Damaged carbon road forks…how do I know if they're safe?

I was dismantling the headset on my Scott Foil which was in the workstand, and for some reason I didn’t think I had released the front brake cable yet but I obviously had because the forks dropped to the concrete floor in a massive clatter before I could stop them!

I’ve built so many bikes over the years I feel like such an idiot for being so stupid!

The paint has chipped on the bottom of both dropouts, and on one dropout there is a crack in the edge which is a sliver of carbon (see pic).

New forks are probably going to be £250ish. Is there any expert who could assess my forks?

20150713_180854-1_resized by Carl Spiers[/url], on Flickr

IANAL, but that doesn’t look serious. No disc brakes so no extraction forces on the axle, no damage to the main part of the dropout. If it was mine I’d touch up the paint and ride it.

Mine are worse. I have no intention of replacing them.

Is it just the lawyer lip that’s cracked?

Mine went a similar way trying to squeeze them in my Thule rack, rode them with no probs.

Can’t recommend anyone in Devon but probably worth getting them checked over.

Yep, just appears to be the safety tab on one side, which I superglued back in a moment of panic!

The forks can’t have fallen more than 3 feet, but the dropouts solidly took the brunt of the impact

There’s no carbon there, it’s alloy. What you are seeing is the thick brittle paint that has broken away. Carry on riding and don’t worry.

The dropouts don’t look like they’re alloy, how do you know out of interest?

Er… I don’t. I’ve never seen a carbon droput. Now that you mention it, they could be carbon, which would explain their somewhat over-built shape. Anyway I still wouldn’t worry!

I sold a bike with carbon forks with alloy dropouts on Ebay and TNT wrecked it. One of the areas of damage was the alloy dropout on one side, bent in and almost closed from a heavy impact.

Why so much carbon paranoia?

They will be fine.

If this was a pair of aluminium forks I probably wouldn’t be thinking twice about it.

As carbon is obviously made using fibres, you get the impression that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think the integrity might be compromised by a piece having already split.

Hopefully you’re right and it is just paranoia!

Carbon is a lot tougher than you think,

I had a old pair of Carbon roady forks from a Giant(They had Alloy drop outs and Steerer for those interested)

Holding the end of the steerer and swinging hard at the corner of my garage wall took several swings before I managed to crack the forks legs and several more swings before they actually started to separate.

And the forks were already ‘Supposed’ to be damaged hence the experiment.