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Owning a Carbon MTB, what to know


mark ellis

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Apparently you should not wrap the chainstay with an old tube. It does something to the paint.

The clearcoat goes opague. No damage purelry cosmetic.

 

since there is a good chance you will crack it at sometime (i have broken every carbon bike i have owned)

 

DONT CRASH ON IT !!

 

Mmmm.. - this is done on a carbon frame

 

Also some guy's Ibis fell of the back of his car while on the freeway doing 80km/h and the bike was scratched, wheel buckled and bar bent, but nothing wrong with the carbon frame.

 

Some input from Ibis on carbon (doubt strongly if it is only them)

 

Carbon Fiber and Durability

Carbon fiber has both phenomenal strength and superior fatigue resistance when compared to other commonly used frame materials. And as it is with other materials, a crash can wreak havoc on your nice carbon frame.

How much do you have to worry about the durability of carbon fiber after a crash? As you might imagine, depends on the crash.

First of all, carbon fiber mountain bikes are not new phenomena. Trek and Giant have had carbon fiber mountain bikes in the field for more than 5 years without a significant history of problems. BCD has been making their bomber downhill carbon frames since 1996.

If you crash any bike hard enough, you’re going to need to repair it or replace it. Before we talk about repairing carbon bikes though, we’ll tell you a little bit about what we do to the frames so that maybe you won’t need to get it repaired. On our bikes, the areas that are most prone to damage are reinforced accordingly. The last couple of layers are engineered to be very resistant to impact. Most of the layup of our carbon frames finds the carbon prepreg in 0º, 22.5º and 45º orientations. The 90º weave you often see as the top layer provides the best resistance to impact.

In all but the most heinous of hucks, it's the resin matrix that fails, not the carbon weave. So the less resin in your layup, the less likely you will see crack propagation. The newer lower resin composites used today are less likely to chip, crack or fail catastrophically. Reduce the resin required to 'wet-out' the matrix and you reduce the risk of failure. See our carbon tech piece for more info.

But let’s say you run out of talent in a big way, and crush some fiber along with your own bones. The good news is carbon can be repaired. You might not believe this, but often it is easier and less expensive to repair than Aluminum, Ti or Steel. An impact that severely dents an aluminum tube might need a tube replaced. Aluminum bikes are heat treated, so in addition removing and replacing the old tube (if it can be removed), you need to also heat treat, realign and repaint or reanodize the frame. None of this is necessary with a carbon frame.

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So yeah, after a crash where the frame drops directly on a rock, it might cause more damage, but most of the time we fall and the bike does not come down upon the frame directly, the bars and wheels and crank takes much higher impact than the frame.

 

Look at the GT Fury, made out of carbon and during testing they started hitting it with a ball-peen hammer until the hammer broke before the frame. Given, that is a downhill frame, but it does say a lot for the material used.

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Carbon is all about how you fall, as long as the frame is not impacted by a sharp rock then most times it will survive.

 

I was hesitant to buy a carbon bike, and then I took the plunge and two weeks later I hit a rock after an endo and damaged the frame. I had the frame repaired (most times easier to repair than alu). I have since been riding that frame for more than a year (done Sabie X) without any issues. Carbon definitely more comfortable than Alu when it comes to hardtail.

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