Joe, I have a Calfee and rode it exclusively for about 20 years with no problems. It came with a kestrel carbon fork which has a steel steerer tube. Not light, but really strong. As you know, I'm not a lightweight, so I've had no problems with the Calfee over those years. Just recently picked up a used Trek Madone 700 and the carbon is super thin compared to the Calfee. Don't know if this is going to last 20 years, but so far, it rides great, especially with the Sram etap ;)
But really the leaders in carbon today can be found in some American builders like Calfee, Crumpton, Parlee, Appleman, and a few others. But those are expensive as a frame starts at around $3000 and can easily go over $5000. For mass production, Taiwan is the leader and Giant is arguably the best. They basically build frames for just about everyone you can think of. One guy in our group just bought a fancy Canyon bike with ultegra di2 and disc brakes. Very nice, but that frame is build by Giant. It is solid, yet light (16+lb range). The complete bike is like $4000. Around the SF Bay Area, if you look at all the big group rides, I would say 90-95%+ are on carbon. Of course, nobody has saddle bags, racks, fenders or anything like that and the most mileage is probably 80 or less on each ride. Then you see the Randonneur guys and they all seem to be on steel with racks and bags. Those guys do lots of miles and some are really fast But carbon isn't for everyone. For those who are paranoid, I say stay far away from it! My latest bike will be a used Della Santa I just picked up. It is made of Dedacciai (sp?) zero steel tubing and feels really light. With some lightweight Campy parts (yes carbon), it should build up to a nice 18+ lb. bike. I'm expecting a fun ride! Of course, YMMV! Good Luck! On Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 11:51:56 PM UTC-7, Joe Bernard wrote: > > Sure, but the steel trust has been built up over a century. As it stands > now I would probably trust a Calfee frame because they've been doing it for > a couple decades and seem to be pretty good at it (and charge accordingly). > But that frame is still going to need a metal fork for me. I know what > carbon looks like when it shatters on a Formula One car and I ain't going > there. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
