I’ve been seeing a lot of people talk about the actual quality of carbon lately. It is good to see people not always drooling over carbon’s sexiness, especially where an aluminum bike at the same price is better, but I’ve got a question.
I’ve noticed that a lot of bike manufacturers have different levels of carbon depending on the bike. I know that specialized and felt use lower grade carbon for their lower level carbon bikes, and I’m sure there are others as well. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I’ve never seen anything comparing the quality of the carbon used in P2s to P3s. Does anyone know if it is the same stuff.
Or even if you’ve ridden the same frame design from another manufacturer that use two different quality levels of carbon, I’m curious to see if there are any opinions out there on how the different grades actually perform on the road.
I dunno specifically about the P2/P3, but from working w/ carbon fiber in other applications besides bikes, it generally boils down to weight - i.e., for the higher-modulus fiber, you typically just use less of it for a roughly equivalent design.
That information likely won’t be available in the public domain for a number of reasons that range from it being a matter of competitive privlege to the fact that it may be a moving target. That is to say, Cervelo, as with many other high end bike manufacturers, are commited to a culture of change and improvement. If they find a way to improve the lay-up, fiber orientation, fiber/matrix content or other aspect of the manufacturing during the product cycle they will impliment it when possible. They likely may not hold the change for some innocuous date or model release.
Cervelo is built on a culutre of change dictated by genuine improvements, not just change for change’s sake. When they see the opportunity to make small improvements (and large ones) they simply do it. As such, the consumer can generally rely on the new bike they buy as being representative of the full breadth of their manufacturing capabilities at the time it was made.
Obviously there are many factors involved, design is the most important followed by manufacturing quality, the grade of fiber has an influence but not as great as these two.
There is a lot of spin going on about fiber grade at the moment, I am waiting for the “Ultra Ultra Super Duper Ridiculously High Modulus” version frame to come to the market
The really high modulus fibers are not that useful for bicycles due to their low elongation and high cost. A designer may spec a small amount in a specific location in conjunction with other fiber grades.
I have the specs of some common fiber properties on my site for reference.
That information likely won’t be available in the public domain for a number of reasons that range from it being a matter of competitive privlege to the fact that it may be a moving target.
Then that would make them a pretty unique company as most every other athletic equipment manufacturer believes that that posting their material specs is a selling point, unless it is lesser grade stuff. The only reason not to provide material specs is that they are using a cheaper material, which is likely for a bike because frame size/utlity/weight does not require the higher quality stuff. Cervelo tries to curry a mystique by not “disclosing” where they make their bikes, which is pretty obviously in the Far East, like everyone else’s. Certainly no vendor would advertize that their up-market product is made with the same stuff, in the same factories as their down-market competitors.
Trek for years was very low key about OCLV anything more than calling it OCLV. It was a long time before they started to “grade” their OCLV frames…and they were made in the US.
Trek for years was very low key about OCLV anything more than calling it OCLV.
OCLV stands for “Optimum Compaction Low Void” for Trek, which describes a manufacturing process not the material. It is basically a sexed-up, meaningless marketing term, like calling beer “Low Cholesterol” (which some do!). It means that when they glue the fiber sheets, they squeeze them together and they don’t have too much resin vs. fiber in the layup. Anyone who has worked with fiberglass even once knows that you want to squeeze out the bubbles between layers and not goop on too much resin. A manufacturer wouldn’t label their product LCLH (Loosely Compacted, Lots of Holes). “OCLV” does sound sexy, but it is what anyone does when they glues things together.
Trek for years was very low key about OCLV anything more than calling it OCLV.
OCLV stands for “Optimum Compaction Low Void” for Trek, which describes a manufacturing process not the material. It is basically a sexed-up, meaningless marketing term, like calling beer “Low Cholesterol” (which some do!). It means that when they glue the fiber sheets, they squeeze them together and they don’t have too much resin vs. fiber in the layup. Anyone who has worked with fiberglass even once knows that you want to squeeze out the bubbles between layers and not goop on too much resin. A manufacturer wouldn’t label their product LCLH (Loosely Compacted, Lots of Holes). “OCLV” does sound sexy, but it is what anyone does when they glues things together.
Yes and no. OCLV to me meant “Optimum Cracking Low Value” carbon. But, the makeup of it is more like particle board or multidirectional fiber board than that of a weave. It was not some market gimic at the time “really”. It was a new way to skin the same cat. At the time every other bike out there (and there were not many - Kestral, Specialized Allez Epic/Giant Cadex and very few others) were all laid up of carbon sheets and then made to tubes and glued to lugs. While companies like Kestral and Aegis were doing some neat monocoque buildups, Trek had the first full lugged carbon mass produced frame.
Yes and no. OCLV to me meant “Optimum Cracking Low Value” carbon. But, the makeup of it is more like particle board or multidirectional fiber board than that of a weave. It was not some market gimic at the time “really”. It was a new way to skin the same cat. At the time every other bike out there (and there were not many - Kestral, Specialized Allez Epic/Giant Cadex and very few others) were all laid up of carbon sheets and then made to tubes and glued to lugs. While companies like Kestral and Aegis were doing some neat monocoque buildups, Trek had the first full lugged carbon mass produced frame.
Cracking? Low Value? Is this a joke post? Cause surely no marketing dept would put those two words into a high-end athletic componant!
And you might want to brush up on carbon fabric design/usage/applications and bike design history/terminolgy as well as both your statements are pretty off.
Did you even read my post? It was OBVIOUS that my OCLV was a joke. And also, please show me where on Treks site it indicates that OCLV was ever made of woven sheets of carbon, like all the other bikes in the time of the debut of OCLV. Pretty sure that I have a very firm understanding of the history of the contruction of bicycle frames dating back to the silver brazing of EL-OS and even before.
I’ve noticed that a lot of bike manufacturers have different levels of carbon depending on the bike. I know that specialized and felt use lower grade carbon for their lower level carbon bikes, and I’m sure there are others as well. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I’ve never seen anything comparing the quality of the carbon used in P2s to P3s. Does anyone know if it is the same stuff.
Or even if you’ve ridden the same frame design from another manufacturer that use two different quality levels of carbon, I’m curious to see if there are any opinions out there on how the different grades actually perform on the road.
Before deciding to buy my P3C, I contacted Felt about this exact question in relation to the B2 vs. the DA. The tech rep indicated to me that (as postulated above) weight was the primary difference between the two frames, and that they should ride pretty similarly, as they simply need to use more of the lower-quality carbon to achieve the same stiffness. He specifically said that the goal was to make the two frames ride alike, albeit at different price points.
As far as Cervelo goes in regard to the P2 vs. P3, I can’t say I’ve ever seen any formal statements from Cervelo. Perhaps Gerard will chime in here…
Is the emphasis on the carbon fibre exaggerated ?
please enlighten me on the role and developemnet of the plastic resin that encases the fibre.
As I understand it the resin does all the compression work of a carbon reinforced beam .
Is this true? Is the resin quality and quality control just as important as the fibre?
What about break down and changeof plastic over time?
Only the acronym for OCLV, the rest is factual. But - what would I know…
Fact is that OCLV at the time was sorta ground breaking and Trek was the only (bike) company on the planet to use that process to make carbon tubes.
Actually the OCLV process was initially for the lugs only, they used wound round tubes from Maclean composites. It is all there in the patents, it was ground breaking at the time. The process has evolved and new patents filed. It is a good process even if the acronym is a bit…
As I previously said the design and the process is very important, you can make a bad bike out of even the best raw material, be it carbon, steel, ti or alu.
