Carbon - strength...?

[yenrod]

Y.day was in a mates bikeshop & he showed me some carbon forks...which had been crashed or such like and he explained that pure carbon forks ie the type that have a carbon steerer - in a crash the blades simply 'come away' (snap off ) from the steerer YET an alu-carbon fork has some section of tube (ie the continuation of the steerer) to below the distance of where the brakes sit effectively.

I was quite surprised at this and I actually though this isn't good for carbon forks.

I didn't know the actual make-up of carbon based forks.

I want to 'believe' in carbon forks but seeing these crashed has seriously really made me think 20x about them !!!

Me wonders about shopping for some steel variants

 

[MajorMantra]

Steel forks can and do fail catastrophically too. In fact I'd hazard a guess that a steel fork is more likely to fail unexpectedly (from fatigue) than a carbon one, though the carbon one may be more likely to snap off in a crash.

Matthew

 

[gaz]

In the type of crash your talking about, your more than likely going to be hitting the deck anyway for the fork to come off. in which case more damages to claim back.