A question we field all of the time is “How strong will the repair be?” Before the last couple weeks all we had was our in-house test standards that they would be strong and the fact that we have never had another frame that we repaired come back into our shop. Most of the time this is enough reassurance, but sometimes we get a “ok, but?”
The most memorable one of these times led to Shawn having his thigh palmed by a customer questioning our ability to put out high watt numbers.
With our leg strength being questionable we brought in some big guns. Well actually he came to us, but I can’t think of a single rider that can mash on a frame harder.
A couple months ago we repaired a frame for Kirk Whiteman, a highly decorated track racer and now a coach for many of the top track racers in the country. We repaired a set of Corima wheels and his Corima track bike. It was on this track bike that he won USA Cycling 2011 Masters Track Nationals | Sprint | | Master | 45-49. On a good day Kirk said he can put out 2100 watts (not a typo), it looks like he has been having a lot of good days lately. You can check out more of Kirk’s stats here http://www.thekinglink.com/biokirkwhiteman.htm
When we do carbon fiber repair, we use a similar process that they use when the bike is originally made. You take pre-existing carbon shapes, prep them and bond new carbon to it to make one solid new piece (in a nut shell). In most cases we will overbuild the repair area, so our repair section is stronger than how we got it.