Originally Posted by digibud

I'm happy for anyone with a great bike at a good price. Here's why I would never personally buy one: https://www.hambini.com/ More to the point would be the videos Hambini posts on YouTube. If you haven't seen his channel I can promise some real bike geek entertainment. He is an engineer that makes bottom brackets and other (?) parts. Folks regularly send their bikes to him with BB problems and occasionally he has the bikes scanned and can "see" where there are voids in the layup. He points out the very real problems with many frames from current manufacturers and has on more than one occasion had to shake his head and pronounce how he would not feel safe riding a bike due to manufacturing defects. The precision needed to align the bottom bracket holes that receive the BB is really quite high and difficult to replicate from bike to bike. No doubt some Chinese frames are decent and no doubt the quality control and engineering tolerances on much less expensive bikes can't be as high as they are with bikes costing $10,000. Or so I assume. It's for that reason I would rather ride a $2500 medium spec'd Trek or Specialized than a $1500 Chinese frame with a better group. No criticism for those that choose otherwise but I think it is a bit more of a risk and choose not to go that way. I would love to see somebody (not me!) buy ten Chinese frames and ten frames straight from the manufacturer and cut them up and look them over with a fine tooth comb. I am sure they would show differences but I wonder if they would be such that the safety of the Chinese bikes would come into question, which is my basic concern.