Carbon Bicycle Frame Repair

Most carbon is PAN carbon which has a high tensile strength, but it takes carbon that has undergone long exposure to heat to get both the strength and stiffness that is required for bike frames and it’s the cost of this heating process can hike the price of a frame to the consumer. One of Rob’s main gripes with the bike industry is that, having bought your top of the range frame, there is a distinct lack of customer support for those expensive frames. Sure you can easily buy one, but should you suffer a crash or damage and there is a distinct lack of knowledge at all levels to help a distraught consumer. Though there are exceptions, on the whole bike companies just do not do repairs nor do they support repairers, and prefer to either exchange the frame for a new one, provide a new for old crash replacement scheme, or simply leave you to buy new.

One of Dean Downing’s frames in for a repair around the bottle cage caused by simply overtightening the bolts.

Rob maintains that all carbon frames are repairable without any loss of performance of the bike and the amazing thing is that with carbon, the repair is actully stronger than the original tube. Plus when you repair a carbon frame, its characteristics are still the same as before; unlike steel or aluminium there is no change in the material overtime, nor after repair.

There are however, certain areas that Rob doesn’t like to repair, though he will if you push him; dropouts and seatposts in particular.

When I met him it was very interesting to hear that Rob is very keen on repairing carbon wheels, believing that it’s easy to get them back into top shape. With that in mind he believes carbon wheels are a sound investment – so never just throw them out! This will be music to the ears of many cyclocross riders, especially those still using canti-rim brakes.

Carbon wheels can be fixed

So how do I know if my frame damaged?

Many of us might worry that we have damaged to our carbon beauty, and the old school method of scratching the surface of the paint off with a knife to see what lies below will no longer cut it (forgive the pun). So how do you know if you really do have a crack? Apart from visual cues, such as cracks or rubbing marks, the only way to be sure is to flex the area under a microscope and get a real look at what is going on. This is Rob’s main method, and he also employs an internal camera which can get deep inside a tube.

Trek Madone repair to rear stay

We thought we’d put Surrey Carbon Repair to the test as one of our team riders had a top of the range frame, which they thought was possibly damaged after they noticed a crack in the paint. As you might expect, they initially took it to a local bike shop but the shop wasn’t sure if it was damaged, though they did advise not to ride it as a precaution. So we took it to see Rob and his more thorough inspection actually – or perhaps, alarmingly – revealed two cracks. We’ll see how Rob gets on with our ‘test’ frame.

Surrey carbon repair workshop

Work starts on our ‘test’ frame

How much will a repair cost me?

Rob charges £90 for an initial inspection and then £150 to fix a basic crack which seems very reasonable. The quality of these repairs is greatly enhanced by the fact that the epoxy Rob uses is of much better quality than the bulk bought stuff that the manufacturers use.

As paint is not only so important to the integrity but also the look of a modern frame, Rob now has a new workshop with a spray booth, decal production service and a curing room, so that he can provide a full service repair. This means that the repairs leaving his premises are ‘invisible’.

Cannondale Synapse repair after a head on collision

So where does the future hold for Rob?

Interestingly he is in the process of moving into aluminium repairs using a cold fusion process he has developed, and it so happens that we have another ali frame that fits the bill there…

Of course you might ask what with all this knowledge, why not just go out and produce your own frames? Well indeed Rob is at the prototype stage with an exciting aeroblade carbon TT frame project…

Having met Rob, I am much more confident about the longevity of carbon as the premier bicycle frame material and very confident about riding and racing a repaired carbon frame. We’ll report back with details of what happened to our ‘test’ frame soon.

Rob’s blog has loads of examples of his work showing bikes from all manufacturers, as no brand is immune from crash damage. See Surrey Carbon Repair Shop for more information.