Quote:
Originally Posted by Batmobile
I have heard a lot of good things about 'Paint My Bike'. I have a friend who fell off his Colnago C60 on the smart trainer (how?? - dont ask), and he had the bike stripped down and send off to Paint My Bike and unless you knew it was broken - you could not pick it . One of the reason's why i would be hesitate to purchase a carbon bike secondhand (for that matter any bike) unless i knew the previous owner. My bike retailer in Melb - tells me that they , along with Paul Fitzgerald based in Geelong are flat out making repairs to 'carbon' bikes .
Another friend , looking to purchase a high end carbon bike 'cheap' won't inpsect the bike unless he is allowed to inspect the frame with a 'scope' through each tube .
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Agreed, but alloy is prone to stress fractures which does not show until it fails in a big way and steel rusts from the inside out which is often undetected until the tube fails, normally at the bottom bracket end of the chain stays. All materials have issues, I honestly doubt carbon is any worse than any other.
My Merckx had 2 issues. One was the alloy bottom bracket shell that is bonded in the bottom bracket twisted when torquing down the Italian thread bottom bracket. It now has a new shell bonded in there and it has been converted to an English thread. The second was a massive gouge taken out of the chain stay from where the chain jumped off the inner ring and jammed between the chain ring and the chain stay. The damage was nearly through all layers of carbon and definitely weakened the stay. That has been repaired and even though it is clear lacquer over the carbon weave you can barely see the repair unless you know it is there.
Interestingly talking to the guys at Paint my Bike they said that sort of damage is easier to repair on carbon than alloy. On carbon the repair can end up stronger than original but on alloy it often ends up weaker because heating the tube during welding causes potential weak spots from the heat of the weld.