Originally Posted by
elcruxio
. . . Your bike will be a pile of rust by the time a carbon frame gives up the ghost due to time exposure. It's inevitable. Unless the steel breaks first. Thin tubed boutique italian frames tend to do that.
I did some searches on the topic of the longevity of carbon fiber/resin structures for a previous thread where the claim that carbon fiber bike "obviously" have a more limited lifespan than metal bikes. One of the relevant items I found was a peer-reviewed article from a scientific journal that included the surprising (to me) information that resin-impregnated carbon fiber, upon being heated for a short period to a moderate temperature (more than the boiling point of water, but not many hundreds of degrees), regains its original characteristics with respect to strength.
The way the writer put it: "the structure's aging clock is reset to zero."