Is anyone training on carbon chainrings? What kind of durability are you seeing? How is shifting performance? Any issues that come up?
Fibre-Lyte claims their chainring gets 5-10K miles. The one issue they mention is that shifting from the big ring to small ring needs to be done without a lot of force on the ring at the time since the teeth can be broken under load. Anyone ever do this? How much load are we talking?
I’ve seen them a lot on weight weenie bikes, but for general use I don’t trust them. One blown shift in a race (dropped chain) can be a big problem. Also they are pretty expensive and 5000 miles out of a front chainring really isn’t a lot. The only real advantage is weight savings and that isn’t real meaningful. If you are putting together a hill climb bike I’d go for it, weight means more and most of them only run one chainring anyways.
Styrrell
Seconding Styrrell’s point. I think that carbon chainrings is where the whole carbon-mania turns on itself in one spectacular explosion of nonsense. (If one wants to go down this path, that is, if one wants to go really light to the exclusion of all the other factors such as stiffness and durability, one really ought to look for chainrings made out of cardboard.)
Ha!!! Regarding stiffness though I thought that was supposed to be one of the selling points for carbon chainrings?
It seems like the dialog so far has focused on weight. I bought a Fibre-Lyte chainring for aerodynamic considerations. The lightness is a nice added feature. Granted, 5,000 miles isn’t a lot for a chainring. Fortunately, it couldn’t be much easier to change out a chainring for race day. Mine goes on race day only. Again, it’s a single-chainring setup. I run it when I’m racing flatter courses and I remove the small ring. So I never have to worry about shifting between chainrings.
I wouldn’t consider going to carbon fiber rings for daily training given the current state of the technology. As for race-day only … it’s not rocket science to swap out chainrings.
Here’s my bike rigged for race day:
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I presume that your body fat is at about 4% right? ;-p
I have been using carbon rings on my road bike during training for a while now with no issues. I also was just sent another ring to go on my new tri build that I hope to race this year. I think it would be better for you to head over to Weight Weenies to post this questions as I doubt you will get a very objective answer here as there is probably only a very few on here that use them. So anyone that has not used them is only giving you their opinion based on assumptions vs actual time riding the rings.
I have ridden in the past year a 16t carbon cog, carbon chainrings, carbon spiderless chainring, carbon cassette spacers and carbon single speed conversion all with very good success.
I think that the set up that psycholist has is a great set up and there should not be any issue at all with that set up.** **
I’m shocked that you think anyone on ST would offer an opinion not based on actual experience. Maybe that happens on other forums but certainly not on ST. 
Also check out Fairwheelbikes forum as they are like a sister site to Weight Weenies and I know that Stephan from Fibre-lyte posts in there and there is a sub catagory for Fibre-Lyte as well in which Stephan replies to all questions regards their rings and such.
Stephen is the one who gave me the original info and he gave me links to Fairwheelbikes. I’m just curious if there are people here who tried them out but didn’t like that flavor of kool-aid.
I presume that your body fat is at about 4% right? ;-p
That shot went over my head, but in season I’m not far from it. Lets just say that, for my age group, I’m considered “unhealthful” based on the information that came with my Tanita “Ironman” scales I got for Christmas. And yet, all I see when I look in the mirror is the pounds I have to lose. (Dang … that sounds girly.)
The bike pics you have been posting lately have been making me jealous!
How do you like the P2? I am hoping to FINALLY pull the trigger on a new tri frame after I move in a couple months and the P2 is at the top of my list.
How do you like the P2? I am hoping to FINALLY pull the trigger on a new tri frame after I move in a couple months and the P2 is at the top of my list.
I’ve done about 100 miles on her in the cold and another 100 on the rollers. Those rides have been very fun. I really like her. But I won’t have a true sense until I get a 60+ degree day and can get her out and really let 'er rip. Every diffence you’d expect between a 650c bike and a 700c bike is noticeable between the P2 and my P3C. It’s like a sports car versus a mid-size sedan. The ride is a little more harsh from the shorter wheelbase and smaller frame. The handling is quicker … again, shorter wheel base. She seems to like to go uphill better. The top end speed doesn’t seem to be there, but I don’t have the right chainrings on her yet and it’s hard to judge top-end speed on a ride in 40 degree weather.
9,000km on my Tune 53T CF chainring on my road bike and still going strong. No broken teeth or noticable wear. Looks the biz.
Just need to be really carefull shifting from big to little chainring.
Could you define “really careful”? I mean are we talking stop pedaling for a few seconds before shifting or something else? My one concern is that I live in a hilly area and certain rides require switching back and forth.
If you are the type of rider who smashes up the start of a climb in 53/11 until your almost at a stand still and then thinks oh-shit-I-better-get-into-the-small-chainring-otherwise-I-will-fall-over and applys 1000W to get into gear quickly with associated crunching sound on normal chainrings, carbon probably isn’t going to cut it.
But if you are smooth, shift before you need a gear and take most of the pressure off your pedal stroke for that 1/10 of a second while shifting, you should be fine. It requires no special thought if you are smooth.
Hi,
When shifting from ring to ring with these plastic chainrings you have to momentarily back off 90 percent. And even then, they shift like crap. I have had some friends split teeth down the center with rough (oh Hell, normal shifts!) shifts.
Definitely WW show, not go stuff. Lose weight elsewhere “Fat bastard” 
Spend your money elsewhere IMO.
TP
Fibre lyte are great, like bman size said contact Stephen, I got a bunch of stuff from them and never once I was disapointed.
I think we would need to know the application that you are going to be using them for. For me it was the weight savings on my weight weenie build that drew me to using them. The new ring that I got for free (very nice gift) is an aero ring which is not for the weight savings but for the aero aspects of the ring like psycholist has shown and suggested. If you are just buying the rings to have some cool rings then they might not be for you. If you are building up a light weight bike and looking for every savings possible or if you are looking for a very aero chainring then I would think these are the rings for you. Also like others have mentioned, if you are a smooth rider there should not be any issues. I have not noticed any flex in the chainrings at all. If you are going to go with the aero ring, I would say that there would be even less flex than a standard ring and more aero.
As you have read, the people that have used them say yes they are good and last as long or longer than than Stephan has suggested. The only people saying no are the people who have not tried them. I think this speaks volumes to your question.
Brian, do you have a link to the fairwheel forum? I looked over at the shop site but couldn’t see any link there.