Originally Posted by rydabent

It is quite apparent that there are two classes of posters here. Many of us are in one class that thinks CF bikes are not the ultimate bike for 98% of the riding public. The other class is the people that have drank the mfg koolaide that say CF bikes are the greatest thing since sex. They are the ones that have paid out huge bucks, and dont like anyone that says anything against there "baby".

Originally Posted by rydabent

The other class is the people that have drank the mfg koolaide that say CF bikes are the greatest thing since sex.

Originally Posted by Digger6255

Wrong! Go to a NHRA race and watch the 10,000 HP Top Fuel engines get rebuilt after every run in less than 45 minutes. My 190 mph Dragster engine gets "rebuilt" every 2 years. Please keep your comments to something you know about like Asploding CF bikes......

Originally Posted by rydabent

To show you that it just comes down to money, on one of my bike forums a guy was bragging that he bought a $12,000 CF bike for $7500. It tells you that there are huge profits involved with CF bikes. You know that at $7500 the mfg and the bike shop still made money.

Originally Posted by davewc

then there are those of us who have simply chosen a bike we like, have ridden it safely for thousands of kms and don't understand why our choice affects you.

Originally Posted by deapee

There are plenty of CF bikes that are over 2 years old that aren't exploding...This thread is pointless.

Originally Posted by rydabent

It is quite apparent that there are two classes of posters here. Many of us are in one class that thinks CF bikes are not the ultimate bike for 98% of the riding public. The other class is the people that have drank the mfg koolaide that say CF bikes are the greatest thing since sex.

Originally Posted by cyclintom

I do find it interesting that you are comparing an open class dragster (no displacement limits) that runs less than 10 sec per run to real racing cars. Is this simply because you don't know any better?

Originally Posted by cyclintom

How do pros sell their bikes when they are property of the team?

Originally Posted by cyclintom

The C40 was EXACTLY the same as used in the Tour de France or the other grand tours. It also held the record for the number of classic wins.

The reason that the lawyer stated that these bikes were supposed to be destroyed at the end of a season was because if the teams sold these bikes they assumed personal liability. Even though in Europe this is sharply limited it can still bankrupt a team and give their sponsors a bad name.

What are the bikes that are sold? The one's I got were the team bikes that were never used. With no marks on the brake mounts or the drop-outs they're pretty easy to recognize. Sponsors will buy and entire group of framesets and at the end of a year there are leftovers that were never even painted. These are usually stolen by the mechanics who sell them for what they can get since they are paid a pittance to work for the teams. That is usually a given.

So the advice given to the teams varies from what Joe Citizen Purchaser should have ONLY in the level of riding. A one year lifespan on a bike used in the spring classics is about 10 years in normal use but that is only in general. Any particular bike could very well fall apart in the three year US warranty period if ridden as roughly as those in professional racing. And this doesn't mean fast, it means hitting road bumps hard at a high enough speed to generate the high frequency waves that will dissolve the resin that holds the carbon fiber together.

BUT, if Mike takes Colnago to court over that failure of his it wouldn't matter if that frame was 100 years old - catastrophic failures of that sort are NEVER supposed to happen on any goods sold in America. Most especially since the working life of the frame is not mentioned anywhere in the manual.