Originally Posted by
Branko D
There's stiff racing CF bikes with an aggressive geometry and there's comfortable CF endurance bikes.
I've ridden a Specialized Ruby (the women's version of the Roubaix, now discontinued), over some broken roads, it's a magic carpet like ride with wide tires at low pressure and the flexy seatpost and the future shock suspension. I don't need it, but if I did, it'd be my pick.
That's the thing with carbon, the layup is pretty much infinitely adjustable to target specific stiffness/compliance in specific areas of the frame that would be very difficult or simply impossible to achieve with metal tubing. For the frame designer it both broadens the limits (at both ends of the stiffness spectrum) and the resolution (ability to both fine tune and localise stiffness characteristics). Coming from a cutting edge motorsport engineering background I've lived through the transition from metal fabrications to carbon composites and the latter opened up a whole new world. I think the bike industry has matured hugely in its use of carbon composite tech over the last decade. Carbon frame layups are now pretty sophisticated and similar to what I was seeing in motorsport a decade earlier.