Monday, March 10, 2014

Carbon BMX: Next big Thing or Waste of Time?

   You may remember my post about Redline's carbon Olympic BMX frame, the Project 79. While several companies have shown prototypes, here are a couple companies that are already offering a carbon BMX frame:




   Obviously, the right side of a carbon bike it the photogenic side. BMX racers will be interested in carbon for a lot of reasons, not least of all that it is sexy! But why carbon? Well let me show you with a video:

5:31 running time

TL;DR - Nm to failure:
Steel: 1376Nm
carbon: 4728Nm

   According to this video for you: Steel is inferior to carbon. Why? Because you can build the carbon to resist specific forces. The builders of that shaft engineered it to resist twisting. With steel, you are limited by the material to what you can do. Back to BMX:

   In BMX racing there are a ton of forces at play. Strong forces. Starts, corners, and jumping all put incredible stress on the drivetrain and frame.

BMX start

   This is where carbon is interesting. You can build the frame to resist the forces at play by how the carbon is constructed. Stronger chain stays and bottom bracket will resist twisting during sprints and a beefier head tube will keep you going straight in the corners.

   Carbon will bring some good competition to BMX racing. It will be exciting to see what the pros are going to do with these new awesome frames.

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