Noonievut

My previous riding on gravel trails and roads was on steel or aluminum frames and I never thought about the many ‘pings’ hitting the frame from gravel. I now have a carbon frame and I’m wondering if it’s necessary to add something like helicopter tape, to areas like bottom of the downtube, to protect the frame from damage? I don’t care about looks, but I don’t want small stone chips to cause any long term damage.

FWIW - I mainly ride this bike on rail trails and gravel roads where in both cases the gravel is usually hard packed, smaller than a pea, but my tires do kick it up often.

Toespeas

i doubt any tape will help but 3m makes some clear tape i use it , doesn't really work but i ride my cx bike on mtb trails so it probably would work better if i just races it or road on cx courses , i can use it to protect my frame from cable rub , i was thinking about trying some if these thermal vynl wraps i saw on amazon , might be a cool hack to try , on my aluminum frame i used gorilla tape on a rub spot , i personally dont get the practical use of carbon off road outside of racing but its your money so do what you want , id search bike frame protection tape

mstateglfr 

Some new carbon frames come with 'armor' which is a hard plastic/rubbery material on the downtube.
This is a sort of aftermarket version- https://www.bikearmor.com/Downtube-Protectors-s/100.htm

msu2001la

Tape protection is definitely a thing. I think there is some debatable points on if it's necessary or not. At a minimum I'd make sure the chain stay has some protection on it, though most bikes come with this pre-installed.

In my mind, the main benefit of taping is to help protect your frame's finish from some small nicks and chips. I'm not sure it's really going to do much to protect the frame from bigger hits that would cause structural concerns. On the other hand, people buying carbon frames have no way to know if the small paint chips/nicks are a result of a bunch of tiny pieces of gravel, or from a larger impact that might have damaged the frame, so something to consider I guess.

Canker

Certainly won't hurt. I run it on my mtn bike but haven't bothered on my road/gravel bike probably should but I'm lazy. 3m mastic tape is also really good for areas that take a serious beating.

unterhausen

isn't the mastic sticky on both sides? What do you put on top?

prj71

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=downtube+...f=nb_sb_noss_2

Canker

No it isn't.