There is no reason for people to not buy CF except because they have a higher rate of failure than other materials. I have been riding for 40 years and have never heard of a good steel bike having a catastrophic failure. And I haven't heard of ANY aluminum bikes having catastrophic failures.

After I said that a person sent me a youtube reference of an "aluminum" frame failure. Indeed it was a catastrophic failure but it wasn't an aluminum frame but an Australian department store MTB. The entire headtube tore off the bike at the welds.

The construction appeared, from what I could see by stopping the video, to be pretty substandard. About what you would expect from K-Mart or Target. Sears and such are much better materials and techniques.

Google images usually finds some good examples:
https://www.google.com/search?q=aluminum+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=steel+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=carbon+fiber+bicycle+frame+failure&tbm=is ch
I learn quite a bit looking at failure photos.

But why would there be so many videos around about CF failures and
so few about other materials? Do you think that it's a conspiracy?

Everything is a conspiracy.

In this case, it might be that CF is considered a high price product
which would not be expected to break. CF is also far more expensive
to fix than steel or aluminum. I might also guess(tm) that
self-disassembly of a CF frame at speed might cause more expensive
injuries. Looking at the photos, the CF frames seem to come apart
breaking two or more tubes in the process, while aluminum and steel
just bend or break in one place.

Jeff - remember I was speaking of catastrophic failures. And while second grade steel and aluminum bikes indeed fail a catastrophic failure is rare. The one's pictures appear to have been at worst ALMOST catastrophic. There's a difference between "Oh**** put the brakes on" and "Hey Charlie - call an ambulance for Tom.

And as we discussed - steel and aluminum bikes in the highest quality are also those least likely to break. Whereas it is just the opposite with CF.

I'm sure that there are exceptions - I have been very impressed with the top end Giant brand. Their construction technique is superb. If you tap a vibrating fork and hold it to the frame and listen to it though the joints they all appear to be all of one piece. Many other CF bikes sound really odd in these areas. The Giants are really light without appearing to be dangerous since they increase joint strength through oversize tubing rather than adding more material to smaller tubes.

I suppose that you can make CF bikes as safe as any other material. But I don't think you can make them reasonably priced and safe at the same time, yet.

And the ride of steel is fantastic in comparison to other materials.


http://www.bustedcarbon.com/2009/12/giant-tcr.html
http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-001/FAIL-088.html
http://www.bustedcarbon.com/2009/07/...ance-comp.html
http://roues-aerolithe.over-blog.com...118777093.html

I have nothing against Giant and I have no idea whether
their failure rate is above or below the industry overall.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Sun, 21 May 2017 10:00:49 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Fri, 19 May 2017 12:56:32 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

So I was wondering what you guys and gals think about this issue.

No opinions on CF safety but a few comments that might be of interest.

It is very easy to demonstrate that something is unsafe. All one
needs is an anecdotal failure incident, and it becomes unsafe. The
real question is what failure rate are you willing to tolerate? Along
that line, what lifetime are you expecting and what tolerance to
overload are you anticipating?

In other industries, where a catastrophic failure is unacceptable, the
standard practice is regular inspection and testing. In a past life,
I did some acoustic vibration analysis to predict conveyer belt
bearing failures. Lots of other tests for structural damage, cracks,
stresses, and corrosion, etc. Basically, one looks for something that
doesn't belong or has changed.

I don't see any of that in bicycling. I found a service that offers
bicycle CF "active thermography" inspection service in Germany:
http://carbon-bike-check.com (German)
http://www.infratec-infrared.com/thermography/application-area/active-thermography.html
Basically, they vibrate the frame with ultrasonic energy. Areas where
there are cracks become warmer, which can then be seen on an IR
camera.
http://carbon-bike-check.com/Motivation_1.jpg

This lack of testing really bugs me. Most CF owners do a visual
inspection and look for wrinkles in the paint or cracks. A few might
borrow some industrial inspection equipment:
http://www.olympus-ims.com
or shove a borescope/endoscope down the tube looking for potential
problems. I have a few of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/351973054942
The problem is that they only focus between approximately 2.5cm to
10cm. Good enough for automotive work, but not for pipe inspection.
I'm working on finding one with an adjustable focus and better depth
of field. Anyway, there are plenty of tools and toys to help with
inspection, but nobody that I know actually does it on a regular
schedule.

So, if you're going to buy into the CF club, and operate on the bitter
edge of mechanical failure to save a few grams, perhaps it might be
useful to find some inspection equipment and use it. It's much like
backing up a computah hard disk drive. Nobody expects it to fail, but
when it does, it can be catastrophic, happen without warning, and be
very expensive.

I've always wondered whether a simple "dye check" could not be used.
That is three "rattle cans" and a rag. It wouldn't check for internal
cracks of course, but then I believe that C.F. front forks are solid
so it ought to work for them and it certainly would have caught the
recently posted "funny scratch on the crank" problem.
--
Cheers,

John B.