Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it)! Hope you got a lot of nice bike/run/swim gifts!
A friend of mine bought a 2006 Specialized Tarmac bike back in 2011.
He bought it from a friend who took really good care of it and never had a crash.
He also takes good care of it but had a few questions:
He would like to know what the life expectancy of the carbon frame is (any deterioration with time, “older” technology, maintenance, indicators of frame reaching its lifespan besides visible cracks and odd noises…)
The bike is in great condition and is not giving any sign of trouble but he would like to be prepared in case a new frame purchase is in order for example.
I cannot answer him (beyond the basic “it works well so don’t change it”) so I thought I might ask here as some of you are very knowledgeable with an expertise far beyond my understanding of carbon fiber.
For everyday use it should last basically forever. Carbon fiber doesn’t fatigue much with time. If there were a manufacturing flaw, it would have failed by now.
Probably the thing be most concerned about is properly torque bolts. I would bet that a large percentage of frame failures have more to do with ham-fisted assembly than a flaw in manufacturing.
sometimes on old frames the dropouts get worn over time because they are soft, then you may find the wheel slips sideways under hard acceleration. The seatpost clamps sometimes get tired and allow the post to slip and the places where stuff like bosses and bottle lugs are attached may crack or get busted off. Internal headsets can get worn to an oval shape over time which is tough to fix.
Beyond that, just riding a bike that that won’t make a difference, it’s mostly throwing it in a car, crashing, traveling ny airplane stuff like that is what tends to bang them up.
There’s not any real interesting changes that have happened in the industry since that bike was made, mostly just some crappy bottom bracket systems. Just keep riding that thing