Carbon Vs Aluminum Mountain Bike

The fatigue life of the aluminum handlebar was reduced due to surface damage but the carbon bar was not affected.
Carbon vs aluminum mountain bike. Two of the most common frame materials are aluminum and carbon fiber. Just as one impact of this nature could break an aluminum frame and not a carbon frame repeated stresses in this manner would cause an aluminum frame to break sooner as well. When considering bikes at an equal price point an aluminum bike will generally have a nicer component spec than a carbon bike. We fatigue tested aluminum and carbon bars with very similar surface damage.
Ride quality is more noticeable on road frames than mountain frames with vibrations being damped by carbon more so than. One of the key considerations when purchasing a new bike is frame material. The primary difference between carbon and aluminum comes down to weight and ride quality. On a carbon bike the catastrophic failure point is much higher than an aluminum bike due to the flex qualities of the carbon material.
The components factor greatly into how well a bike performs. There are two main frame materials you will encounter when deciding to buy a mountain bike carbon and aluminium. That said we still recommend replacing any carbon or aluminum product that has been damaged. Carbon fiber doesn t exhibit this type of crack propagation.
Carbon frames are usually a bit lighter than aluminum up to a pound for mountain frames and up to a half pound on road frames. Most of the bikes ridden at world cup enduro world series level will be carbon although it isn t ubiquitous but it would be simplistic and maybe even wrong to say that carbon is objectively better.