New carbon

Just touching base on what has been keeping me busy recently.

After the Supermarine Spitfire crash, I took a deeper look at the materials that I use in my handlebars. A greater safety factor was needed at the cost of a little bit of flex.

Some of these bars have been in service for next to two years. The issue may be anomalous but being too close to the edge for one random tube to cause problems isn’t cool.

I tested out the new material with the Spitfire bars, then I plowed through and replaced all four of the other bars with older carbon. Ordering $750 worth of carbon fiber material really hurt me but in the interest of safety, it had to be done.

Originally, I was using a filament wound tube but have moved to roll wrapped pre-preg. It’s 30% stiffer which isn’t desirable but the strength improvement is significant.