The Difference Between GOOD and BAD Carbon Fiber Bike Frames!

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○ Repairing a Cracked Carbon Frame – https://youtu.be/QyZNFTMbwzk
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A big thanks to Rob at carbon bike repair UK – https://carbonbikerepair.co.uk/

Are all carbon frames the same? Discover the essential differences between good and bad carbon fiber bike frames! We delve into the manufacturing process of carbon frames, explore whether carbon bike frames are truly worth the investment, and provide insights on what makes a carbon frame stand out. Whether you’re considering buying a carbon bike frame or just curious about how carbon frames are made, Rob helps shed some light. Join us as we unravel the mysteries behind carbon fiber frame manufacturing and help you decide if a carbon frame is the right choice for your cycling needs.

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I have cut up various carbon frames from high quality to low quality from cheap to expensive but what makes each frame unique what gives each frame its characteristics and why would you pay £4,000 for a frame when you can get a frame direct from China for around £800

To answer those questions I’ve taken all the carbon fiber frames I’ve ever cut down to carbon bike repair UK to speak to Rob whose company has repaired over 14,000 carbon frames so let’s jump into it and see what Rob has to say you can see on all these Brands we’ve got lots

Of colors and we’ve got different uh makes and different shapes but what you as the consumer don’t have an understanding of necessarily is what goes into making these bikes so the question is very valid why am I paying so much more for the Western bike than I

Am paying for the Chinese bike well I’ve got a treat for you today or we’ve got a treat for you today because we’ve grabbed all of Jordan’s hard work and his chopped up bicycles and we brought them into one place so we can have a look and see what uh what really is

Going underneath the hood of these bikes so we’ve got a a range of different bikes and I’ll say this on the outset there’s no brand preference here and there’s no necessarily we don’t have the luxury of having a like for–like bicycle here so we’re going to try and

Just give you an indication of what’s going on um in in a western design bike compared to a Chinese bike and maybe why we think those bikes are done that way so if if we look at some of the the expensive bikes like this Pella for

Example one of the things you note is um all the experimentation that’s taking place in the junction points both for weight and for um for its its characteristic its ride characteristic this bicycle at the time it was designed was arguably designed for sprinting not climbing although it can climb pretty

Well we have a bicycle that is very purpose designed they know why they’re designing it they know that they have to conform to the rules of the UCI particularly and they know most importantly that they have to deliver a service a warranty service that protects this bike both on its 2-year paint

Warranty if that’s what that brand has got it’s generally run about 2 years and a lifetime warranty on any particular failings of that frame set so that’s the first thing that you’re paying for is that background service that takes care of your bicycle it’s a little bit like having your own personal insurance

Policy on your bicycle whereas with a a Far East frame uh and that you buy online the only thing that keeps them honest is the amount of reviews that that bicycle gets in terms of whether that bicycle is a b bike you should think about buying or not for the money

So there’s a few interesting things based on those ideas that we’ve come come up with while we were talking off camera about why certain things are the way they are between these two bikes so let’s go through them a little bit on the Chinese bike and we’ picked this bike here the tri

Fox one of the things we note on the tri fox say compared to where is this yeah and and bearing in mind these are very different bikes but you get the indication of the amount of effort that’s gone into say this um Canyon you can see how incredibly thin these walls

Are now it’s not to say that the Chinese are not capable of of doing this because these bikes were made there so it’s not that they don’t have the technology to do that but you can see the wall thickness in the design of this bicycle in insisted that the wall thickness was

Going to be like this by this German company and that the wall thickness of the down tube was going to be almost 2 mm in thickness so there’s a lot of layup design work which is the key to the bu of how and where they want the material

To be and what they want that bike to do when you ride it in such a way so if we take this Chinese bike I think it’s Chinese it’s a Chinese J Tri okay and we’re not picking on this company we’re just saying this is a typical example if

You see this you see the wall thicknesses are almost the same across all the sides which tells me that this bike company is either there’s two things it either doesn’t know what it’s doing with carbon in other words it’s taken a mole design that it likes and

It’s gone and apply put carbon in it but it doesn’t they don’t necessarily know what the engineering requirements are or or the dialing in of that bike for its particular characteristic the other more Sinister idea that that I certainly think about is the fact that if this bike was made very fragile like

It like the canyon is made for its purpose the warranty claims on this bike would be huge because there have lots of issues with this bike bike is very fragile and it’s very well cared for Canyon customers get a a very good after care service on their bikes very

Aggressive return policy in terms of making sure the clients gets the best out of their bikes whereas this bike once it’s been shipped out uh there’s a there’s a huge distance between the manufacturer the dealer and the client so the last thing they want is you to be

Riding a bicycle the cannot handle uh over clamping or a bike clamp issue or chain suck issue you’re going to want a bicycle that can survive that so the the big question about all this tuning is what do we really benefit from a bike that is well tuned and designed

Internally or doesn’t it matter now Jordan you rode a bike the other day where I watched your video and you said you couldn’t believe how comfortable that that bike was and this was a CH what brand was it uh YOLO R11 the frame was yeah I would say they’re quite big

Though cuz they’ve got distributors in Europe and right in the country so they’re sort of a mid-range you like and the weight of that bike uh the whole bike was eight it was eight something okay I I I could be incorrect here and and I stand I stand corrected but it’s

Generally the the policy of a of a company that’s gone to the expense of producing a bicycle with molds Etc and all the carbon pre-order they’ve got to make in order to get the prices down for the carbon remember these are it’s a supply chain the bike you get has to go

Through various processes of truckloads of the stuff coming at a certain price and the glue and the electricity bills and the factory rentals and all the things that you and I don’t necessarily want to know about have an impact on the bicycle itself now I would I propose

That that bike if it was going to be shipped out to Europe they would they certainly wouldn’t want that bicycle to be fragile I don’t know if too many really high-end Chinese climbing bikes for example that are you know within five or 6 kilg like I’ve seen say with

The Athos or the um amond the Tre amond I just I just wonder whether it’s either they don’t really know how to technologically build that bike which I do find strange or there’s some other reason and I’ve got a feeling it’s all about warranty a hybrid situation was

Probably the best so you’d have a Chinese frame a good quality Chinese frame with components West and components would make up a really really good bike but there’s a distinct difference between if you want a high performance bike you want to own a really really good brand there is you

Can see in the detail if I show you that particularly say on the venge the amount of work that goes on inside this bike um for example this is all what we call um tuning around the the tube or the different types of materials that have that applied and

These are all probably coming back from feedback from Riders um in a certain batch they would then add these bits in which are you know not necessarily going to be there forever until they trial them for a while so yes although we are the bug fixes these bikes are at a certain point

Where they are still very very rable they would just make some changes to them so lots of different types of carbon in specific kind of places applying different Technologies to different things trying to make them lighter trying to make them stiffer and that is where the money goes the money

Goes to the designers who are part of the evolution of the bicycle I think it’s very easy to copy a bicycle once somebody else has gone to the effort of understanding how to manipulate that carbon where you could still benefit and see the difference is in the quality of

The way the carbon is woven how you can uh uh manufacture those components together into making a very thin stiff light bike and a lot of that stuff a lot of that DNA in the bicycle is kept very much Under Wraps the manufacturer themselves might not necessarily know

How or why that’s done that way and that can be a protection against some of these rather interesting characteristics we’re having bicycles now where they are super super light very stiff and and and becoming more robust glass is on glasses on means business so this this is a Chinese

Gravel bike I mean first off I have to commend The Bravery and the skills in the uh graphic side of the of the bike it’s a it’s a crystalline type material in the paint it’s a it’s a it’s a chemical reaction that makes the these crystalline effects and you see them a

Lot on high-end kagos very good quality let’s say no no no worse than any other because a lot of these bikes are manufactured in the Far East anyway the supply of these materials for both our um Chinese bikes locally and the international bikes the foreign bikes

All use much the same stuff like for example these foils here these foils are very very difficult to get this thinness of foil uh here in in Europe certainly and so you can see that they’ve taken advantage of all the the the development that our Western bikes have produced the

Pressures on them to come up with solutions that they feel is acceptable for their bikes at that price point and applying them to their Chinese bikes so you get a lot more bang for your buck on this bike utilizing the those things um on a Chinese bike but when you flip it

Around we have a look um we see a very standard layup system here you’ve got a mixture of uniweave carbon which is carbon that is laid up in One Direction and then you’ve got stiffening carbon which is what looks to me like a a three k that’s 3,000 hairs per toe uh plain

Weave which means 90° angles 90° angle carbon is used for very stiffer shapes whereas the Twill I don’t if you’ve seen them on Bonnets of cars and things where that’s kind of a step 45° angles which is twill we don’t see any sign of twill here which means that the chaps who are

M making this bike know that plain weave carbon is better for structural rigidity than is 12 so that’s encouraging to see I’m not seeing much evidence in wall thickness changes here but then I’m not quite sure what the pressures are on a bike like this it’s a gravel bike but I

Shouldn’t think a whole lot more than a road bike we are seeing the traditional thickening areas around the head tube which is standard anyway um and then we’re seeing some additional thicknessing here we do see on Western bikes we see um we don’t necessarily always see this um plane weave here I’m

Trying to look for an example around as I’m speaking if you take the giant you see there’s there’s none on this side very little but this can be and I and I’m only taking a hazarding a guess because I don’t work for giant is that they use high modulus carbon car High

Modulus carbon is a is a stiffer carbon much stronger carbon but more brittle so you would use high modulous carbon in more expensive bicycles cuz it takes a lot more energy to make a high modulous carbon and it allows you to put less carbon in those areas so you can reduce

Weight cheaper bikes you’d often see them with a lot more of this plane weave in them because it’s just all low modulous material just thickening up these areas so that’s the kind of that type of development that we see coming from these Brands um where they’re willing to throw good carbon at the

Problem to make these bikes what they are one development we’ve seen in carbon bikes over the last 2 to 3 years is this uh drive towards uh monoco frames now you might say yeah but Rob they’ve been making monoco frames for years years they haven’t uh monoco is a Loosely

Termed phrase for one piece and it hasn’t been the case for many many years and here’s an example and this is not just to um pick on on the specialized brand because they were all doing this you can see what is a monoco frame is actually a modular bike it would be like

Uh comparing a kaga lugged bike that’s glued in on the on the head tube and and the C tube except that they’ve hidden the lugs away okay that’s the difference and here here is an example of what they what was an overlap so you can see that little Ridge

There is where this is inserted into that and then bonded with plain glue so there is no carbon bond between these two components if I had to heat this up that epoxy would soften and I could pull those components apart and back then part of the warranty claim was if the

Midun failed it was normally because of the bond now this is quite interesting because we just discovered this that even on this Chinese bike which is arguably newer we’ve got less or more monoco Happening Here than we have um on this um specialized venge you can see there’s no joint lines

Here so basically what that means is you can see there’s a a wall there where a bladder would enter into the tube enter into the tube and come all the way around and then they would extract that from as many places as possible to turn this into what would be a true

Monoco that is still uh the exception to the rule at the moment because I think there’s a lot of bikes that are still uh manufactured that way where they still Bond them together and they’ve been all right up until now but there’s a drive to get away from uh the bonding aspects

Because a carbon bicycle that’s bonded with glue together is kind of defeats the object of the exercise again I want to reiterate that I’m not endorsed we’re not endorsed by Canyon at all here but we fix a lot of their bikes and uh it’s interesting to note a few things now if

We talking about fit for purpose this is a really good case in point which is why I’ve particularly picked this up also we don’t have any other frames that quite match what I want to say so I’m using this bike but this is a climbing bike it’s loosely mod on the

R5 the SLL R5 which in my opinion was just a phenomenal bike at its time way ahead of its time very thin seat stays squirel like uh down tubes Etc that made a very efficient climbing bike and they still that shape is still being used today as a traditional climbing bike

Because it’s very simple and efficient this bike what’s interesting about the canyon bike is that they’re producing a price point in the canyon bike which is phenomenal it’s very very difficult to beat they’ve also very aggressively um sell their bikes well aggressively sell their bikes but they don’t have uh

Outlets they have test Outlets where you can fit the bike but then generally you only buy these bikes online so that cuts a lot of costs and they put that money into the development of the bikes in particular the wall thickness is the thinness of the bike um the designers of

Canyon are very forward thinking in terms of producing a very high performance bicycle uh for the low price possible they have run the risk of producing a bike that is known to be very fragile it’s not a robust bike like some of the other bikes we have but

Then it should be said that it could be better communicated instead they’ve got a very robust uh returns policy or replacement policy which kind of meet meets that because I assume it doesn’t cost them as much to make the bike uh as as maybe the others but this is what what is a

Typical case of fit forp purpose bike very simply laid up very carefully designed there’s very little uh additional thinking going on in this bike as you can see the bottom bracket here is super super simple and um very cleverly designed very impressed with the canyon although as a fragile bike

Very good for our business um particularly on the seats days uh as as most people who’ve owned a canyon know at some point they’ve got some problems with chains sock but um yeah a very very um transparent fit forp purpose bicycle that we get typically out of the

Knowledge that we have here in the west if you enjoyed this video then you will enjoy this video as well where I ask Rob 12 of the most common questions about carbon fiber very insightful Knowledge from Rob there will be links to Rob’s company carbon bike repair UK in the description down below