• I'd add my agreement, but with the following qualifications:

    a) not all carbon is created equal.
    b) it's harder to tell if carbon is damaged than with metals.
    c) carbon doesn't bend, or give any other indication of impending snappage, it just snaps.

    It's the combination of b) and c) that makes me wary of it. I'd use it for my Sunday-best road or mountain bike, but I'd expect to replace components after crashing/dinging them, even if they looked fine.

    Aluminium should be replaced 'periodically', as Landslide says, but I still trust it more than crabon. I bent my aluminium crank in a crash at the London Open, and replaced it ASAP. If that had been carbon, I wouldn't have known it had undergone severe trauma, and would probably have snapped at some point between now and then.

    Part of me thinks the 'internal damage/repeated impact' problem with crabon is overstated, but a bigger part of me values my teeth/face/balls more than the negligible weight saving/stiffness gain. Especially on stems. Stems and cranks are stupid places to use crabon.

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