Ok here is the damage...what do you think?

on topic, off topic. I went down on the 31st. Lucky me, my body took the whole slide, frame was the winner. did crack a plastic arm pad and destroyed the bar end shifter though.

I needed a new frame, but, only because it's 7 years old. I TOTALLY need a new body, but, that's nothing new :-( the wife wants a Tom Sellick model circa his early 30's. (that would be a BIG upgrade for her).

Oh well...

Good luck with your frame

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I saw this on a white board in a window box at my daughters middle school...
List of what life owes you:
1. __________
2. __________
3. __________

Where is the damage - can't tell from the photo (sorry if you mentioned it elsewhere in the thread). Is it somewhere of high stress or somewhere more benign? And like what another of the correspondents said, there's a reasonable amount of redundancy in the design of bikes.

I've crashed my old Giant carbon frame a number of times, still ride it. It gets a good visual every so often. Ok, not that often. Also fallen off my old P2C as well. Still fine. But then I also still use my old Spinergy Rev X wheels, and they're known for spontaneously combusting.

It's that little chip right at end of top tube closer to aerobars. There is some exposed Carbon. It looks like a rock must have nicked it when I crashed.

That is just a paint scratch.
There is no broken fibre and the matrix is intact.
The force was a sliding force tangential to the frame so there will be no underlying damage.

The chip is deeper than a surface scratch though.

Looks very straight and 'neat' for a scratch, is it possible the bars got wrenched round and something around the stem has marked it ?

WD :-)

Yes I bet my aerobars twisted when I crashed and made this mark.

can't help, but sorry to hear. Heal quickly!

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I've worked in a high end store for 8 years. We saw a lot of crashed carbon. That looks like your bars twisted and scratched the paint. It may have scratched the first layer of carbon, but not much more. In a way you are lucky with white paint, you will be able to see a crack form much easier if one develops. It will look like a hairline mark forming in and around that mark. But at this point it looks totally fine. Ride it, but pay attention for a while too see if anything develops. One thing I would do however is take the stem off and inspect the steerer tube and the handbars/extensions.


Also, the shop telling you that you should replace the frame anytime its crashed is rubbish. Get a new shop. That shop is just trying to push a new frame on you. Carbon is not just going to "fail" on you mid ride. If there is a small crack or damage, it will slowly grow. As long as you are aware that something happened there and you inspect it semi regularly for the next while, you are fine.

Paint damage from stem pinching, purely cosmetic don't give it a second thought

"bruised ribs I think"

You should take your ribs to the doctor. Just saying. Get better.

 
Whatever shop told you to replace a frame anytime it is crashed is a shop I would avoid from now on. I have seen plenty of carbon bikes go down, the majority of them are just fine. The picture you posted is just a scratch, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

I think we have this perception that because carbon is so light it must be fragile and prone to shattering. I am good friends with the guy who ran the service shop at my LBS. A girl came in needing a new fork because she left the bike on the fork mount roof rack and ran it into the garage. Fork clearly had a crack but that was it, and that was with running it right into a building. He fixed her up with a new fork and kept the old one to be sure it didn't end up on ebay or something. I asked if I could "destroy" the fork, I wanted to see what it would take to do it, he agreed. I put the wheel mounts in the bench vise and grabbed the steer tube, I then braced my feet against the work bench and pulled as hard as I could on an already cracked fork, and nothing happened. We then took a hammer to the steer tube and made some progress on the crack. It then took bending it back and forth with a lot of strength over and over again for 15 minutes to get the thing to actually break, even then it was holding on by strands at the end.

I came away much more confident in my carbon bikes. They are not going to shatter, if they crack you want to watch them and make sure it doesn't spread, but it is not going to just fall apart on you.