Carbon Mountain bike Frame Repair Solutions

Carbon has struck at the heart of XC racing frames leaving aluminium for dead in the race for the first corner.  Aluminium is reserved for, "oooh, that's retro" comments on the startline, doing nobody's confidence any favours when powering up the first climb wondering if matey-boy with the fast mouth actually has an advantage with his sub 1kg carbon frame.  (Yes, but they you all know that..)

It's all well and good that we're told carbon is faster, infinitely more bling (because nobody knows how it works) and much lighter that it's contemporary rivals.  The downside to carbon is fatigue life and the general resistance to shock/impact in a direction it was not expecting.  Hence why most carbon appendages are tagged with the, "bolts tightened to 5nm" moniker and sales of micro adjustable torque wrenches have rocketed.

My newly purchased 2011 frame had the misfortune to suffer a failure on the non-driveside chainstay/seatstay interface, underneath the brake calliper.  As the picture shows the carbon was delaminating and to the touch it was all, "squishy", Eeeeurgh.  Confirmation was sought with the manufacturer that this wasn't covered by their warranty, which in the short term caused me to ask what was covered, but this wasn't going to get my frame fixed.

Carbon repairing was a slightly scary concept for me.  Even though from family experience with racing cars I knew of carbon chassis being repaired all the time and "re-skinned" with cars reappearing to be as competitive as before.  I set about garnering reviews and knowledge of who in the country could turn my now worthless frame into a re-usable bike.  Carbon Cycle Repairs  www.carboncyclerepairs.co.uk in Derbyshire ticked all the right boxes and owner Darren was sympathetic and took time to talk me through his thoughts on the break.  Professional opinion: A bit soft but would be no problem to fix.  Darren's main workload comes from mainly road carbon dropouts, fabricating and replacing bent originals, but he can turn his hand to any carbon problem.  

Less than a month after sending to Darren I was presented with my (expensive) frame ready to ride.  Close inspection by fellow riders could spot no repair and the black paint matched perfectly.  A 6th place at Isle of Man End2End and 1st place at the Forest of Dean Enduro have since confirmed its durability.  You won't find any shortage of people to tell you I'm hard on kit, any weakness would have been exposed by now I can assure you.

The best part was that the whole process cost £120 including carriage delivery back to my place of work.  When the frame in question retails at £1,300 and was used for little over 2 months I am immensely pleased to be able to recoup some of my investment.

What are you waiting for? Don't dither. Winter time is the perfect to get that old carbon frame repaired, get it singlespeeded and enjoy it once again.  Carbon repair is here, it's proved and inexpensive, particularly when you take into account the original cost of the frame. 

Downsides? You will void your warranty and by repairing an area of weakness you may be creating additional pressure on areas around the original crack which were designed with an additional layer of carbon in mind.  In my opinion this is a small price to pay to recover the use of an expensive item of kit.  If you don't do it, you won't' be able to ever use it again.  I would be somewhat cautious if the repair were in a particularly high stress area, like headtube but I would always take the repairers opinion on such an occasion.

Top of the podium with bells on.

Niall Frost

Xcracer.com

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