If you caught the footage from the ABA Grandnationals this past weekend, you no doubt caught AA Pro Denzel Stein‘s scary crash caused by his carbon forks snapping.
Truth be told, I’ve never really been a fan of carbon forks and things like this are not making me any more comfortable.
Die-hard carbon fork fans claim that carbon is stronger than chromoly but you never seem to see this level of catastrophic failure with a steel fork.
And the lightness argument? The gap between a good-quality chromoly race fork and a carbon fork is so small these days it hardly seems worth it from a safety and price perspective (carbon forks are generally the more expensive than other types of forks).
Word on the street is that some how an insert/sleeve to strengthen the steer tube was not installed. That’s all well and good but if this kind of thing gets overlooked on a top pro’s bike…how many average joes are riding similar setups (without the insert/sleeve)? Seriously, it’s not worth the risk.
Ironically up until this year, Denzel was often seen running chromoly S&M forks on his factory Redline whip.
Did he make the switch due to pressure from his sponsor? Or maybe to cash in on co-sponsorship money? I wonder if he’s rethinking his decision and whether it was worth it.
cruiser revolution 