[Closed] How sturdy are rigid carbon forks?

I've had several pairs of Pace carbons and ignore any twaddle/fairy stories about them being compliant - they're still a rigid fork and your arms will hurt if you have lots of rocky trails!!! The main benefit of Pace forks was their lightness.

I can't vouch for their ability to withstand drops as I'm a wheels on the ground type of rider.

I have a set of "exotic carbon" forks, My wheels also stay glued to the ground but for fast cross country work and single track they are ideal. There is a certain twang about them that takes the edge of trail buzz and unless it gets really rocky or rutted I really don't miss my suspension forks.

What about durability?

1ft drop for example?

Hmmm I'd also be interested to hear about this!

I've done 2ft drops on my road bike, get on with it ya big jessy!

i do drops and stuff on mine. never not ridden anything because of forks.

Have to have freeride socks for it though 😉

Back in teh days before suspension folk were doing drops and jumps on rigid steel forks. I'd have thought carbon was stronger, and if they couldn't withstand 1' drops there'd be alot of flaming.

I had some carbon Pace ones. I rode them on a bmx track once or twice, they made some, er, interesting noises but didn't break.

Been running Pace carbon for last 8 years with no problems. They do flex slightly but you get used to it. Durability ? secondhand when I bought them and still seem all ok. Drops ? I've had the odd "whoops to late to brake" and down a 2ft drop moment with no damage done.

My pace ones snapped. I am a xc rider. I don't jump. Forty stitches later and many dentist bills I drew the conclusion they aren't sturdy. Pace said they should be serviced annually... On a fork that has no moving parts? Clowns. I can send you a pic of my face if you want any persuasion not to buy them.

I'd like to see some pics of your broken fork. Never found any horror stories by googling...

The Mg alloy disc mount on mine is split, however. Caused by overtightening the brake bolt, not by riding.

I went back to steel for the MTB for piece of mind and my recently found ability to break everything.

Me and my RC31 at Cwmcarn 🙂

[img] [/img]
[img] [/img]

Yes, that IS tinsel and bows on the bike. Xmas.

On one carbon compared to on one steel, much more comfortable, seem very strong to me, don't ride any differently if I have sus forks, I like em a lot

Carbon fibre is stiff (high Young's Modulus).
Carbon fibre has poor fracture toughness and poor strength under compression but nothing to worry about.

http://www.salient-news.com/2010/04/carbon-fiber-bicycles-dangerous-without-maintenance/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/342883/2007_raleigh_cadent_bicycles_with_carbonage.html?cat=27

http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/06/news/steered-wrong-racers-concerned-about-broken-carbon-steerer-tubes_121389
http://www.cervelo.com/en_us/company/support/recalls/

"A damaged
carbon part may appear normal at a quick glance, but could suddenly fail without warning. Carbon forks"
http://www.trekbikes.com/pdf/carbon_care/06TK_Carbon_Care_Flyer.pdf

http://rideyourbike.com/carbonfiber.html
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07211.html
http://www.mtb-news.de/forum/showpost.php?p=2862503&postcount=188

Macavity wasn't it you that said:

Aluminium does lack sufficient fracture toughness, for bike frames.

That reminds me...

personally I would never had a carbon component of an MTB because the catastrophic failure mode scares me.

I am fully prepared to accept this may not be rational but I would never be happy riding the bike

I've had 2 pairs of pace forks and hammered both of them, never really looked after them, and not had any problems, Done countless drops, roll ins, rocky decents and a fair few crashes. Riden all over the lakes, but mainly North Yorks moors and dalby.

Like above they have made some noises. The only reason i don't have any at the mo is that i'm recovering from a broken wrist but when thats sorted i'll be back on them.

I just realised that worrying about carbon forks is pointless. My whole frame is carbon 😆

Has anyone got a pic of a broken carbon fork?

personally I would never had a carbon component of an MTB because the catastrophic failure mode scares me.

I am fully prepared to accept this may not be rational but I would never be happy riding the bike

I know what you're saying but have you never seen a pair of alu handle bars fail? The failure mode is just as catastrophic. You hear a crack then the next thing you know you are picking your teeth out of the stem.

That said, I do find it offputting that it is so easy to kill carbon stuff by overtightening clamps.

Ask Simon about Alu bar failure 😉

Slight Thread take over sorry! but Would clamping a carbon frame on a roof rack be a problem?

Glad I saw this; I'm going to put some exotic forks on my bike for Peak district riding.

www.bustedcarbon.com or whatever has a sample of the millions of carbon components that have broken.

Another pair of broken Pace RC31's over here. Unbonded at dropout and crown = BIN!

Anyone riding steel forks? Kona makes one: http://www.evanscycles.com/products/kona/p2-mtb-fork-disc-only-ec001685
Anyone know the weight of these or comparable ones?

I have some p2's somewhere, they aint exactly light. i thought they where a harsh ride.

Pace rc31s on my Giant xtc. Ridden with them in Rhayder a few times where it can be quite rocky, biggest drop is probably only a foot or so though. They work well round the local woods where I live. Light rider 60kg.

Kev

New Science of Strong Materials: or why your feet dont fall through the floor, a book by J E Gordon.

"Like boron, this fibre has suffered from a great deal of irresponsible Government publicity.
Although frequently described by the newspapers and on television as a wonderfibre of exceptional strength, carbon fibres are not in fact, particularly strong; if anything they are a little weaker than glass fibres. They are however, for their weight, something like eight times as stiff as either glass or the normal engineering metals. As might be expected the resin-fibre composites made from carbon fibres are very stiff but not especially strong in tension. They are also, at present, rather inconveniently weak in compression. While it might be possible, in theory, to put up the compressive strength of carbon fibre composites by using a metal matrix, this does not usually work in practice because of the chemical reactions which occur between the carbon and the metal.

However, for many purposes where weight saving is important but where the strength requirements are not too critical – such as artificial limbs, golf clubshafts or the stiffening of car bodies – carbon fibre composites have been very successful.
When we turn to more exacting applications, like aircraft parts, the trouble is generally lack of toughness. When the composite is made in the conventional way the work of fracture whichis actually achieved is not far short of the calculated theoretical limit – but unfortunately this is, in practice, not sufficiently high."

Yes cynic_al aluminium has limited physical properties (toughness)
Higher strength aluminium alloys do not always have higher FRACTURE TOUGHNESS.

http://emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=B098E158DF7197C11F7B9EA2CEB39EA8?contentType=Article&contentId=1682514

"THE highest strength wrought aluminium alloys currently available are based on the aluminium-zinc-magnesium-copper system, and such alloys offer considerable potential for weight savings in airframe structures. However, these alloys have presented problems in service, arising from deficiencies in fracture toughness and fatigue crack propagation resistance together with a susceptibility to exfoliation corrosion and stress-corrosion, which have led to restrictions being placed on their use by individual aircraft companies and by procurement authorities in a number of countries. This situation has led to the wide-spread use in the UK and continental Europe of lower strength alloys of the aluminium-copper-magnesium-silicon type, even though significant weight penalties are incurred in the process. There has been a more general acceptance of the high strength aluminium-zinc-magnesium-copper alloys in the USA, where problems associated with their use have been partially alleviated by a willingness to replace components at short intervals, but even so during recent years a trend has developed there towards the use of lower strength versions of these alloys in attempts to improve airframe durability and reliability. "

Macavity what relevance do your posts have?

I think there are thousands/millions of unbroken carbon and aluminium frames?

Interesting stuff, Macavity.
How does "aluminium-zinc-magnesium-copper" and "aluminium-copper-magnesium-silicon" translate in to the 6000 and 7000 numbers quoted by bike frame manufacturers ?
It's all very well a manufacturer saying they are using a lighter, stronger alloy, but not so good if it's one that's been found unreliable by the aircraft industry.

Oh, and 100kg rider on Nuke Proof rigid carbon forks.
Since snapping two egg beaters clean in half I have given up any aspirations of doing anything remotely radical, dude, and never intentionally get both wheels off the ground at the same time.
I have still managed to snap one aluminium and one steel frame within the past two months, so, I too worry about the fatigue life of my forks every time I hit a set of braking bumps.

Its not fatigue thats the issue - its overloading them. the limits might be high and could well be higher then a metal bit.

But - it you overload carbon fibre it turns to dust. Overload metal it bends. Thats what scares me.

All horribly oversimplified I know

Still waiting for some photos of a broken RC31...

If it's just the crown or dropouts that are damaged Pace can replace them.

Fortunately when my Mary bar broke I landed on grass. Painful but no damage done. And my cranks that snapped didn't me hurt at all - the pedal end just got left behind. Aluminium is evil - I've got a commuting frame that's probably going to snap pretty soon, the corrosion is far worse and accelerates quicker than anything I've seen with steel.

TJ, I'm a mechanic, not an engineer, so I'm not familiar with different failure types.
Generally, if a bus breaks, I weld it back together and add a reinforcing gusset.
I snapped an aluminium frame at the top of the seat tube. Presumably it was the constant flexing and leverage of my weight on the seat that did it.
I snapped a steel frame at the seat and chain stays near the left hand drop out. Presumably it was the torque reaction of the Rohloff hub that did it.
In both these cases the load would have been well within what the frame was designed for,it was repeated small loads that caused a fatigue failure.
When you say fatigue is not an issue for carbon fibre, do you mean that if it survives the first bump, it will survive an infinite number of similar bumps ?
Maybe not quite that literally, but you get what I mean.

Some materials do have high UTS Ultimate Tensile Strength (resistance to being pulled apart), but unfortunately in a three dimensional world there is compression and torsion and a combination of these.
CFRP (Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic) was initially developed to have higher specific stiffness (ratio of stiffness to weight) than steel, titanium and aluminium.
CFRP does have fairly good UTS (the carbon fibres can resist the pulling / tensile loads) but not so good compression strength (as the carbon fibres begin to rely on the plastic matrix). Just think rope: how good is it at pulling compaired with pushing?

Fracture toughness is important in dynamically loaded structures such as bikes. Fracture toughness or lack of is one of the more common reasons for bike bits breaking.
Because almost everything has defects in it, all materials. Then the strength of a material will not be the limiting factor, but the ability of a material to resist the effects of these defects. Hence fracture toughness is the measure of how well a material will resist defects, whether surface scratches, inclusions / contaminations, voids, plus a variety of other defects.

Militant Graham
The IADS International Alloy Designation System (for aluminium) http://www.jjjtrain.com/vms/eng_metal_stds/eng_metal_stds_06.html

The digit "6" as in 6xxx designates magnesium and silicon as the major alloys
The digit "7" as in 7xxx designates zinc as the major alloy

There is a relatively readable book Light Alloys by Polmear that gives more info on aluminium.

There are various opinions on what materials are best for bikes:
http://www.kvastainless.com/bicycles.html
even if the bit about rust is odd.
http://www.rivbike.com/article/bicycle_making/frame_materials
very similar style and logic... also odd

cynic-al
what relevance?
Sometimes the lively enquiring mind does wonder why stuff breaks?

"cynic-al - Member http://www.bustedcarbon.com or whatever has a sample of the millions of carbon components that have broken."

Some day I'll found www/bustedaluminium.com, the Metas alone will fill the page to bursting

"MilitantGraham - Member - Oh, and 100kg rider on Nuke Proof rigid carbon forks."

Worth mentioning these are exactly the same as the Exotic ones, just much more expensive. I use the Exotic ones myself and though I haven't exactly hammered them, 40cm or so drop to flat would be the hardest they've had I reckon, they've not done anything odd. I don't do anything on them that I wouldn't do on a set of 100mm XC forks but that's about it.

You can quote any website you want but i am yet to see ANY carbon mtb forks that have snapped through approved use or infact at all. I have seen carbon forks where the legs have seperated from the crown through poor bonding and I have seen this happen on countless sus and aluminium forks.

With carbon being a new and "scary plastic" material there will always be nay sayers generally in most cases those who have never actually used the item in question (very common on this forum).

Companies like Nuke Proof, Pace, Niner, Trek etc that make these products have poured 1000's of £/$ into testing and design so through correct use they are NOT any more likely to break then anyother material.

Bike parts break its a fact, There is NO part/bike that you could put on a site like this that someone somewhere hasn't broken or dislike.

Militant Graham.
This is really rather pushing my (amateur)knowledge but..........
Steel if stressed below a certain point will not fatigue, an infinite number of cycles and it will not weaken. Aluminium will fatigue however it rarely seems to be an issue in MTBs

My understanding is that CF acts like steel - if stressed below a certain limit it will not weaken with fatigue.

When you say fatigue is not an issue for carbon fibre, do you mean that if it survives the first bump, it will survive an infinite number of similar bumps ?

The rolf must have been failing gradually from overloading.

My concern - which I will happily accept may not be rational is about failure mode.

Put an large overload force ( ie in a crash) thru a metal component it will bend and fail gradually. Put the same overload thru a CF product it will fail catastrophically - turning into dust.

Now sometimes the progressive failure of the metal component might occur in a very short time and sometimes there might be a propagating crack that is not noticed leading to what looks like catestrophic failure.

I fully accept that my fears might not be rational - but i could never trust a CF fork.

"Singlespeed_Shep: Companies like Nuke Proof, <snip> that make these products have poured 1000's of £/$ into testing and design"

Nuke Proof buy theirs from a catalogue, the only think they designed on those forks is the logos. Not to say that the actual manufacturer didn't design them well of course, they're the same as the ones I have under a different name and seem great.

Derail mode off 😉 Just annoys me slightly when Nukeproof get away with being largely a rebrander but still charging the prices you'd expect from a producer, like with these, or their pedals etc. There was a post on Bikeradar a while back where someone was insisting Nukeproof pedals were better than Superstar pedals because they were more expensive, exact same pedal though...

i snapped some aluminium handlebars, trust me, it was a very sudden failure and my face hit the ground quite hard.

Thankfully it was in the woods and the ground was soft earth.

Why is when a carbon part breaks, people blame the material??

Carbon fork breaks - its because its carbon fibre
Steel fork breaks - its because its badly made/designed

Interesting links, Macavity, although it does look like someone's been copy & pasting instead of doing their own original research. 😉

I feel a bit more reassured now about the reliability of my carbon forks now. The idea of sudden catastrophic failure is still a bit of a worry though.
Both frames developed a mysterious creak shortly before they broke. I would imagine that if I had searched more thoroughly I would have found the cracks before they spread.
A crack on a steel or aluminium fork may spread slower, but it may still be too quick for me to stop riding before it fails completely.

I'm still curious as to why there is a rule of thumb 80 hour limit for carbon handlebars and no similar limit for frames or forks.

TJ....please please please dont scare people with your theories..

stick to what you do for a day job, and dont come on here as a mechanical/electrical/aero engineer?

please?

scotia - I did say I accepted my fear might be irrational - and then please tell me what is wrong with what I said?

At the end of the day it's down to design and manufacture, rather than material. A correctly designed carbon part will not fail catastrophically as it will be designed not to fail in use. Likewise a steel or alu part. If a steel fork or an alu fork cracks it's because it wasn't designed properly and the material has been taken outside it's safe envelope, just as with a carbon part. The instantaneous failure that seems to scare everyone also scares me. I've not had bars fail, but I've had forks fail. 2 of them. Both steel, but fortunately both instances they bend plastically and were still loosely ridable. Not sure that really matters though as both times I'd crashed and come off the bike in the process. Had they been carbon forks they'd probably have shattered, but I'd still be off the bike.

Heres a link to a picture of a broken Pace RC31:

http://jasperscyclingdiaries.blogspot.com/2010/05/epilogue.html

Heres a link to a picture of a broken Pace RC31:

And a picture of a broken steel chain, does this mean i need to go to a belt drive? as my chain could fail catastrophically throwing me over my bars. 😆

Some important points from that link;
Only one leg broke.
It didn't break completely.
The rider was able to stop without crashing.

I also have irrational fears, including having one fork leg snap clean off, which then overloads the other one causing it to also snap, leading to a nosedive.
It looks like that may not necessarily be the most likely scenario.

Carbon eh ? What a can of worms. As I said earlier I run RC31s both very old and newish ones.I have thus far had no problems but now it has been mentioned "the bad juju man" might just spook mine into to failure. Fit them,ride them, check them when you wash you bike after every ride (yer as if) and stop fretting.

if you look at those broken rc31s they've failed exactly how they should have. Instead of snapping the crown assembly has bent. Unfortunately other companies dont do the same thing :S

Ive ridden some stuff on my exotic carbon forks that a lot of people wouldnt do on XC suspended bikes and not had problems. Get the odd creak and stuff from the front end but ive not stopped riding them yet.

Just dont smash them on anything and make sure they dont crack or anything and you will be fine.

and then please tell me what is wrong with what I said?

Well there's this bit.

Put an large overload force ( ie in a crash) thru a metal component it will bend and fail gradually. Put the same overload thru a CF product it will fail catastrophically - turning into dust.

It you put the force required to break a CF product (e.g. handlebars) through a similarly designed metal product it will fail just the same. It won't "fail gradually", it will just fail. The minutae of the failure mechanism might be different however you, as the person experiencing the failure, will not notice the difference during the failure episode. You'll crash just as hard and you'll hurt yourself just as much. It will make no practical difference whatsoever.

Are you sure of that gonefishing - there won't be bending rather than fracture?

I have seen bent metal components
Edit - like this?

[img] [/img]

Would a CF bike be in two pieces if in the same crash?

[i]"Instead of snapping the crown assembly has bent."[/i]

I'm not sure what you mean there.
It's not very clear from that photo, but it looks to me like the carbon leg has snapped immediately below the aluminium crown.
Or is there a spigot on the crown extending down inside the leg and it's the spigot that has bent ?

Would a CF bike be in two pieces if in the same crash?

I'd have thought that a similarly designed CF bike would have withstood the crash just fine rather than bending. CF will withstand an impact that bends a metal component without failure. The reverse is not true.

As I said the minutiae of the failure mechanism may be different but a failure is still a failure.

if you look at those broken rc31s they've failed exactly how they should have. Instead of snapping the crown assembly has bent. Unfortunately other companies dont do the same thing :S

No, it's snapped at the crown from what I can see?

At the end of the day if you have a lightweight designed anything it will fail in a fairly rapid way anyway. Light alu bars will fold and fall off pretty much instantly, just as carbon. Forks are possibly the safest place to have it as you have redundancy of sorts, the second leg will share the load should one begin to lose strength unbeknownst to you, so as above you should see the failure before it goes big-time. But at the end of the day if you hit something hard enough with any fork it will snap clean off, or if it doesnt it'll bend and become so weak it might as well just fall off.

No-one else taken a road bike on a BMX course as a kid and bent the forks, leading to forks that bend on any further mild impact and eventually shear right off due to fatigue?

Gonfishing - who knows?? Of course a failure is still a failure but one that leaves you with a bent component and one that leaves you with a broken one is different.

I fully accept my fear may be irrational as I said - but I personally could never be happy riding CF forks for this reason.

I fully accept my fear may be irrational as I said - but I personally could never be happy riding CF forks for this reason.

TJ, that's fine and I don't think anyone has a problem with it, however statements like this

Put an large overload force ( ie in a crash) thru a metal component it will bend and fail gradually. Put the same overload thru a CF product it will fail catastrophically - turning into dust.

are a long way from that position.

Or is there a spigot on the crown extending down inside the leg and it's the spigot that has bent ?

Production technique on that style of fork is to press a chromoly or even titanium tube into the cnc'd crown, then bond the mandrel wound carbon fork leg over the top.

I have some sympathy with TJ - structural components that break in the way carbon does just give me the heebie-jeebies.

Steel/alloy can often be bent back and get you home. I accept this is all irrational and carbon is probbers way stronger but I doubt I'll evet own much carbon.

Gonefishin - but is that not the case? a tube put under a bending load and the load increased until it fails - the metal one will buckle and bend whereas the CF one will break? Metal will undergo plastic deformation before failure CF won't

Thats my understanding. Is that wrong?

edit I also accept that CF is stronger for the same weight.

Thats my understanding. Is that wrong?

That statement isn't wrong, but the conclusions you are deriving from it are. As I said the exact mechanism of failure between a CF and metal component may be different however the effect will be the same. Just to be clear any force sufficiently strong to break a CF component will also break a metal one and whilst the precise failure mechanism of the metal will be different to that of a CF one it will still fail, and you'll hurt yourself just as badly. The reverse however is not necessarily true, i.e. the force required to break a metal component is not necessarily enough to break an equivalent CF one.

To put it another way, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Sorry gonfishing = I may be being dense here. If overloaded does the steel tube bend and the CF one break? Yes or no?

Edit - relative strengths surely depend how how they are made

Double edit

So ride your bike into a wall at speed. Teh CF one breaks the steel one bends? Both hurt

The important factor with any material is will it fail in such a way that you can dismount safely? (eg disintegration versus bend)

@gonfishing why are you assuming that the force required to break a carbon component will break that of a metal component? it relates down to specific stiffness, material UTS figures and geometry, and without quoting those that argument is fairly redundant.
Anyway when a steel fails it fails progressively and plasticly, this act dissipates energy, mitigating (arguably minutely) any failure. carbon fibre failure modes are poorly understood and catastrophic with zero plastic flow, do with that what you will...
oh and putting a small ding in steel/alu isn't the end of the world, whereas with carbon you get all sorts of nasty effects such as debonding, crack initiation and delamination.

Without knowing the load, it's pointless speculating on the failure mode.
Yes, when it fails, carbon fibre will fail completely. However, given a high enough load (for the design and material spec.) steel will also 'appear' to fail completely. The progessive, plastic, region is only so long.

Best reason I've heard is that is easier to extract metal shards from you person than carbon.

I have carbon forks on the commuter (Bonty Switchblades) and really it's only the weight - the compliance over P2s was nothing you could distinguish after you've added even a 1.5 tyre at 60 psi. I also have carbon bars on the full suss and I'd say the same about them.. but there the weight saving isn't even so apparent.

[i]"Production technique on that style of fork is to press a chromoly or even titanium tube into the cnc'd crown, then bond the mandrel wound carbon fork leg over the top."[/i]
That makes sense. So in that picture, it looks like it is the pressed in metal spigot tube that has failed, by going way past its elastic limit and permanently deforming, while still remaining in one piece. The CF fork leg itself doesn't appear to be damaged at all.
So if we take the Cf out of the equation and imagine that as a full chromoly or titanium fork leg pressed in to the aluminium crown, it would have failed in exactly the same way.

[i]"Just to be clear any force sufficiently strong to break a CF component will also break a metal one..."[/i]
There's a lot of variables and assumptions in that statement.
I watched a bit of the Olympic track cycling on the telly.
There was a crash where a rider hit another downed rider and endoed over the top of her. The bike could clearly be seen flying through the air in two halves.
Presumably it was a CF frame and a single minor crash had exceeded its design limits.
I wouldn't take that as evidence that my CF forks will break the first time I crash with them, more that track bikes are built down to a weight with a minimal safety margin.

Ok - can I sum up - lets see if I get it right???

CF forks will be ( assuming properly designed and made) strong enough for most xc riding and at least as strong as metal ones.

In the event of exceeding the load capability of the fork the steel one might give you a bit less catestrophic failure but this might make no odds at all.

Some of us are paranoid about Cf components?

Im no expert but i ride with someone who knows far too much about cf stuff and loves his RC31s. He told me they have a spigot or something from teh crown assembly down into the carbon fibre tube. IIRC he said this was the place that gets the largest amount of stress placed on it.

When they do break you hope the spigoty thing bends instead of the CF snapping.

And i do believe that has broken as i said, the picture isnt big enough but the carbon has what looks like a very straight cut instead of a big fracture.

Apparently whoever bought out Paces fork department (DT swiss??) have shown a RC31 prototype with the titanium/alloy spigot made of carbon fibre. Talk about missing the point.

Good summary TJ - that pretty much does it all.

Ask Mark Webber how strong CF is.
[img] [/img]

Dont know much about the science but back in 2004 did have one leg of my months old set of Rc31s shear completely through about one third of the way down - 9 stone rider doing moderate XC.

how about that video from niner bikes. hang on

[url= http://www.ninerbikes.com/fly.aspx?layout=bikes&taxid=260&video=true ]bloke lampin carbon forks with hammer[/url]

Still stuck on the nuke proof forks being made in same factory as others, or being rebranded. I keep reading about this -- how do we know nuke proof don't make their forks?

I'm right on the weight limit of the RC31's and mine have cracked ... at the drop out.

The carbon legs held up fine for a number of years, but the magnesium brake side dropout has cracked ... forks unusable. I'd say that if i were to get another set, then I would be going for dropouts which are less liekly to suffer the white powder corrosion like the Pace ones did.

As for overall strength, I would say that mine held up well. I avoided drop-offs and like and a wheels on the ground rider, but other than that, they were great.

[i]TandemJeremy
I fully accept my fear may be irrational as I said - but I personally could never be happy riding CF forks for this reason.[/i]

Mountain biker makes component choice based on irrational preconceptions rather than sound, peer reviewed, scientific evidence shock.

nuke proof, [s]wide[/s] WHITE industries, on-one, someone else and exotic are all made in the same factory i believe. If you want proof just compare the products in detail. The dropouts/crown are the obvious places.

Can you stop this now as i have some rc31 for sale 😯

rather than sound, peer reviewed, scientific evidence shock.

Is there scientific data available on any mountain bike components?