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beardedmacuser
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: eastmidlandshire
 
2007-04-30, 07:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by Perfecting_Zero View Post
Those of you with carbon fiber road bikes, how do you like them? I think that my riding style is too aggressive for the somewhat delicate-natured carbon fiber frame. I prefer a well-made steel frame. But I think that I'm old-fashioned that way.
I agree, you can't beat a good old steel frame for comfort and longevity, but I've never owned a bike as solid and pleasant to ride as my carbon-framed Trek road bike. It combines the comfort of steel with supreme stiffness and sublime handling. By far the weakest and least stiff part of that bike are the wheels. I've thrashed that frame over thousands of race miles, crashed a few times, and it's still as good as new apart from a couple of scratches from nasty aluminium bikes in crashes. I've gone through several pairs of wheels for it though. Should I get back to racing at the end of this summer it'll be due a new groupset and another pair of wheels.

Of course as with all frames, the choice of material is only half the story. It's possible to find crap carbon frames, and sometimes aluminium can make for a decent frame too (not that I've ever found however). In fact, come to think of it, I've seen several steel or aluminium frames snapped clean in half in big crashes but I've never seen a carbon frame suffer such a catastrophic break.
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