Originally Posted by Nickolassc

I get it, I didn't get the same bike he's looking at, but he asked about fairdale, and some of the points still stand, as far as I know, there's no way to know the tubing thickness on the Fairdales, they can make all the claims they want about their special chromoly, but in reality, chromoly is chromoly as a material, especially unbranded chromoly where you have to assume it has bottom tier tensile strength, all that really matters to the ride is geometry and thickness and without those numbers, it's a gamble. Same goes for All City. I feel like I fell for Fairdale marketing when I could have gone with something more known from Soma, BM, Surly, etc and that's what I did: I replaced the Fairdale weekender with a New Albion Homebrew, which is virtually the same bike as the Soma Smoothie ES, except lest costly and narrow tubing and made from a known tubeset, that is, tange champion 2. The ride is twice as nice--So nice I'm selling my Cannondale synapse alloy because I no longer need or even desire to ride it.

If he were to get a known quantity, such as a used Lemond with 853 tubing, he'd probably be better off than taking a chance on a fairdale, which is just basic chromoly and nothing special. However, Lemonds are special and I see used good condition Lemond Reynolds 853 framesets with 1 1/8" carbon forks on ebay in 58, 59, and 60 right now for $299 plus shipping.