245. 3 years on mine, nicked, dinged, head-on with trees, Diablo, Plattekill, no go-arounds, not even slightly worried.
You should replace aluminum bars every 3 seasons or so depending on use.
not necessarily; depends on the construction & part in question. with alternating cloth layups, a (well built) carbon part might crack due to some ridiculous loading & still maintain adequate integrity (in other layers) to keep the whole intact, and not result in a catastrophic failure mode. i've seen carbon stuff crack that would still require serious work with an axe to come apart fully. granted, i don't think building something with as small a cross sectional area as a bar with that kind of toughness is easy.
I have never seen a crack in a seatpost or handlebar. Frames, I have seen cracks before, but not the other two, any time I have seen a failure, they are broken. Like i said before htough, its not usually from a crash, its from improper installation or user error.
yeah, i was referring to frames as well, so i suppose i can't really contest your original statement in the context of referring to 'parts'.
That made my day.
Carbon couldn't normaly break from bouncing up and down on a seatpost. It's not a valid point as if that was the case my bars would brake from flexing a thousend of times before.
