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Comment by rokkitmensch | Hacker News Reader

People who ride carbon mountain bikes absolutely baffle me. The thing is going to get seriously chewed up if you're having fun and pushing your limits, why make it a glass canon to boot?!

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This is a misconception. Carbon fiber mountain bikes are not more delicate. Designed properly they are more durable. The idea that carbon fiber is innately delicate comes from road bikes designed to be as light and stiff as possible, and they can end up brittle, and weak in areas that don't normally see stresses. Not all road bikes are designed like this, even high end ones, but some early ultra light bikes were.

Bikes that need to be durable use different types of fibers that can bend more before cracking, and may include layers of kevlar or other composites with more 'toughness' in key areas. My wife has a carbon fiber mountain bike and has been racing every weekend, winning, jumping, crashing, riding every day, for 3 years now, bike is fine.

Perhaps you should take the popularity of carbon mountain bikes to be a hint that your preconceptions of carbon durability are inaccurate.

These old materials sciences classes are leading me astray! Fatigue, embrittlement, they must be solved problems by now.

Carbon MTBs are pretty strong. Just don't clamp the frame so much you are crushing it and avoid direct rock hits, which will damage any material anyway.

There used to be a video on youtube of a carbon mountain bike fork, and they were SMASHING it with a ball peen hammer, repeatedly. It did do a little damage but remained rideable, and was in much better shape than the metal forks they smashed.

There is also this video from Santa Cruz: https://youtu.be/w5eMMf11uhM?t=148 where they test the fork and frame

I am also remind of the Danny M video of the carbon wheels test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfjjiHGuHoc

> avoid direct rock hits

Given that I mostly ride my local volcano, this may not be a practical constraint for me.

I mean crashing it into hard objects, pebbles against the frame are ok.

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