Carbon Frame Benefits - Longer and More Comfortable Road Bikes

Carbon Frame Benefits - Longer and More Comfortable Road Bikes

Carbon fiber is considered to be the best material for bike frames because of its light weight, stiffness, high tensile strength and excellent corrosion and abrasion resistance. Carbon frames are also usually a little lighter than steel - up to five pounds for full suspension mountain bikes and up to ten pounds for full suspension road bikes. Because of these characteristics, carbon frames have become almost ubiquitous among today's top-end manufacturers. The downside, though, is that carbon fiber is also expensive. So, what is the alternative?

One option is to pay close attention to the lugs of a carbon frame. These are the ones that directly touch the saddle, which means that they will be more prone to scratches and dents if not treated well. But you don't just have to worry about the lugs; the seat post should also be maintained in good condition. A good carbon frame, however, will usually have tightly sealed and polished lugs that are covered in grease-resistant silicon.

You may have noticed by now that the top tube on carbon frames is laid up differently from regular bicycles. It's laying on top of a tube, which makes it have longer top tube length. The advantage of a long top tube is that it can conserve space. That means more room under your seat and a fatter saddle. But the down side is that it can make the bike feel heavier, which may not be a big deal for some, but for others it will present a significant problem.

To remedy the problem of having a long top tube, most carbon frame manufacturers have made significant modifications to their bike frames, so that they can provide better handling and more comfortable riding. In addition to the layup mentioned above, they have made the cutout for the seat stay longer, thereby creating a much more comfortable "sit up" position. They've also usually used a longer and wider fork to get a stiffer feeling as well. All these modifications have paid off very well for most carbon frame producers, and now there are lots of bikes out on the market that take advantage of them.

Carbon fiber frames, though, take this same idea one step further. In order to provide better handling and greater comfort, they are built with additional structural support. The extra structural support helps reduce the overall weight of the frame and lets carbon fibre frames handle the extra energy transfer through the body of the bike when you take a tight corner or kick the tail out, for instance. This increased impact resistance is another of the reasons why carbon fibre frames have become so popular.

Another advantage of carbon fiber frames is the higher fatigue life they have compared to aluminum frames. This means that you can expect a much longer kicking lifespan. If you're an aggressive rider, for example, you don't want to buy an aluminum frame that's going to break before it gets a chance to kick. When you try and do that with an aluminum frame, the stress will spread across the frame and it will get damaged. With carbon frames, the force of the kick is spread across the frame - and this means that the frame will last much longer before getting damaged and will still be working fine when you finally take it out for a spin.

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