i had a really great ride yesterday. On my normal route I came across a long section of road that was in the middle of being resurfaced (the old top layer of asphalt had been removed leaving a rough cobbled surface) It was great!
At 21mph my Ti machine glided over the rough terrain and with my hands barely gripped around the hoods i felt like I was at Paris-Roubaix. which soon gave way to visions of catastrophic failure of CF bike parts.
I know there is another thread about CF wheels going on right now, but that is not so much my concern. I was really wondering about the carbon/carbon fork, and the all carbon bars that are fitted on my bike. Is there a general rule of thumb about replacement of some of these parts?
I haven’t seen any forks break this year…but have witnessed several frame failures, waaaaaay too many handlebar failures, a couple seat post problems and not-so-many stem issues. I’ve seen (2) pair of Zipp 404 taco’d in crits, another pair in a CX race.
The only change I’ve made is to go back to alum bars/stems on each of my road/cx/ss/fixed bikes (tri is still carbon base bar, but use alum s-bends over CF). Earned a bit of money back from my ebay transactions as well!
It seems the “darkside” of carbon fiber is a bit of a mystery.
Here’s a set of my handlebars from a few weeks ago…
