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The advice is good (steel and aluminum are much underappreciated) yet this op-ed is weird and mean spirited. Yeah, carbon fiber bikes are expensive and quirky. They’re a specialty bike for racers squeaking out tens of seconds to a minute or two of time. No one is seriously advising new riders to get a 10 grand bike. Why the gatekeeping? Let racers spend their money on their favorite, healthy, and engaging hobby.
You don’t even need to spend 10k to get a carbon bike anymore, they start under 3k
I did not expect this article to recommend steel bikes as alternatives. I fully expected to read aluminium especially with the advanced tube types available now.
Also, although the aerodynamic benefits of carbon are difficult for amateurs to truly appreciate, the weight advantage that carbon bikes or even carbon parts offer, can’t be ignored. Even replacing the front fork with a carbon fork would remove a lot of unwanted weight that you’d feel even on the first run!
Yeah weight is the best advantage for carbon imo. Of course when you’re riding it’s a marginal performance gain nobody really needs nor want. But when you’re not it’s a massive difference. Try going up a tight spiral staircase to reach you front door with a 25lbs roadie. Now do that twice a day to commute to work and suddenly the steel part really, really sucks. Even more recent options are still 50% heavier not to mention as expensive as some cheaper CF options, not all of them are 10k. Aluminium is really the only good alternative as far as I’m concerned.
And they also think looks is a valid argument.
Aluminium is what I go for personally. My bike has aluminium frame with carbon forks. This provides a bit of dampening during the ride but frame is more rigid and not much heavier. Whole bike is like 8.7kg anyway. Also any benefit you gain from getting carbon bike is easily negated by the gear you have to carry with you since you don’t have a support team.
Less people steal steel than carbon, I’d assume.
Does carbon have the same longevity and load characteristics as steel?
Those are value judgements. How does a carbon bike get stolen if it’s never locked in a public place? Why would a carbon bike be loaded with anything more than a bottle of water and a small saddle bag?
These considerations are important for commuting, touring, and other fun activities, but are perhaps less important for the bike racer.
You’re in the “fuckcars” community. Bikes are part of non-car transportation. How do you use a bike as an primary or secondary form of transportation if you never park in a public place or carry anything more than a bottle of water and a small saddle bag?
I’ve had many coworkers roll into the office with their carbon bikes because it makes quick work of a long commute and it’s so easy to carry a lightweight machine up the office stairs. They’d wear a backpack if they needed to carry a laptop. No cars involved; not even a bus.
There’s no need to gatekeep which kind of bike someone chooses to use when the objective is to not drive a car. They can ride a carbon bike if they want too.
Not every bike needs to be for transport. Also, I’ve brought my carbon bike in my office at more than one job. My commute was already 1 hour each way with a nice road bike. My hybrid might be nice for running errands, but there’s no way I’d have made the trip to work with that. Now I have an ebike that makes it even easier to do the trip to work (doesn’t save much time except when there’s a headwind, but I don’t get as sweaty). But if I didn’t live on the ground floor, there’s no way I’d be able to deal with getting that up and down stairs every day.
Somewhere like the Netherlands, every bike racer is going to have at least two bikes: a regular commuting ‘granny bike’, and a racing roadbike.
Just as it’s common for a runner to have regular-ass shoes for going grocery shopping and a pair of running shoes they only really use when training for a marathon, or for reasonably well-off car/ motorcycle enthusiasts to have a more practical regular car they use for daily driving and a less practical sporty vehicle for pleasure drives.
Road bikes like you see in the Tour de France aren’t really a practical form of transportation. You have special shoes that clip to the pedals, you wear lycra bike shorts, etc.
No. Carbon is more elastic but when it fails it fails completely. With metal frames they get a dent which you can easily repair.
Carbon’s elasticity limit is far beyond what steel’s plastic deformation point is though. That means a carbon frame will still be structurally sound as a bike frame after being through an impact that would bend a steel frame to be unusable. Steel is tough, carbon is strong.
Of course there is some impacts that will shatter it but a metal frame would’ve bent beyond any repairs from the same impact in 100% of the cases.
Moot point in reality, as unfortunately any deep gouges or signs of delamination are genuine cause for replacement of a CF part. The gouges are strong stress risers and cannot be ignored.
I agree that the damage can’t be ignored when it happens but that’s not my point at all. I’m just saying that the force needed to inflict this damage would have destroyed a metal frame to a greater extent rendering it immediately useless. That is also part of why carbon parts are so light. You need much less material to achieve similar strength.
Here’s an example of the difference between a carbon and aluminium MTB frame of the same bike model. Again, I’m not saying these frames are undamaged, I’m just pointing at how much more repeated and specifically applied force is needed to damage them when talking about two parts used for the same application.
edit:fixed the link
I unfortunately can’t agree with that sentiment. Composites fail in very complex ways, with part of a tested sample failing in tension, another portion in compression and a third portion of that same sample in torque (possibly other ways too, depending on layup etc).
To bolster my point, listen to the video you’ve linked. Long before the steel has started obviously yielding, you can hear some of the CF fibers failing. It’ll take it, but your rated static strength is actually decreasing as those fibers in the downtube cross-section progressively fail. When failure in that video finally happens, it’s indeed at a high value… But it was only tested to failure once. And therein lies the insidiousness.
You’ve taken a jump on your mtb several times, jump, jump, jump, not hearing the gentle pinging in your bike’s headset area every time you land. One day you take the jump, as usual, but the headset and thus the forks & handlebars snap off. That’s a problem.
I totally agree with everything you are saying. But you have to consider the application of said material. A bike frame that bends is a failed part and it does not matter how much more force it can resist, it is now useless. I also am speaking of catastrophic failure by the way, as in there is no bike anymore after this crash type of incident. In these cases, I believe the carbon bike will endure a greater amount of force than a steel bike. And that’s also while being far lighter because at equal weight there is really no contest.
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I understand that it does not do well beyond it’s yield point. What I’m saying is that this yield point is higher when you are comparing specific applications like a bike frame for example. In the video, you can clearly see that the same force (in this case impact) just ruins the aluminium frame while the CF bounces back, repeatedly and while increasing the force applied. I am not saying that it’s completely fine and safe, I’m saying it’s still a usable bike frame even if unsafe if we are speaking peak strenght. This can make the difference between being able to ride back home and being stranded.
Should I spend 5000€ on a carbon bike or should I diet for like 3 days to save the same weight and keep using my aluminium road bike, tough choices…
That’s what i always find funny. i mean i like stuff like that, i currently have a carbon frame mtb that i absolutely adore. I bought the frame for cheap and build the bike from parts that i already had. But i don’t think there is any advantage. It’s not even very light, i just like the idea of it. I sometimes talk to ebike enthusiasts who own 10+K ebikes with carbon frames. Good job, you saved 500g on a 22kg bike where the battery and the motor is the thing that weights it down. And the guys are always on the chunky side as well. Bro, you van drop 10kg easily.
Carbon Frame (Male to Bike)
Sounds like they like owning the bike more than riding it
I say if you have money, buy whatever you want. It’s your money. There’s no need to buy higher quality anything following this logic be it car, clothing, food or house. But if you can afford it, why wouldn’t you. Why would there be a need for a reason to do something you desire?
I’m pretty pleased with my fixed gear steel bike. It’s cheap and easy to maintain, and it’s held up well over the years.
I just don’t talk to bicycle enthusiasts (except the worker at the shop I frequent) because they’ll compare it to bicycles that are way beyond my means or needs. Most people don’t need carbon or even aluminum, if you’re just looking for reliable transportation.
What side of comparisons are being made? I own two enthusiast level carbon fiber bikes but also have a steel framed urban bike and love them all.
Mostly just like comments ranging from “You should buy a [$5000 bike]” to “You’re riding a death trap!” And I’d say I’m basing this primarily on my experience trying to ask for help or advice on reddit, so maybe not a really fair cross-section of enthusiasts in general lol
Yeah Reddit enthusiasts are the nutjobs. Your local shop is where the real enthusiasts are. My local coop is just happy people are riding and fixing up their bikes
Yeah the people working there are pretty chill, and I’m pretty sure they’d alert me if I were actually riding a death trap!
I just want to see more people on bikes and fewer in cars.
Lovely. Which bikes do you have?
You can never have too many
I’d argue for aluminum only for the resistance to corrosion. I rode through snow and salt all winter in NYC; while I’d rinse the bike off right after, there’s still holes and nooks in the frame.
Only issues with fixie bikes I have is the strain on your knees and ligaments they make.
I haven’t noticed a problem, but then I also longboard a lot so maybe that helps keep things flexible
Strain is there, but you are probably fit enough and use to it for it to not be a problem. My injury was few years ago and I still have to be careful to start slow and warm up well before any strain.
Yeah I can understand that. My husband has a bulging disk, and it makes it hard for him to do certain things too.
I work in a bike shop and my colleagues like to poke fun at my 13" kids mountain bike that I use to commute. But you know what, over 3 years, even after riding over glass bottles and thorny branches and who knows what, no puncture so far. All I’ve had to do is change my brake cable, just did a chain and freewheel replacement last week (probably cos I don’t wash it as often as I should) and a brake pad replacement cos the ones it came with on the v brake was the cheap sort that screamed.
They keep telling me to upgrade to a aluminium frame hybrid, I’m like, why?
I’ve just had to change brake pads and tires so far, just because of how much I ride it, but I have it in the shop every year, and so far no major problems.
Before that, I had a cast-off bike from Walmart that my ex-boss gave me when he left, and I rode that into the ground. I still have it and could fix it, but I decided to put the money into something newer instead back in 2020.
My adventure bike, in my bike bag, is under 50 lbs. I like traveling with my bike. Imma keep buying CF.
I got my cyclo-cross on sale for < $1,500.
I love that I can easily lift and carry it.
No regrets. (Other than getting fibromyalgia 6 months after buying it lol).
Nobody here has mentioned the climate impact of choosing carbon fiber over steel.
Starling Cycles, a rare producer of steel mountain bikes, concluded that a typical carbon frame uses 16 times more energy than a steel frame.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/02/can-we-make-bicycles-sustainable-again/
Of course, any bicycle will be more sustainable than a car. But we’re in a climate crisis, and that means taking extreme measures, including considering whether even low-impact tools like bicycles could be even more sustainable. We can’t afford to be completely uncritical of any technology.
Yep. At least steel and aluminum (ooo titanium) can be produced, & recycled, using electric arc furnaces.
How does my $50 15 year old bike from a big box store stack up to these newfangled Carboner Bikeys?
So carbon frames are somewhat softer and provide more enjoyable ride. However carbon is not as resistant to damage as is metal. If it fails, chances are it will fail completely while with aluminium frame you can easily fix a dent and keep moving or not even address the damage at all. My bike for example has best of both worlds, aluminium frame and carbon forks. That way I get some smoothing during ride but most of the bike is aluminium, so a middle ground.
How does it stack up? It’s like switching from 50cc scooter to 650cc sport bike. It simply can’t compare. Carbon has very little to do with that really, but 50$ bike from a store would assume poorer transmission and general quality which means higher weight. Lower weight goes faster, thinner tires go faster, good transmission means you go faster. In general both bikes will get you from point A to point B, but being able to travel faster than 30km/h on your own strength is a feeling to be experienced. It feels very fast and satisfying.
Former bike mechanic, now engineer. This person’s got it right, and have been riding the same setup as theirs for 13yrs on the same bike.
As someone who switched from a Walmart bike to a carbon fiber bike I can definitely say there’s a huge difference. Everything on the carbon fiber one is much higher quality. The gear ratios is has make sense, whereas I could never find the right ratios on the cheap one. Switching speeds is much faster too as I can be pedaling hard while changing gears and I know it’s going to do exactly what I tell it. Finding parts is very easy compared to the Walmart one. Anytime something broke on the old one it was difficult or impossible to find a replacement. With a much nicer bike you can get parts for it easily so I can keep it in top shape for a long time. There are many other benefits as well.
None of those points have anything to do with the material of the frame though…
It’s true they don’t. I was trying to point out some of the differences between a real bike and a Walmart bike. For the frame I love how it rides, I love how lightweight it is, I like how strong it is, and I love how repairable the bike is.
What a dumb take. Metal is heavier than Carbon fiber, therefore carbon is the preferred material. Carbon fibre frames aren’t even that much more expensive for even entry level road bikes…
The issue is not weight. You are not competing anyway to desire those few minutes off. Problem with carbon is that it fails critically. With aluminium and its alloys if you hit the frame somewhere bike is most likely going to be fine. With carbon chances of complete failure are higher.
Funny how this is getting talked about now, but I’d reached the same conclusions years ago. My aluminum frame, carbon fork gives me the best of both: supple ride, high durability, and has done so for about 13yrs and a free ride on a hood without fail.
