Ride it or Bin it?

I was lucky enough to catch a big nail in the rear wheel.

It went into the tyre and straight through the rim, almost poking out the other side. And as a result, the nail head scraped under the brake bridge. You can see where it’s gouged the caliper.

So I’m thinking this may be a liability now.

However, that was a month ago and I just discovered it last week. It’s been 1300km since the damage was done.

There’s no holes in the carbon and no obvious broken bits. But there’s plenty of gel coat missing, probably down to the carbon.

I can’t bend it or hear any cracks and it rides the same so I’m thinking just ride it and keep an eye on it. But is it gonna collapse eventually and give me an arsectomy?

Take it to a carbon repairer and get them to fix it. Depends where you are, but there’s usually one or two per city who specialise in these repairs.

There’s already a much bigger hole in the bridge, where your brake bolts through. A missing or broken SS bridge isn’t going to crash you out, and consider how thin and flexible the SS can be on a frame and still ride fine. It’s the CS that usually fail.

Put some clear nail polish over it, give it a look over when you clean the bike, don’t sweat it too much.

That seems like quiet the blanket statement you’ve got there.

I’d sand back to the carbon around the area. It’ll make it easy to spot any cracks, although it doesn’t look like anything but clear coat damage.

In what way?

You could literally say that to anyone with pretty much any kind of damage on any carbon fibre bike.