Ok so that is a valid and excellent point. My background is aerospace and i have worked with composite materials for many years both professionally (Swift, Hughes) and in hobby. Yes done correctly CF is awesome and if you ever get a chance to work with it, it will give you a new appreciation for the capabilities and options you have within the engineering scope of your mission. The difference for me is strictly function. I have to gain something by material selection that offsets any potential disadvantage. In the case of aerospace applications, i can easily pull up the data on the thousands of hours of stress analysis and accelerated aging that was carried out for acceptance spec. Take for instance the CF tail on my 1299. It hauls my 200lb ... around without issue so in a sense, it is a stressed member. The issue is that unlike a swing arm or a triple clamp or a frame, you do not have much in the way of engineering constraints and motion dynamics that you have in those parts. Again made correctly, there is no reason to be afraid of these things. I just do not have the data on these parts that I do for a certified aircraft part. I just don't gain anything from the CF frame or the CF swing arm on this bike.
The weight difference between the CF frame and the SL mag frame is not significant. You can barely see the frame and if your in it for the look, just wrap it. Again with the swing arm, i have saved more "sprung" weight in parts than i would get with the CF arm and if the bike tips into a curb, a swing arm is $450.00 away. Not $6000.00 away. A metal swing arm is easy to weld or repair of modify without a lot of thought from a structural integrity perspective. You crack a CF component to the point of fiber/resin delam and that part needs to be electronically analyzed and meticulously repaired. Just my opinion.
The weight difference between the CF frame and the SL mag frame is not significant. You can barely see the frame and if your in it for the look, just wrap it. Again with the swing arm, i have saved more "sprung" weight in parts than i would get with the CF arm and if the bike tips into a curb, a swing arm is $450.00 away. Not $6000.00 away. A metal swing arm is easy to weld or repair of modify without a lot of thought from a structural integrity perspective. You crack a CF component to the point of fiber/resin delam and that part needs to be electronically analyzed and meticulously repaired. Just my opinion.
