Carbon/mechanical anxiety

[lihp]

tl;dr
Question at the end, back story first

I am a very experienced mechanic, with backgrounds of building race vehicles, and repairing, building and maintaining large automated machinery.

Though I have broken things here and there like everybody, I have thankfully never done anything that has been dangerous.

However, back in January, I had a skating accident in which I had an open fracture of both radius and ulna. These have been plated, my arm, and hand is back to pretty much full strength, and healed (minus some slow recovering nerve damage to my hand)

What has stayed, surprised me. As I've never been one to shy away from any activity, but now I find myself anxious about anything that could result in falling, and landing onto my arm.

This leads on to all the horror stories you read about carbon bikes, my bike currently has a carbon fork. My engineering knowledge tells me that carbon is supremely strong, and certainly comparable to metals with little to no usage fatigue.

So I purchased my first full carbon bike to build.

To fit the crown race of the integrated headset to the carbon fork (also has a carbon steerer, but where the crown race sits is actually aluminium), I opened up the vice slightly wider than the steerer.

Fitted an old headrace bearing over the crown race, and while holding the forks upside down near brake mount, hit them down with a few sharp strikes, so the old bearing struck the vice, pushing the crown on.

No unusual noises, no gauges in any of the surfaces. However, this doesn't help my irrational anxiety at the moment, with the fear that the impacts can have caused internal damage. That will fail when I am doing 30mph down a hill and I will die in a massive ball of fire.

Help my mind, was my method acceptable? Likelihood of invisible damage? Any simple checks that can be done to check the structural integrity of carbon before I ride it, to make me feel better?
____________________
covent.gardens: lihp is my most favourite member ever

[Seb]

I routinely ride over cattlegrids at 20+mph and have mistakenly hit potholes a fair bit faster.

You'd have to be seriously going at it with the hammer to put that kind of force through a carbon fork pls
____________________
2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[bamt]

When you say hit them down with a few sharp strikes, I assume you mean that you held the forks and moved them down with your hands to tap into the race, rather than you set it up in the vice then administered a few sharp strikes onto the inverted forks with a lump hammer?

If the former, you'll be fine - it's pretty much how I do it. Where people tend to go wrong is resting the fork legs on the floor then whacking the race on, so all the force goes into the dropouts.

[lihp]

[stinkwheel]

Destruction testing carbon frame:
https://youtu.be/xreZdUBqpJs

Or just watch The last bit where they swing it into a concrete block with both hands.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[cagiva gezzer]

I was going to post the above link.

I've got a carbon road bike and I was very worried when I dropped a kryptonite new york lock on it from a fair height. It bounced and there's no sign of damage.

I still have horror thoughts when going down hills fast on skinny wheels and carbon forks though, but that'll never change.

New MTB has carbon rims and the shop has warned me about pumping them up to high pressures...

Conversely to what has been said - enjoy this one - https://www.bustedcarbon.com/
____________________
"because one stroke isnt enough and four strokes waste two"

[sickpup]

Carbon forks generally have a weight limit as do many frame, check before buying.

I know I exceed the weight limit on most carbon rigid MTB forks.