Carbon Fiber Fork, Get your $$$$$ ready

The problem there wasn't the material it was the engineering carbon fiber is great in tension, in compression it is the epoxy carrying the load.

 

I doubt it is fully over Aluminum (I haven't seen pics) but highly likely there are aluminum parts bonded for the seals and the threaded inserts for the caps.

 

He may have figured that out...eventually...it was 30yrs ago..CF wasn't really a common sight.

 

Thought Ducati used them in the 990 class and the Aprilis RS3 had them too. Or were they just running black aluminium tubes??

 

What's Los Angeles International Airport have to do with any of this?

 

About as much as lacrosse.

 

I bet it's more to do with flex or changing vibe frequency than weight reduction.

 

as long as its a reduction in unsprung mass - it's quite substantial!

 

Yep. For the maybe 2 people in the world that could feel the difference...

 

Dude, you ever ride a CF framed bicycle? Even a first time rider can feel the difference between it and a steel frame or an aluminum framed bike.

 

There's plastic, and then there is plastic...

How about an entire plastic engine: http://www.enginelabs.com/news/plastic-race-engine-returns-as-polimotor-2-project-underway/

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_automotive_engine

 

Ya, I have a long time ago. The carbon bikes were crazy stiff. But I stick to my statement that most would not be able to tell the difference between a stiff as fuck Ohlins aluminum motogp fork and a stiff as fuck carbon fork. And as far as the "whole pound lighter" goes, I took a bigger shit than that this AM. I just find it funny when people get all moist and would drop their entire years race budget on to something that will not make even a little bit of difference to their laptimes.

 

Neither was a 20-something year old Britt.

 

Looks like a full body aluminum fork to me with a carbon cover over it.

 

Telling the difference and benefiting from the difference are separate results.

But to your point, I have to believe the felt difference on a 350 lbs bike plus it's 180 lbs rider is substantially less than on a 20 lbs bike with the same 180 lbs rider.

On the bicycle, you are causing all the flexing. On a motorcycle, its own mass accounts for a far greater portion of the forces exerted.

Same effect, but different FELT effect.

 

In compression it isn't just the epoxy taking the load, true most composites have worse compression properties than tension, but it is better than just epoxy. If they are doing a hybrid carbon/boron laminate, the compression strength with will be lot higher than a pure carbon laminate.

And to Dave's comment of a carbon shaft breaking after a couple hits, that depends on how well it was designed. Composites have excellent fatigue properties as long as the hits are inside the strain limit of the material. Also kevlar can be added not just for abrasion resistance, but also because kevlar has a higher strain to failure (stretches more before breaking).

For reference, I am a structures design engineer for composite aircraft.

 

http://forums.insidelacrosse.com/

 

I love this place, I post a picture of the damn forks and you idiots want to argue about lacrosse shafts.

 

Re: LAX discussion
I remember getting poked checked by a PL66 with a wood shaft in high school, left a nice bruise on my arm where the elbow pad stopped and the shoulder pad started
Probably still have my old Superlite II around

 

If any of you idtio's had been watching live early this morning, the Ohlins guy went into great detail (~5 minutes worth) about its construction and benefits. I'm not going to try to summarize, but one thing that did stick in mind was allowing the teams to move mass to where it's more helpful. As in away from the fork uppers.

When you're spending cubic €€€ shaving grams off things, a pound is a serious chunk.

-jim