Honestly, which is better Carbon frame or aluminum for a road bike???? - Page 4

not to mention propel you up hills.

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"It's a dog eat dog world Sammy, and I'm wearing milkbone underwear." - Norm Peterson

Carbon Mo!!!!!!! wrong spelling, mais oui?
Aegis only. Thousand times better than Trek who stole it from them. Check it out with its crash and break guarantee.
You'll drool mon ami et avec l'Aegis les autres will drool too.

Well in a crit point of view you want a very direct frame with no flex and high STW (stiffness to weight) for fast ascending safe descending and tight cornering while pedalling. That´s why I use aluframes. Caad6, Principia Rex pro, and Klein Quantum pro (pre carbon b-stay) were the leaders on STW and handling.
Now Cannondale in the search of lower weight have the flexy caad 7 as their nr 1, Klein have with their carbon b-stay lost their heart (thx trek...:-( ) left is Principia and Boreas or So I thought.

The 2-3 generation carbon frame is here. Scott Cr1 with low weight (990 grams) and the highest STW ever recorded on an off the shelf roadbike (alu included) (91)... and it´s made of carbon so I think it´s bye bye aluminium at a racers point of view.

Comfortable bike for a recreational rider? Carbon, titanium sure.
But the obvious choice should be steel. Because with steel you can get a custom made sized to you steel frame by a small builder at half the cost of a top end non customised carbon or titanium frame.

The 2-3 generation carbon frame is here. Scott Cr1 with low weight (990 grams) and the highest STW ever recorded on an off the shelf roadbike (alu included) (91)... and it´s made of carbon so I think it´s bye bye aluminium at a racers point of view.

Could you provide the source of these STW data? I'd like to see some numbers, and how the testing is done. Assume they reflect BB lateral flex for out of the saddle sprinting?

Good point on the custom steel frames. I think a lot of people pass up custom builders, thinking they are too expensive, when that's just not the case. But, they can build Al/carbon as well.

After riding only steel bikes for decades, I just got a "semi-custom" AL/carbon bike from a small builder here. Really enjoying the flex-free stiffness and response. It's not soft-riding, but very smooth/quiet over most road surfaces. At 17.8 lbs, it's a good 4 lbs lighter than my steel bike, so I guess it ought to feel a little quicker!

I'd like to try one of his S3 or Ultrafoco for an extended test ride/comparison, but haven't been able to arrange that yet!

The data is from the German bike magazine Tour. They use an independent test lab, EFBe (Engineering for Bikes).
Read about them here: http://www.efbe.de/ehomepag.htmed
It is the most comrehensive biketest you can find.
They dont list many frames on their homepage, but you can see many more in Tour (I guess it´s a way of making you buy the magazine) 22 carbon frames (all the major manufacturers represented) were tested in the january issue.

I have owned/ridden most types of material and I will now never ever buy anything other than one piece carbon, Im a big fellow, 120kg, so that may have a bareing on things but for me there is only carbon : )