Originally Posted by
DrIsotope
While I understand the OP's sentiment, the delivery is a little over the top. I see plenty of capsule "reviews" where someone has used <insert item here> for a week or two, and posted something glowingly positive, because they're still deep inside the honeymoon phase.
I don't even start to seriously evaluate a product until it's been in service for at least 1,000 miles. That's the starting point, AFAIC. Getting out to 10,000+ is a much better indicator, but by then I've usually forgotten to write anything about it. Honestly, aside from quick-wearing items like tires and chains, most everything is well made enough. One of my current wheelsets has like 16,000 not-at-all-easy miles on them, no significant issues. They're round (mostly) and pretty well battered.
Here is one guy that gets what i'm trying to say.
its a bit to early to evaluate a part in like 100 miles/km for a road bike. UNLESS the part is severely flawed by design / severely used "outside its intended purpose" or has some very severe quality defect straight out of the factory.
parts simply dont break in 100 miles/km. unless they are
very bad. and even at 1000km/miles most low quality stuff will still work just as intended.
-----------
I'll give a real world example. My coworker got a Genesis croix de fer, complete bike, costed about 15-1700€ or so. I think it was the second best model.
*Then after using it for about 1 year and maybe 2000km the rear wheel started breaking spokes. and going of true severely. A complete de-tensioning was needed, with some new spokes. and also the nipples had glue in them so adjusting was a complete nightmare.
*Handlebar bent severely when bike was dropped once. way beyond practical use.. should be better imo.
*Headset starts wobbling/having play even though completely disassembled and greased/adjusted when recieved as new, and its getting worse and worse too (i personally tore the whole bike apart when new, 8h, to make sure it was good, and greased/lubed everything that needed it, including lubing inside the frame tubes). Headset will actually have to be replaced. with cane creek 10.
none of these problems had showed up at 100 miles or even 1000miles. But they all pretty much showed up at 2000km. all 3.
And now with in hand. if reviewing these parts at 1000miles or km they would all have seemed fine right... But in reality all these parts were really crappy parts. very very crappy parts. and that was with me going through them and lubing them and adjusting them after the factory had (not the wheels/spokes though). And i can tell you none and i mean none of the parts would have lasted for more than 2-3 months or so if i had not done that.
lets take the shimano "non series" hubs for instance. I think these were 105 or one level below 105; talking "shimano quality"; disc hubs. they had that translucent green crapola grease, like 1 microscopic blob per hub, and the hubs themselves were not adjusted at all. they were "assembled" though. one wheel was way way too tight and one had play, i cant really remember which one had what but it was a double fault there. And i guess only those 2 faults would have made the wheel bearings give up long before 1000km. For different reasons obviously.
-----------------------
A couple of years ago I bought like 5 front and 5 rear slx disc hubs, and none of those would have been usable straight away. no way.
------------------------
I guess what I'm trying to say is that below 1000km/miles only they crappiest of stuff will actually break down or somehow prove themselves as "bad".
and lets say between 1000 and 3-4000 then the mid grade stuff will start showings its defects.
And the actual real quality control point should maybe be at 10000km/miles. Is everything working good then??
well, then its actually good.
Talking general bike stuff.
But with wheels you could for instance measure spoke tension and radial/axial runout after 1000km and then after 10k, thats quite a good quality stamp imo.
I guess many of you will try to misunderstand this on purpose in the most extreme ways but I think this is most explanatory way i can explain what i mean with this thread.
1000km/miles is not a a long way.......... yeah.