Carboon failures
PATRICK MOORE
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wb8bAl1P-N0/S5UF4SO8BLI/AAAAAAAANBo/3px9Vh9Aw8E/s1600-h/squirrel.jpg
--
Patrick Moore
Albuquerque, NM
For professional resumes, contact
Patrick Moore, ACRW at resumesp...@gmail.com
(505) 227-0523
PATRICK MOORE
Patrick, I normally enjoy reading your posts, but not this time.
Tasteless is the only word I can come up with for that, although it
doesn't quite say what i mean.
On Mar 8, 5:30 pm, PATRICK MOORE <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Graphic evidence of carboon (known colloquially as "crabon") weakness:
>
>
> --
> Patrick Moore
> Albuquerque, NM
> For professional resumes, contact
> Patrick Moore, ACRW at resumespecialt...@gmail.com
> (505) 227-0523
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newenglandbike
rather the picture itself is tasteless I guess. I'm not sure what I
mean. I just don't need to see photo evidence of someone's anecdotal
encounter with a hapless squirrel.
Sorry, I'll shouldn't have commented.
On Mar 8, 5:46 pm, PATRICK MOORE <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What, the fork?
>
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 3:45 PM, newenglandbike <matthiasbe...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
> > Patrick, I normally enjoy reading your posts, but not this time.
> > Tasteless is the only word I can come up with for that, although it
> > doesn't quite say what i mean.
>
> > On Mar 8, 5:30 pm, PATRICK MOORE <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Graphic evidence of carboon (known colloquially as "crabon") weakness:
>
> > >http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wb8bAl1P-N0/S5UF4SO8BLI/AAAAAAAANBo/3px9Vh9...
>
> > > --
> > > Patrick Moore
> > > Albuquerque, NM
> > > For professional resumes, contact
> > > Patrick Moore, ACRW at resumespecialt...@gmail.com
> > > (505) 227-0523
>
> > --
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> --
> Patrick Moore
> Albuquerque, NM
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> Patrick Moore, ACRW at resumespecialt...@gmail.com
> (505) 227-0523
rperks
On Mar 8, 2:30 pm, PATRICK MOORE <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Graphic evidence of carboon (known colloquially as "crabon") weakness:
>
> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wb8bAl1P-N0/S5UF4SO8BLI/AAAAAAAANBo/3px9Vh9...
>
> --
> Patrick Moore
> Albuquerque, NM
> For professional resumes, contact
> Patrick Moore, ACRW at resumespecialt...@gmail.com
> (505) 227-0523
PATRICK MOORE
My point in posting it was the, what, ironical juxtaposition of a relatively small and delicate rodent with a wholly failed, key bicycle component. I meant to poke fun at carbon, not squirrels.
Over and out.
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RonaTD
On Mar 8, 5:23 pm, newenglandbike <matthiasbe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ^^^^ that being said, steel certainly wouldnt've done that, ^^^^
> although the guy probably would've gone OTB hard.
I don't think we have enough evidence to say that steel wouldn't have
done that. On the other hand, I think we can safely say that a steel
fork with more clearance would have a far greater likelihood of
avoiding such a disaster.
And, let's give a tip o' the new fur hat to the Bontrager wheels for
their durability. Makes you wonder if bladed spokes would have helped
with the, uh, clearance problem.
td
Big Paulie
This thread should be the last carbon fiber-related topic in this
group, ever.
This is a Rivendell owner's group.
Rivendell doesn't make or sell anything made of carbon.
Every carbon thread to date has ended in tears or virtual fisticuffs.
Addtionally, Grant has made his postion very clear on this
subject...with a great deal of sincerity and evidence to back it up.
Nothing he says publicly will likely prevent a carbon fiber-related
bicycle crash from happening. He, and we, should drop it.
bfd
Agree, if Grant stops making his false statement that carbon FRAMES
are not repairable. Good Luck!
CycloFiend
My take on Grant's statement has always been that they aren't _widely_
repairable, in the way that steel is.
And I do think that all salient points have been made on this topic. March
can be the brutal month on all the lists, a point I have made before. Many
people are inside waiting for the thaw, and for some reason, the tone on
most online lists seems to decay and devolve to a really nasty level. It's
one of the reasons (early on) that I mentioned simply shutting down the list
in mid-March for a couple weeks.
This topic really shouldn't have a polarizing effect, especially here.
So, lets put down the darts and move over to the shuffleboard table...
Thanks,
- Jim "half list-adminy and half list-membery"
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"That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the
anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace."
William Gibson - "All Tomorrow's Parties"
Shaun Meehan
here in Minnesota! Anyway, I agree with Jim's take on it. I think what
Grant is getting at when he says "steel is repairable" is that it's
possible to do a functional (albeit in some cases ugly) "field repair"
that will get you on the road again on a steel frame. Even in
Smalltown, USA or Lower Slobovia or wherever. I don't think he's
claiming it's impossible to repair a carbon frame at all. It's been
demonstrated that carbon frames can indeed be repaired, but it's
necessary to ship the broken frame to an expert to do the work. Just
wanted to add a little clarification to what Jim was saying.
Shaun Meehan
scott
something more useful, or at least more cathartic for all involved--
how about strangest or most bizarre component failure of any kind
(maybe also some field repairs). I'm thinking in the spirit of the new
Reader piece on the spoke that broke and landed in a chain link.
Here's mine: (not super strange, but whatever)
I parked my bike in front of the English building where I was teaching
for the day. There was a huge ice storm and when I came out my bike
was a block of ice. I actually really enjoy this because I get to kick
off big chunks of ice to free everything up. Anyway, I start riding
and am going down a big hill that I always shift into my big ring for
and snap! my Front changer broke off. I guess it was a little too
frozen. It wasn't even that old. I loosened up the little cage bolt,
slid it out from the chain, and rode home in the middle ring. I kept
it for a while to show people, but realized fast that nobody much
cared and tossed it.
I also had an old Suntour rear changer explode on my way to the
grocery store once. I gathered the pullies, but couldn't find the
bolts. Got home using wire twist ties from the produce section as temp
"bolts" that didn't work so well, but I got home!
Scott "It was sunny and nice for a couple of hours this morning,
and now it is going to rain" Lutz
William
main focus. When Grant states the carbon is not repairable, I think
Grant is talking mainly about the catastrophic failures that only
carbon can and does exhibit. Like when the headtube breaks off from
the top tube and downtube. Like when the fork legs completely break
off from the steertube. Like when the frameset breaks into four
pieces. I know that Calfee is a spectacular provider of carbon repair
services, and if I handed them the multiple pieces of a shattered
carbon frame and insisted on paying them to fix it, I bet they could
do it. But would you actually get any of the above three failures
repaired? I'd argue no. Nobody has Calfee fix a shattered fork
(steel or carbon), but I bet Calfee could. Nobody has Calfee lash a
headtube back onto a frame, but I bet they could. Nobody has a 5
piece frame lashed back together, but Calfee could. I think Grant is
labelling those repairs that no sensible person would ever do as 'not
repairable'.
I think the common ground for all of us is:
1. We can agree that carbon frames sometimes shatter into 4 pieces
and that steel frames never shatter into 4 pieces.
2. we could also agree that when a carbon frame shatters into 4
pieces it is not worth repairing.
3. I think everyone can also agree that sometimes a stick goes into
your wheel and causes a cracked or broken carbon seatstay, that
probably would do nothing to your steel seatstay. Such damage can
easily be and absolutely should be repaired in carbon. If the steel
stay did get dented or bent, you would hold off fixing it until you
next wanted to overhaul it or paint it.
The thing that appears to scare Grant is the fact that voids inside
carbon are Gremlins that can cause it to fail without warning. We can
all agree that voids in carbon are bad and we can all agree that they
are hard to inspect for because they are inside. You have no idea
whether your new carbon frame has a void in it. You trust, however,
that buy paying big big money to a top-notch supplier like Calfee or
Serotta that they are so good about designing their processes to make
voids vanishingly rare, that you can take the leap of faith that
uninspectable flaws are not there. Grant and a lot of other people
can't or won't take that leap of faith, and instead choose steel,
which is inspectable for the flaws that can lead to failures.
Secondly, I think Grant and others are afraid of the surface impact
properties of carbon. How do you know whether a pebble thrown up from
your front wheel at your downtube will lead to a crack that will grow
and lead to a catastrophic failure? Grant knows and we all know that
95% or more of carbon frame riders do not regularly inspect their
frames for damage. I rarely inspected mine. If they did, how many
would find a flaw that should be taken to Calfee for repair (that
absolutely can be done)? 5% of them? 1% of them? Even if it is 1%,
that's hundreds of frames that are carrying scary damage that on a
steel frame would not be scary. Of those hundreds of frames, some
will shatter. Will it be because of pebbles thrown up from the front
wheel? Not directly. Will it be a contributor? Likely. When frames
shatter, is serious injury much more likely? Of course.
I think Grant's thinking and language are built on the tragedy that
out of the cycling community today, some of us will be paralyzed or
dead within 10 years, and that some small percentage of those injuries
or deaths would not have happened if none of us rode carbon. That is
not a hard position to defend, and if you believe it strongly like
Grant does, it's actually kind of an outrage. I believe that Grant
actually does lose sleep over thinking about the safety of us riding
'his bikes', and I think he loses sleep over the safety of cyclists
not riding 'his bikes' because he believes in cycling, and he believes
that this entire community should take care of one another. Just like
there are plenty of 2nd Ammendment folks who 'bash' assault rifles,
Grant appears to believe that carbon fiber is bad for cycling as a
community and a movement. I personally think he's a little rough with
his language, but I admire what I think his motives are. I am certain
that money is not one of his motives.
bfd
All I can say is you appear to be mixing apples and oranges. IF
Grant's concern is about carbon breaking catastrophically and causing
death and destruction, then he ought to say that. That's his opinion
and I have no problem with it.
But making a general statement about carbon FRAMES not being
repairable is blatently false and needs to be corrected. Good Luck!
> > are not repairable. Good Luck!- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
William
causing
death and destruction, then he ought to say that."
Grant's most recent Riv News (March 6th, 2010) was identified as a
direct response to this forum and we can assume was to a large extent
a response directly to you. In that statement, Grant spent the entire
time talking about safety and catastrophic failure, and did not once
mention repairability. That might not be the explicit retraction you
would like to see, but he said over and over in that statement that
Safety is his concern, and is the reason he will keep talking. You
got him to do that, largely.
Michael Glaser
entire thread to wind down. We all come to this forum because we
appreciate the form and function of lugged steel bikes that are built
with recreational / utility riders in mind. I personally do not enjoy
the conflict that seems so pervasive in other on-line communities, and
it saddens me to see it here.
But a few things are gnawing at me. I'll preface this by saying that
Grant is not only entitled to his opinion, but each member of this
community obviously agrees with and celebrates many (if not most or
all) of Grant's views. However, I don't think that we should be
dogmatic. Critical thinking is a good thing, and not only when
questioning conventional wisdom that leads folks to buy racing bikes
that are uncomfortable for recreational riding and unsuitable for day-
to-day tasks. Here's are my personal heresies: First, I don't agree
that carbon is an inherently dangerous or inferior to steel. Second,
I don't agree that the weight savings associated with MCRBs are
irrelevant for recreational riding.
For what it's worth I recall seeing a number of spectacular failures
from the early days of carbon (esp. forks) in the late 80s / early
90s. Memories of those failures kept me off of carbon for a long
time. And to be fair, the mode of failure for carbon can be quick and
dramatic. However, the rate of "just riding along" failures is
extremely low. Pebbles kicked up while riding do not cause stress
risers that lead to catastrophic failure, period. That is just
patently false. Stress risers are caused by serious crashes (inspect,
inspect, inspect after a crash, regardless of what you are riding), or
by seriously improper installation (it's wise to use a torque wrench
when installing parts on any bike, but it's especially important with
carbon . . . and if you wrench something until it literally crunches,
you ought to realize that you've broken it).
If you do a non-partisan review of the www.bustedcarbon.com site,
you'll notice that many if not most of the broken bikes are attributed
either to very serious crashes (e.g., tangling with a car) or non-
riding incidents (e.g., roof rack vs. garage door, spouse backing over
bike on floor of garage, etc.). Steel, aluminum and titanium frames
do not generally fare any better under these circumstances. I have
seen steel head tubes detached from front triangles. I have also seen
steel fork blades detached from lugged steel crowns. A car /
boulder / cast iron bollard can mangle any bike beyond recognition --
as well as your body. That doesn't mean that the materials are
unsafe; it means that cycling itself can be dangerous. And even if
the bike survives, when a cast iron bollard sends you over the bars
head first, there's a risk that you will end up with a spinal cord
injury. I'm not an accident investigator, and I don't know the
individuals involved, but I think it's possible that this unfortunate
bike shop owner that Grant mentioned might have been seriously injured
on any bike.
I think that using the photo at the beginning of this thread to
demonstrate the inherent vulnerability of carbon is unfair. First,
I'd submit that it's pretty rare for squirrels to jump into moving
wheels. Second, take a look at the wheel -- it's one of those
Bontrager models with a proprietary spoking pattern that leaves huge
voids between pairs of spokes. Third, even with those huge voids, the
wheel must have been rotating pretty slowly in order for the squirrel
to make it half-way through in the time that it took to do less than a
single full rotation. So, suicidal squirrel plus very unusual wheel
design at rotational speed low enough for squirrel to pass through the
wheel equals crash. As someone pointed out, this would have caused a
crash even with a steel fork (perhaps damaging it beyond rideability),
but if there's any design flaw to blame here, it's the wheel not the
fork. Were it not for that very unusual wheel design, I think the
squirrel probably would have bounced off of the moving spokes.
Some thoughts about weight. It does matter. Especially for
recreational riders who ride at relatively lower speeds on hilly
terrain and do not produce gobs of power. This isn't subjective, and
it isn't about being a racer (I am not, never have been, and don't
aspire to be). It's simple physics. The less you and your bike
weigh, the easier it is to pedal up hills. If you'd like to translate
that into statistics, check out the Analytical Cycling site
http://www.analyticcycling.com/ForcesLessWeight_Page.html. If you're
turned off by the fact that the site is populated by a bunch of Type A
wanna-be (or actual) racers, then look into the whole lightweight
backpacking movement. The pioneers of that movement are not cardio-
monsters, they're Appalachian Trail through-hikers like Emma "Grandma"
Gatewood. Smell-the-roses type people who have much more in common
with Grant Petersen at Rivendell than Gerard Vroomen at Cervelo. All
things being equal, you can go cover more ground in a shorter span of
time with less weight, particularly if you're not a paragon of
physical fitness.
But it's not all about being faster. My Hilsen weighs about 30lbs,
fully-dressed. My MCRB weighs about half that with the small kit that
I carry. Would you rather hike up Half Dome with a 30 pounds of gear
or 15 pounds of gear? I guess it depends on what you plan to do at
the top of Half Dome. On a day with good weather when you're just
going to turn around and go back to camp in time for dinner, it's a no
brainer. It's also a no brainer to reach the opposite conclusion if
I'm planning to have an elaborate picnic and possibly stay the night.
For me I ride my Hilsen when it makes sense to ride my Hilsen, and my
MCRB when it makes sense to ride my MCRB. I love them both for
different reasons.
Tim McNamara
> I personally do not enjoy the conflict that seems so pervasive in
> other on-line communities, and it saddens me to see it here.
As the starter (maybe I should spell that "starteer") of this thread
I want to say that I had no intent of causing conflict. And, having
said that, I have not seen actual conflict in this thread.
Disagreement, yes, but that's a perfectly normal part of human
interaction. If we all start lock-step agreeing then we have drunk
the Kool-Aid and I for one would be outta here. But I've seen no
conflict, no name-calling, no overt anger in this thread.
The RBWOB is a remarkably well-mannered group of people who can
disagree respectfully. Maybe I'm just battle-hardened and jaded from
years of participating in Usenet and anything short of threats of
violence seems relatively pleasant to me. Anyway, the list owner/
moderator has asked for an end to this thread so over-n-out for me on
this. I probably shouldn't even have sent this.
RBWOB? Sorry. Sometimes I get carried away...
NickBull
had two in the last seven years -- one I ran over, the other bonked
his nose into my rim and then skittered away with what I expect was a
very sore nose. If "unusual wheel configurations" encourage them to
run through and get caught in the spokes, then I'd sure rather be
running 36 spoke wheels :-)
> that into statistics, check out the Analytical Cycling sitehttp://www.analyticcycling.com/ForcesLessWeight_Page.html. If you're
cyclotourist
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Cheers,
David
Redlands, CA
"Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There is something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym." ~Bill Nye, scientist guy
William
neither hostile nor irrational. I have no bad feelings for any of the
posters with whom I expressed disagreement. I'll bow out as well.