I'm thinking that this carbon fiber frame trend is the latest in a long series of consumer sucker plays.

On the road bike side of the house development is near stagnant. Sure there have been some refinements here and there wheels have gotten better, they added a couple of cogs to the rear cluster but really since Shimano brought STI shifting out in the early 90s there really hasn't been a significant roadie development. In fact if you hung those new light wheels on say an original decade+ old Litespeed or Merlin Ti frame you would realise no better or worse results than if you had the latest unobtanium bling bling frame of the day.

Thats because all of this new frame crap they are pedaling (ha) is a crock. And in fact the carbon craze lead by Trek (maker of in my experience of the most fragile bikes made I've broken 3 out of the 4 Treks frames I've owned) using the logic "Well Lance rides it, it must be good". Is simply the latest sucker fad designed to part the average consumer with his money. You can't compare a pro racer with the average weekend job-bob racer or rec rider. Here is why; to a pro racer longevity is irrelevent. If they break a bike a new one appears out of thin air. If they just don't like the bike they get a new one for free.

Contrast that with your average weekend racer or rec rider who pays $1000-2000-3000 for a frame. Too much for a fragile as eggshels carbon frame which is easily damaged. Oh don't leave it out in the sun UV rays!!! Don't drop it!!! You know how I got the stickers off of my Ti frame last week? A propane torch and a metal scraper. Try that with your pansy ass carbon frame.

Now enter mountain biking. Contrasting the glacial pace of change on the road bike side mountain biking has undergone some radical improvements over the course of the last 10 years. And it is the last place that you should have a carbon frame. Come on do you really want something that fragile on a dirt bike you are going to beat the living hell out of? Just stupid.

To sum up; if you are a pro who gets bikes for free carbon is great. If you have to pay for your own stuff and want it to last for a while carbon sucks. If you have a dirt bike and you are considering carbon you should have your head examined.

Oh BTW; aluminum sucks too.

Ti for life. Suckers.

My you are an anngry boy aren't you. Now take a deep breath and relax. Ahhh isn't taht better.

Interesting. And here I am with around 30,000+ miles on my 93 OCLV, not to mention that my 97 OCLV mountain bike has been through hell and back. Both frames have outlasted at least one groupset.

You must either be really beating the crap out of your stuff (curbs, potholes) or you have a black cloud hanging over you. Maybe you should try a different sport before you maim yourself or something.

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You are clearly not riding hard enough.

The guys I race with have broken 100% of their Trek/Fisher mountain bikes. Every single guy has at least one (some two, one three) Trek/Fisher bikes replaced because of a failure.

Two of them have switched to Titus Racer-X bikes and I went Litespeed. For light duty they seem to hold up. If you really beat the living hell out of them and race... not so much. The Racer-X guy hasn't had a single problem with his Titus.

The uber-fast Trek pro riders of course race Trek bike but they get their stuff for free.

Hmmm well, not that I disagree with your carbon fiber is mostly bling rant, but I have to wonder why someone would buy a 2nd frame after "breaking" the first, then only to repeat this process three times...who is the sucker in this story?

Trek/Fisher replace broken frames for free. So everyone has gotten new replacement frames. It's a great policy and I appriciate that they do stand behind their product, but at the same time it would be better if they just didn't break in the first place. In season there are weekend races back to back so downtime could knock you out of the series.

Under racing use 100% of these bike have failed. Those would be the older OCLVs and the Fisher Sugars. Most of those have been replaced with the newer OCLVs 100s, 110s and the last iteration of the Sugars. We'll see how they hold up.

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my bike page - my journal

If someone wants to buy the same bicycle as their favorite rider, what's the problem?

Ummmm..... yeah.

Bill Lumbergh, is that you? Did you evern give Milton his stapler back?

Classic!

Whassa matter? Daddy won't buy you a titanium frame after you tore up all those carbon frames?

Carbon isn't fragile, and it's a lot lighter than Titanium

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Ciocc 7005 with Colnago Carbon Fork and Ultegra 10

I'm also under the impression that this person has had some sort of bad experience with a carbon frame, albeit under dubious circumatances.

What I can't get my head around is this:

He claims his racer friends kept using carbon frames, at least for a while, because they were replaced for free. But he also said that they had a 100% failure rate, which implies they broke during every race. How many times would this have to happen to a logical person before they just sold the warranty replacement frame and bought something else?

Also, with 100% breakage, you would think there would be significant injuries (or even death) resulting from said breakage. Yet I've never seen nor heard of a failure-related lawsuit. Surely if so many of these frames broke, someone would be bound to get injured.

As for myself not riding hard enough, I'm a horrible mountain biker, and I'm pretty breakneck. I've wrecked hundreds of times, and broken helmets, handlebars, wheels, brake levers, just about anything on the bike. Never had a carbon frame failure though. Broke my old aluminum bike, but the carbon has held up well, and I had serious reservations about buying it (but the price was right).

A few minutes ago I gave calls to 2 LBSs I deal with, as well as my friend's bike shop up in PA. All three deal some sort of carbon frame, so I asked about warranty returns for failure. The two locals had had a few in the past several years, but they were either bike vs vehicle accidents or car rack mishaps. The PA shop had one race failure, when a guy in a crit went up a curb, through a hay bale, and into a hydrant.

Not saying there aren't other types of failures out there, but the 100% seemed a little steep.

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Hmmmm what about the possibility that this guy incessantly pestered Trek so bad for sponsorship that they purposely gave him bad frames HOPING the above would happen?

Most likely though, it is just an exageration of an isolated case... the sad part is when people do that it totally discredits any reasonable complaint they originally had, at least in my mind.