What are the disadvantages to a carbon frame?

[ny biker]

Oh you think so…. sure if it's catastrophic and all that's left are little pieces, but it's actually kind of scary some of the airplanes that they've refit and reflown…… There's an amazing video of a plane that lands so hard the tail falls off…. granted it was a test plane and the hard landing was kind of intentional (it ended up being harder than they really meant), but apparently the plane had a new tail fit and went on to have a long life as a test plane - eek!

F1 cars are carbon fiber, and I'm pretty sure the chassis (what is the plural of that word?) are repaired when needed. The thinner parts like wings tend to shatter into shards so they get replaced. The safety standards for the cars are strict (and amazingly effective) so repaired carbon would not be allowed if it didn't meet the structural requirements.

However I don't think my mass-produced bike is as high a quality material as an F1 car.

[Eden]

When aircraft crash and the carbon-fiber burns... I would hope that is not relevant to bicycles.

lol.. only in the movies (thinking of the myth busters episode that showed how really hard it is to crash a car and have it catch fire or even more crazy, explode- but how it seems *every* crash in the movies results in an eye catching, but completely fallacious fireball)

I'd make a guess the carbon fiber on an F1 car isn't structural, but just an aerodynamic shell, so I can't imagine repairing it wouldn't be a safety issue, unless the repair could possible shatter or tear off under the pressure of the wind? I have seen carbon fiber bike frames fail - but as far as I know all the failures have happened during or after a crash which damaged the carbon. For sure care needs to be taken, as damage done may not be readily visible, but I wouldn't expect normal knocks to have any affect - there are carbon mt. bikes, so a pothole shouldn't pose a problem. I've also seen aluminum, ti and steel all fail too, nothing is invulnerable.

[OakLeaf]

Potentially slightly more relevant to this discussion is Ducati's failed experiment with a carbon fiber frame. The bike was famously too stiff and wouldn't steer. They've gone back to aluminum for 2015, but are keeping the carbon fiber swingarm.

The carbon is also structural in the cars. They can get away with it because of the much, much, much larger tire contact patches.

[ny biker]

You mean that tires contact the road in a much greater surface area than a bicycle tire?

Actually,...English, please?

There's a good picture of the cars here.

http://www.formula1.com/content/fom-...ed-podium.html

I think there must be something more solid in the part above/behind the driver's heads, which is there for safety reasons. I've seen the driver walk away unhurt after his car flipped upside down and then bounce rightside up again. Whatever is in there, the car did not break apart from the impacts.

Anyway, as I said before, they have different requirements and budgets in mind when they make the carbon for these cars vs. mass-produced bike frames. I can't find the link to it, but I recall BikesnobNYC writing about his carbon road bike cracking pretty easily, from hitting against a lamppost or something similar.

[Eden]

I stand corrected - I was looking at an old F1 car frame that was aluminum. It does appear that current cars have a carbon monocoque chassis/cockpit. They are specially coated so that they will not splinter in case of an impact, something which obviously bikes don't have, but I would guess flying carbon bits aren't going to be a huge problem in bike crashes either.

I don't know about bike snobs bike… that sounds unusual of not improbably, but the carbon part I have seen break without provocation was carbon spoke wheels.. which had a bad habit of simply shredding themselves

[OakLeaf]

You mean that tires contact the road in a much greater surface area than a bicycle tire?

Actually,...English, please?

Yep. A car has so much more grip (than bici or moto), and it doesn't steer by leaning, so having a certain amount of controlled frame flex isn't critical to handling in a car the way it is with a two-wheeled vehicle.