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A few remarks on where I am coming from.
I have had two experiences that have shaped my views on the mismatch between what the bike industry sells and what the broader market for recreational sports bikes needs.
One is being an assisant ride leader for the Cascade Training Series—a series of rides to progressively build up the fitness of riders who want to complete Cascade’s annual Seattle To Portland (STP) ride. The ride is in late June, the training series starts in March, when it’s still raining in the Pacific Northwest. Many of the riders are new to sport riding (not racing) and show up with brand new bicycles. This was in the rim brake era of the early 2000s and the bikes were typically Shimano 105 level “road” bikes, which I think translated to “bikes that look like professional road race bikes but are too heavy so no one knows what they are good for”. Mechanically they were fine, and Merckx could have repeated his Tour de France wins on them, but for sport road riding (which is more similar to Audax or randonneuring then road racing) the bikes had several deficiencies: a) no fenders and no provision for fenders, b) skinny tires, c) frequently poor fit. Add-on fenders were tacked on after the first ride—Cascade rides not so politely tell you to ride at the back if you have no fenders and the roads are wet. The skinny tires could not be helped—this was an era when many frames had clearance for 25mm tires at most. But c) was the worst problem, particularly for shorter riders that were just never going to be comfortable on 700C. The introduction of monocoque carbon fiber frames has made the situation worse, because there is no affordable recourse to custom frames. (There are, of course, custom carbon fiber frames, but the ones I know of are quite pricy, and are basically bonded carbon fiber tubes.)
These riders are better served by the few dealers in our area that will a) determine what features they need in a bike for the type of riding they are going to do, b) give them a fitting, so the target dimensions are known and then c) sell them a stock frame customized with choice of saddle, bars and saddle, and/or d) build or have built for them a custom steel frame. In my area of Seattle there are a few shops that do this: R&E does the whole process, making the custom steel frames in house, Montlake Cycles used to work through Waterford, says they will now go through Co-motion, Cascade Bicycle Studio (at the high end) goes through Seven Cycles and Stinner, Davidson will go in house for titanium and out of house for steel. There are probably others, but those are the ones immediately around. At any rate, the resulting bike will not be competitive for road racing, but it will fit the rider and fit their use case. And it won’t be made out of CFL.
So to turn it around: what use cases demand CFL? I would guess serious road racing at the advanced amateur level and above. I don’t know about cross racing—is the weight advantage significant? Possibly tri-athlon participation at a high enough level.
I was teaching a bicycle commuting class once, and a participant who was probably 40 lbs overweight asked me if I thought he could make his commute easier by buying a carbon fiber bike. I told him he should figure out what the change in total weight of him + bike + luggage would be. Say it was 5%. Then, at best, he would save 5% of the time required to go up a long hill. For me in summer fit trim, self + bike + luggage is about 200lbs. So saving 4lbs by going from a steel frame to a light CFL frame would save 2%. It would win a race, but it wouldn’t let me sleep in.
The second experience was teaching home maintenance classes for Cascade. The instructors hated it when a student showed up with any bike that didn’t have a round seat post that could be clamped in the Park repair stands that had been provided for us. (This would usually be a CFL bike with an aero seatpost, sold to some ordinary mortal to ride in a triathlon.) Also we did not have an appropriate set of torque wrenches, nor the confidence that a beginner home mechanic wouldn’t drop a wrench on their nice new CFL frame. I concluded that for riders who want to learn to do their own maintenance CFL frame bikes are not the appropriate introductory bike.
Summary of my position: CFL provides real gains in light weight and ride, but these gains come at a cost in resilience, service life and maintainability. CFL must be treated with care. CFL bikes are probably best reserved for serious racers and dedicated enthusiasts who can deal with the care and maintenance issues. Everyone else would be better served with a metal frame.
Abstract debates about frame materials miss the issues of matching material to use case.
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