Bonzo Banana

My point was bikes sold in the Philippines have little consumer protection but bikes sold in Europe, the US and Japan have greater protection and require certification. It seemed to be a brand mainly sold in the Philippines. The situation could be similar in China for bikes only sold in China.

downtube

Bonzo,

I imported several containers of bikes into the UK. There was never a certification process.

Thanks
Yan

tcs

There have been cases where the frame failed in the first few months of ownership. Design of the latch fragile/fussy? Poor factory assembly?

tcs

I'm not in the industry, but AFAIK ISO 4210, ISO 8098, ANSI Z315.1, CPSC 1512 (16 CFR 1512), ASTM F 1975, ASTM F 2273, 19 CFR 134, AS/NZS 1927, AS/NZS 8124, JIS D 9301, JIS D 9302, CPSA 0052, EN 14764, EN 14766, EN 14781, EN 14872, EN 14765, EN 71-1, EN 15194, BS 6102, NF R30-020, DIN 79100, DIN 79105, GB 14746 AND GB 14747 are all mandatory to meet but compliance (certification) is on the honor system.

dahoneezz

Ah ... so ... yes ... true. Also if you rebadge the bike into several different brands, you will limit your liability as well. Makes it harder to pinpoint which company to sue.

Technician

Some retailers had suggested if bikes had been returned to the store for their 6 week check (or whatever) loose bolts on the hinges would have been spotted.
I know that sounds like a get out clause but still there is truth to it.

fietsbob

So was the aluminum welding done by people or a computer controlled robot?

Bonzo Banana

I used to be a compliance officer and much of the certification is mandatory. Are you sure the manufacturer wasn't compliant? I never dealt with bicycle certification but a range of products some with greater safety issues and some with far less and the certification was pretty much mandatory for most of them. Some had an allowance for self-certification but often required sophisticated test equipment that only a test house would have anyway. Some minor products like small torches required certification just to prove the switch didn't create RF interference.

https://shop.bsigroup.com/ProductDet...00000030259907

Many of the chinese bike manufacturers clearly show their models are certified with CNAS logo's etc on their site. If you are reselling such bikes then you are pretty much good to go in many markets. Someone like fuji-ta probably has certification available for a wide range of models. Smaller back street bike manufacturers who produce lower volumes and more likely to create an inconsistent product may not. That certainly was my experience of chinese manufacturers. Some would only certify a product with a concrete order to go with it.

Bonzo Banana

I was curious about the state of welding a month or so back and it seemed like aluminium robot welding is pretty much state of the art. It can produce a exceptionally good frame but only some of the largest manufacturers can do it. It's still much easier to robot weld steel frames at high volumes. When I looked at some of the smaller manufacturers they would often weld steel frames themselves but buy in their aluminium frames from one of the key large manufacturers like fuji-ta. Welding aluminium frames manually is a high skill level process where as steel can be welded well manually with a far shallower learning curve. It seems like once a basic steel welding level has been obtained they start welding children's bikes and then once they reach a slightly higher standard of welding go onto adult bikes. I'm not saying this is the standard procedure everywhere just one example company I read about. A lot of aluminium frames are still welded manually as far as I can tell by many manufacturers. Some surprisingly good aluminium frames come out of Vietnamese and Cambodian factories that are owned by Taiwanese firms. Often their main failing is inferior painting that is more likely to chip. I think they used these countries because of restrictions on Chinese bikes into Europe plus of course the much lower wage rate than China.

I think someone may have pointed this out already but if the tube itself fails that is poor design and/or material quality but if the weld itself fails that is more likely a manufacturing quality issue.

Technician

I would just love to know if it was in fact a quality issue with the welds which was exacerbated by frame movement due to the hinge.

berlinonaut

Well - Yan IS the manufacturer (or at least brand-owner) of downtube. As far as I know bikes imported into the EU have mandatorily to comply with EU norms. It is the duty of the importing party to ensure the compliance. So it is responsible for the testing and it is (again as far as I know) allowed to do this himself (though this is a complex process). It is illegal to sell bikes that have not been certified. Officially, bikes that do not comply with the norms are subject to be destroyed if this is discovered. But probably it rarely does due to the amount of imported goods. In any case if there happens an accident with a bike that does not fulfill those norms the seller will be in deep trouble (again if this is discovered). So any commercial importer or seller ignoring the certification process takes a huge economical risk. I'd assume that the situation is not much different in the US or Japan and am really wondering that Yan does not seem to know about this.

Regarding the Tern: Last year German "Ökotest" magazine did a test of folding bikes. The test itself was pretty ridiculous but one thing they did was to get an external institute to test the bikes for compliance with the norm DIN EN ISO 4210 (this is the norm mandantory for bikes within the EU). Some of them failed for various reasons and if I remember correctly one of them was the Tern Link C7i - the frame broke at the hinge during the endurance test (which consists AFAIK of 100.000 cycles of stressing, simulating i.e. riding out of the saddle).

downtube

There is one problem here....my memory. I think I filed paperwork that the factory had some certification ( I don't recall exactly ). However I am 100% sure that all testing was done at the factory. The UK did not get any bikes from me for testing or any other purpose.

Thanks
Yan

Technician

Interesting you should mention the Tern Link C7 berlinonaut. If you look online at the reviews or stores that have it for sale, you'll come across the 2012 version with the earlier hinge lock. Compare it to the 2015 and later version, bulkier and more secure hinge.
Clearly they (Tern) thought a change was needed....I wonder why

Technician

Looking at the Tern bikes web site it appears there are three types of frame latch. The original OCL 1.0, the later FBL latch that had hidden sections that fitted into keys as the frame was folded presumably to keep the whole bike more rigid. The latest version is the FBL 2.0 which is what I have on my folder (not a Tern) where the back section envelopes the front piece to make an even more secure lock. I wonder if any of the newer frames with the latest hinge have failed.

tds101 

Out of the 9 bikes tested, which failed & which passed (besides the Tern Link C7i)?

sweeks

Since the problems with the frames began a number of years ago, many if not most of them have been reported on Tern's Forum. There haven't been any such reports since the frame re-design happened. Having seen the re-configured latch weld, I would be surprised to see the same problem in the new frames.
Disclosure: I own a Tern Verge S11i with a frame replaced under the recall after about 4,000 miles. The replacement frame has about 1,200 miles on it.
Steve

northernlights

The Tern recalls are for certain batches of first gen models made in 2011 and 2012. As long as you don't buy a Tern made in those years you should be fine. There's a simple way to tell - recalled bikes have a frame number beginning with AI.

https://www.ternbicycles.com/2014-li...luntary-recall



Side note: The son of Dahon's founder quit his father's company to start Tern. Dahon is the biggest producer of folding bikes in the world. I hope the son has learned a lesson: That's what happens when you cut corners to save a few bucks.

sweeks

It's not clear that this is the reason for the frame failures. There are design errors not motivated by cost reduction, manufacturing (welding) errors, defective supplied materials, and probably lots more I can't think of. I imagine there were a lot of ways to cut costs that didn't apply to critical structures.

I always felt that the problem had its basis in the drive to reduce weight, which is perhaps felt more keenly in folding bikes than some other types (racing excepted). Of course there are other ways to reduce weight; it seems likely that the frame was not designed on the back of a napkin without any involvement of people with engineering expertise.
It was interesting to me that the replacement frame for my bike weighed the same as the original to within a gram, so some weight re-distribution seems to have occurred.
Steve

berlinonaut

Can't remember the details. I had the paper version back then but that was last year. At least one other bike ended up with a broken frame: On the B-Fold 300 the welding broke at the bottom-bracket. This is shown on a picture on the teaser-webpage with the technical test-details.

berlinonaut

During this thread I got the understanding that some bikes broke apart that were not part of the recall. Did it get this wrong?

berlinonaut

The test was done in 2016, therefore I'd assume they were using a 2016 model.

northernlights

I haven't seen proof of such. If that were true, the consumer protection agency would have been all over it by now and would say something about it. Making assumptions without real evidence, isn't helpful to anyone.

If a bike frame made by Tern breaks in 2017, for example that does not mean the frame was made in 2017. Most likely the frame was made in 2011 or 2012, but it didn't fail until 2017. Perhaps the original owner moved, sold the bike, etc and never get the recall notice before it was too late. So its still possible to see more 1st gen bikes failing in the future.

berlinonaut

Cases mentioned in this thread alone where bikes broke that were NOT included in Tern's recall:

https://www.bikeforums.net/19760019-post80.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/18803816-post48.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/18728802-post7.htm
The test of a German magazine in 2016 that I mentioned


possible recall in Japan (hard to understand): https://www.bikeforums.net/18819765-post63.html
new recall from Tern: https://www.cpsc.gov/recalls/2016/st...ding-bicycles/

I've no interest in blaming Tern. But it seems to me more and more that there may be issues with their product safety to which they possibly do not seem to react properly.

northernlights

Thanks for the info. Looks like they have some very deep-rooted problems at this company that may never get fixed. Too bad, seemed like such a promising company. Tern's marketing is pretty fantastic, and I guess that's where they decided to invest all their money rather than quality control. I'll go with Dahon from now on.

berlinonaut

Not sure if you will be better suited with Dahon (overall, not regarding braking frames). Those kind of things happen and have always happened to a degree. Just today we recognize them more easily as there are internet forums. And problems are more prominent than positive experiences there. Nobody posts "I own a Tern and my frame didn't brake!" In fact we do not know how many frames were produced and how many broke. All we know is that some Tern frames broke and that's not too much knowledge overall. The two relevant questions are how big the risk is and weather we are facing a ford-pinto-scenario. I can answer neither of the two.