
by Joel on Mon 5/Jul/10 8:44pm
XCrazy wrote:Scaredy_Cat wrote:[hijack]
Can anyone offer any thoughts as to why no manufacturer (that I'm aware of, anyway) makes a 13" carbon bike? Just lack of demand?
[/hijack]
Nothing to see here
I'm going to go with low demand and high cost. ie not many people need frames that small and there is generally quite a high cost per mold which is different for every frame size
Simonk wrote:I bought a 'cracked' Trek OCLV MTB frame (only $500!) and used it for a whole National Series and a world cup - no worries. Then in 1996 I got my hands on a carbon DBR which developed a couple of small cracks after three years - have carried on using it, mostly for touring and commuting and I'm still trying to finish it off (and even leant it to Oli and Jonty to try and demo it - no luck). At the moment I have a cracked carbon seatpost on my Schwinn - it cracked about 5 years ago and got a bit worse 2 years ago - over-tightening the clamp above the internal seat-post sleeve. Doh! But it still won't fully break (would have replaced it but a 27.0 with set-back is hard to come by).
Conclusion - carbon fails like any other material, but it also has the potential to hang on very well after moderate abuse (like any other material).
Probably helps that I'm only 70kg and have been lucky enough to score high-end carbon (at dirtbag rates).
Scaredy_Cat wrote:[hijack]
Can anyone offer any thoughts as to why no manufacturer (that I'm aware of, anyway) makes a 13" carbon bike? Just lack of demand?
[/hijack]
Nothing to see here
by Simonk on Tue 6/Jul/10 8:28am
ape wrote:
nice conclusion.., except I'd take it a step further. Carbon has two wonderful characteristics here.., firstly it can fail, and still remain quite intact, and secondly, cracks don't propagate through carbon nearly as well as they do through metals. Because your parts are made from various layers of fibres in different directions, a crack will only travel until it hits a fibre running across its direction... usually a fraction of a mm. As long as you don't exceed the strength of what's remaining, the part won't get any weaker.
by onyabike on Sat 17/Dec/11 11:26am
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