fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
Wouldn't trust a word that Durian bloke says. Nasty piece of work if you look into some of his history.
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Riding older carbon road bikes
- Thread starter Gritstone
- Start date
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Wouldn't trust a word that Durian bloke says. Nasty piece of work if you look into some of his history.
Punkawallah
Veteran
āLet he who is without sin cast the first stoneā. So unless your name is āMaryā . . .
fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
I guess you don't know he's a female abuser and a bully.
Punkawallah
Veteran
No. And I know nothing about you, either.
fossyant
Ride It Like You Stole It!
- Location
- South Manchester
The other issue with the bloke is he's dead against disc brakes and posts all sort of rubbish about them causing accidents - people fall off bikes, period, not just because of disc brakes. He was also on here spouting some of his nonsense some years ago and was shown the door.
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Have I not?
A fair amount of my time as an undergraduate was devoted to material science and testing; including a reasonable bias towards composites due to their extensive use in motorsport. Emphasis was placed on the special considerations required during design, manufacture and use of composites due to their often unique mechanical properties compared to more traditional monolithic materials.
The resultant knowledge of composites' failure characteristics is sufficient to convince me that I'd rather not be exposing myself to their use in unregulated safety-critical applications.
Aerospace engineers understand the peculiarities of composites, so components are subject to regular inspection and testing to check for internal degradation / delamination; and will most likely be written off after a pre-determined number of hours use regardless of apparent condition.
Pressure vessels used both in breathing apparatus and commercially-available applications are prescribed a finite service life and must be destroyed IIRC ten or fifteen years after manufacture. By contrast steel bottles are fine for indefinite use as long as they keep passing hydrostatic testing.
While a bicycle has a similar capacity to cause serious injury or death, no such safeguards exist.
The steady trickle of product recalls due to fears of the catastrophic failure of composite steerer tubes - such as these examples from Scott, Specialized and Canyon - does nothing to buoy my confidence.
I won't labour my point by going through all of the specific mechanical properties of CFRP that make me question its use in safety-critical consumer applications; in any case I'm sure there's no need as the fact that you've owned some bikes made of this material has presumably imbued you with an understanding of these factors.
Finally, while we're on the subject of anecdotal evidence and sample groups of one; here's another chap who's owned a carbon fibre bike, but seems less evangelical about his ownership experience than you.
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When you say as an undergraduate Iām thinking some time ago so not really up to date.
I have a friend who has a bike shop and previously he worked hands on in the aircraft industry lots of experience with Carbon fibre and yes he rides a carbon bike.
As for quoting a Planetflex as an example I wouldnāt even trust a pair of their bib tights never mind one of their bikes.
There are hundred of days in professional cycling ridden on Carbon bikes yes they break in crashes but I have seen no examples where a bike just fell apart.
You are more likely to be in harm from eating sausages than riding a carbon bike,š
I have a friend who has a bike shop and previously he worked hands on in the aircraft industry lots of experience with Carbon fibre and yes he rides a carbon bike.
As for quoting a Planetflex as an example I wouldnāt even trust a pair of their bib tights never mind one of their bikes.
There are hundred of days in professional cycling ridden on Carbon bikes yes they break in crashes but I have seen no examples where a bike just fell apart.
You are more likely to be in harm from eating sausages than riding a carbon bike,š
Punkawallah
Veteran
It seems there are no recorded fatalities from eating sausages in the UK in 2025, nor any from riding carbon bikes in the same year. About 80 cyclists were killed on roads, so we could say riding on roads kills more cyclists than eating sausages.
No need to thank me. I live to serve : )
No need to thank me. I live to serve : )
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- Location
- Inside my skull
Thereās a door? š® I broke in via a first floor window
Jameshow
Guru
That wasn't even a carbon bike, but a carbon forked bike! Which 90% of bikes are these days so all you can ride is steel tbh. Which rusts!
biggs682
Itching to get back on my bike's
- Location
- Northamptonshire
While it's obvious that you'll baselessly dismiss any evidence that challenges the narrative you're so keen to cling to; I'll continue to play.
Here's an example of a composite Giant fork failing catastrophically causing life-changing injuries for the rider; but again they're only a tinpot, fly-by-night brand and certainly not the largest single manufacturer of bicycles in the world or anything like that.
As for failures in races; there's George Hincapie's steerer tube failure causing the bar assembly to instantaneously part company with the bike at Paris-Rubaix:
.. as well as Simon Pellaud's Bianchi similar experience in the Tour du Doubs:
For what it''s worth I'd consider failures in races less likely as the bikes will cover fewer miles, have shorter lives, will be maintained to a higher standard by more knowledgeable staff, are likely subject to more rigorous inspection and are probably better made than consumer items in the first place.
This is in stark contrast to your average privately-owned bike that's potentially subject to far more risk factors - the kid in the bike shop who didn't understand the importance of a torque wrench when putting the bike together, the multiple pothole strikes during use, the fork getting dinged by an errant pedal whilst locked up outside the cafe, constant thermal cycling during storage in the shed..
Of course you're entitled to ride whatever you want and it's up to you whether you take any notice of the relevant risks. However, to dismiss associated concerns so mockingly while offering zero meaningful rebuttal to the raft of supporting evidence provided appears bizarrely petty, punitive and naive.
What's your point? It's a composite component in a safety critical application that - if you look beneath the surface - has a reputation for catastrophic failure and correspondingly high risk of severe personal injury.
Forks have to be the single biggest risk factor with composites used in bikes; thanks to a combination of their ubiquity (as you suggest pretty much everything has a placcy fork now), complexity of manufacture, stresses encountered during use, susceptibility to damage from incorrect assembly / handling and the potential repercussions of a failure.
Personally the risk of such unexpected, catastrophic failure - no matter how small - is an unacceptable trade for saving a few grams.
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