mzeffex 

My first good road bike. My first carbon road bike. It came into the shop today, saw a little chip near water bottle bosses, asked boss about it, said its nothing to worry about. In the process of finding that, I found this crack straight through the chainstay on the non drive side. It wasn't even assembled yet .

Does carbon tend to fail easily, or should i expect years and years out of this bike? And yes, it is obviously warrentied, and i'll be getting a new frame tuesday, but it still is rather disappointing, and it is anything but reassuring.

brian416

Carbon lasts a long time, my mountain bike is a carbon frame from 1997, its get beat on and is still going strong.

DannoXYZ 

My Allez Epic was built in 1991. Have ridden it over 50k-miles and have over 10-years of racing with numerous crashes (on 3rd fork). It's keeps on ticking...

mzeffex 

Well thats good to know. I mean, for $2200, rrrrrr. It was really dissappointing.

chiltonp

what kind of frame?

johnny99

Probably a manufacturing defect. Or maybe the bike was damaged in shipping.

In my experience, carbon bikes are no more likely to fail during normal use than metal bikes with a similar weight.

mzeffex 

It is a Giant Defy Advanced 3. There was a hole in the box, I blame UPS.

Matt Gaunt

Might want to start there then. I doubt Giant will replace it for free if UPS are to blame. It makes no sense.

Sorry about your new project though.

mzeffex 

Na, my boss called up Giant as soon as we noticed. They said they'd ship out a new one ASAP. Oh my god I'm so excited!

dalava

Carbon fiber is a very strong material but it's tensile strength is directional, meaning it's very strong along the carbon axis, like 10 times of alloy. But that strength is not uniform. That's why you see carbon forks get sheared in half rather easily sometimes. I suspect that you were unlucky with the chainstay, the force applied by UPS mishandling happened just so, it cracked the frame. Just my guess.

mzeffex 

Alright. I don't want a frame failure, obviously. I can't wait to actually own a bike with 105 and ultegra!

531Aussie

Intersting -- I didn't know Specialized sold carbon back then. Who made them?
Is it as flexy as all those old carbon frames are 'meant' to be?

SemperFi87

One thing I have found with a few items with shipping damages is that the manufacturer usually warranties it or refunds you or whatever then THEY file the claim with UPS or FedEX or whoever. It doesn't really matter since Giant covered it, but when the product is being shipped from the manufacturer, that's traditionally how it's supposed to work, unless you are working with a company that's shady enough to try to pawn the damage off totally on the shipper. Either way, glad it got covered.

mzeffex 

Yeah. After all, it only costs Giant about 10 bucks a frame

JohnDThompson 

Those were rebadged TVT frames.

bassplayinbiker

Bike companies generally don't ship out frames Via UPS unless it was just a single bike. (its cost prohibitive to ship 50-100 bikes out UPS)

That being the case, it was probably damaged in the warehouse, because all of the trucks I've personally unloaded have bikes packed in like sardine cans. (no way to get damaged)

mzeffex 

It was in fact a special order, and shipped UPS. I know what you mean about sardine cans; i help the Ward Shipping guy bring them into the store somtimes.