chaadster

Regarding the possibility of this being counterfeit, LT simply says, "unlikely." See video below from about 40:10. Relatedly, a funny thing coming out of the vid was someone's joke that BMC is the acronym for Badly Molded Carbon! Hahaha...ouch!

TakingMyTime

I am by no means a carbon hater. I'm riding a 2001 carbon Trek (that's a 16 y/o frame) and I have not noticed anything unusual or worrying about the bike since I received it about 6 months ago.

With that said... There may well be extensive testing and QC during the manufacturing process but this video makes me wonder why there isn't more QC'ing during the process. I would think if anyone who sells bikes was able to improve on the process and document that process they would probably sell a lot of frames.

Esthetic

RoadMachine is a newer bike, so the title of the OP is misleading.

Not sure what to take from this other than CF bikes look ugly on the inside, having seen other cut-up videos. Mine rides like a dream, has seen some jarring terrain with my 200lb frame.

Are the -01 findings too surprising? 25% less Width of the carbon layerup and Weight of the -02 models (but stiffer carbon) , its bound to have some thin areas in the name of weight savings.

This is an interesting area. The ultimate weight weenie carbon bikes are built with the Pro Race crowd first and foremost who dispose of a frame like toilet paper, yet deep pocket enthusiasts want to ride what the Pro's ride , mega miles , long term ownership. Is a pretty good topic for discussion on its own where the general consumer is making the poor investment into a Pro Race Day Bike for road training and trainer use, when it comes to 'tiered carbon'/weight options in the marketplace.

memebag

But "low" and "high" build quality don't exist in a vacuum. If smooth innards with zero voids doesn't make the bike perform any better, it's wasted effort. I don't reject the idea of "quality", but I know quality exists in a context. If the quality we're looking at is good enough, smoothing out the bubbles is wasted effort. Hence my questions. Did the things we see in that video contribute to a failure? Or are they purely cosmetic?

chaadster

I don't understand what the disconnect is here, but I'll try again...

Quality does not exist in a vacuum, you are right. By imposing a definition of quality restricted to specific usage conditions though, e.g. when you say, "it works for me," you are trying to create a vacuum around your specific experience. Just because a frame doesn't fail under one rider's use in a given timeframe, does not mean that same frame would not fail under another rider in the same use, or within the same or shorter timeframe.

Smooth innards and zero voids do make a bike perform better, i.e. to it's fullest potential. Again, improper compaction, poor resin distribution, improper folding and delamination all make a frame not as strong as it could be.

The context for quality, then, is the frame as good as it is designed to be. If there are flaws, then the answer is no, and the quality lower.

Whether the things (i.e. flaws) we saw in the video contributed to a failure or not are questions of interest, but not relevant to the discussion of quality, other than to recognize and understand those flaws are proof of low quality construction. Like a house of cards or a hollow tree, if the conditions are right, a low quality frame will stand, but when sufficient stress is applied, and the structure exceeds its limit, then it fails. Whether or not certain limits are good enough is another matter, and one related to, but distinct from build quality.

memebag

But that isn't what I said. I asked if that frame failed, and how many miles it had on it. I'm trying to find out if these issues are actual defects or not.

But it may not need to be any stronger than it is to function properly. My CAAD12 frame has thin walls in some places to flex along certain axes. Sure, they could be stronger, but that wouldn't make the bike better.

Do you know that frame wasn't designed to tolerate those wrinkles and voids? I don't.

79pmooney

The workmanship I was talking about in my post above. I used to be a laminator making very light off-shore racing sailboats. We did such good work that we used almost no sand paper and no power tools to clean up our work. (The final layup got one hand swipe of 36 grit sandpaper to get the tiny glass hairs that if not sanded, become very sharp splinters after the final paint. The edges of each layer were left entirely visible and got two swipes. We took real pride in doing good work that always be visible.

Rather unrelated except not entirely - I go to see a TiCycles steel fork that had been cut up for a forensics study. So I got to see the braze at the top of the fork crown at the fork blade end. The braze had a perfect radius like it was machined except that until the blade was sawn in half, tools and human eyes had never seen it. (And the finish was matte; ie raw braze, not a polished machined surface.) My point? High quality and good looking work can be done in places that can not be seen but it does take skill and care.

If I am going to trust my life to a two pound frame of plastic as I go 50 mph down a mountain road, I want work that looks like it is up to the job. Yes, I know well from my fiberglass experience that you can do good looking work with fatal flaws but on the poor quality work, you cannot even look for those flaws.

Ben

SethAZ 

I agree with most of what's been said, and I agree the bike is ugly inside and I too noticed some specific quality issues that were alarming.

We still don't have enough information to condemn it.

For instance, given a quality defect that we can identify in the film, we don't know whether the bike was dependent on that quality defect not being there in order for the bike to meet its safety and reliability goals.

It's entirely possible, for instance, that the designers accepted that certain things would be difficult to pull off 100% consistently, and designed in enough redundancy to accommodate a certain rate of defects. Since we don't know whether this is the case, we don't have enough information to conclude that the simple existence of a defect implies that the bike frame did not meet its safety, strength, durability, reliability, etc. goals.

With all that said, I'm riding a titanium bike right now, for quite a few reasons. None of the videos I saw, whether of the BMC, the Emonda, the Pinarello, or any of the others make me regret my choice of titanium.

79pmooney

A concept not being talked about much is how does a frame fail when it is ridden into the ground. Ie, say it is a beloved frame with the perfect ride. Say it is ridden decade after decade until it fails. How does it fail?

My three furthest riding bike: my first, a Peugeot UO-8. It had a hard life. 5 winter in snow/salt country; typ 5 crashes/winter. At 19,000 miles the right chainstay failed behind the gusset. My Miyata 610. Picked up used with unknown history. I crashed it hard three times, ending its life on the third atr 27,000 miles. My Peter Mooney. A couple of crashes, one hard and a number of minor spills and slides. 47,000 miles and still running like new.

Point? These bikes were or are being ridden until they fail. I had/have confidence that those failure are very unlikely to be life threatening when they happen (barring life threatening crashes that are not the fault of the bike). One difference between my steel bikes and any female molded plastic bike is that potential problems will probably show as visible cracks or rust stains well before breaking. Another is that traditional narrow tubed steel bikes are built with materials and methods proven over many decades to work and be trustworthy. They were developed at a time when something that expensive was not a throwaway.

Another point actually directed at my post above (#32). I've sailed across the Atlantic on a 34' fiberglass boat. We saw two storms with winds to 60 knots and seas to 25'. And 1) those conditions were the norm, nothing exceptional and 2) the Atlantic can serve up far worse, even in late July/early August, pre-hurricane and statically the best weeks of the year. In those conditions, far from land, far from radio range of anybody outside of shortwave (we did this in the very early days of GPS and did not have on board any satellite access) you have no choice but to trust the workmanship of the fiberglassers who created the structure your life depends on. This was my dad's boat. When he was talking about this sail and asking me about what boat to buy, I researched the companies building the possible alternatives. I felt comfortable with what I read about one company in particular. I also instructed my dad to make it well know to the company that the boat he was ordering to be built was going to be sailed trans-Atlantic. I wanted the fiberglassing crew to get that word. I've built those boats. One to race to Hawaii single-handed. When you know, you pay special care. It's pretty obvious the crew that built the BMC of that video didn't have that care. Do I want to trust my life to them? (Not an idle concept to me. I nearly lost my life to a very preventable bike design and execution failure. Cost me thousands of dollars, years of my life and my education.)

Ben

berner

The layup on that BMC is the equivalent of risky behavior in motorist, or druggie or alcoholic. It will lead to a bad end sooner or later. All of manufacturing hangs on the the capacity for consistent adherence to manufacturing specifications.

Bomb Komodo

Great vid. These bikes are major investments for most people. If the companies are cutting corners on them and not making them to the high quality they market, than they should be held to task.

Seattle Forrest

That's how I feel about my carbon bike every time I see rust.

Seattle Forrest

Enve makes a big deal out of doing this with their wheels.



vs

memebag

Go home right now and cut them open to make sure they are as good as you believe! Cut everything open and look for flaws!!

pvillemasher

I think the disconnect is that memebag is asking, "If it meets spec, who care what it looks like?" and then the conversation seems to veer from that basic premise.

Apologies memebag if I misrepresented.

datlas 

Hi! What's this thread about?

memebag

That's pretty much it. I'm not saying that bike is good, but I don't know if it's bad based on that video. Maybe everyone else here knows a bunch more about CF manufacturing than I do.

Dean V

The frame is basically poorly made.
End result is a frame that is either over engineered (heavy) enough to allow for this, or it will be susceptible to failure.

noodle soup

Enve wheels are not vacuum bagged, and neither are monocoque style bicycle frames.

memebag

But was it a bad bike? Was it too heavy? Did it ride poorly? Did it fail?

Maybe I know too much about how sausage is made to judge a product just by looking inside it.

Imagine we had two CF bikes. Both were the same weight, both provided 20,000 miles of riding pleasure, blindfolded riders couldn't tell them apart, but one had inner wrinkles and voids and the other didn't, would the wrinkles and voids matter?

RPK79

That's kind of where I lean on this issue as well. I'm sure BMC doesn't expect too many customer complaints about what the inside of their frame looked like when the customer cut the damned thing open.

rpenmanparker 

Never heard of bad welds?

chaadster

If I didn't know anything about what I was looking at, I might be able to convince myself of something like that, but with the benefit of the expert in the room, the guy with military and commercial aerospace carbon fiber construction experience and who actually runs a carbon fiber bicycle repair service and makes his own carbon fiber tubes and bikes-- that's Raoul Luescher of Luescher Teknik who made the video-- being disappointed at the quality and literally at a loss for words at one point while looking at the bike, it's impossible for me to imagine a scenario where sloppy construction by design is a sensible theory.

chaadster

Thanks for the rephrasing @pvillemasher. I guess that's it, but I have a really, really hard time understanding what making spec has to do with quality. I mean, we all understand that both an A grade and a B grade are passing grades (i.e. grades that meet spec) in elementary school, and we understand an A is a better grade (i.e. higher quality). I dunno what's going on with some people, but there's a serious rational disconnect going on if they cannot get their heads around the concept of different grades of quality.

Regarding knowing stuff about CF manufacturing, watch the video and listen to the expert assessment. He definitely knows more about it than you do...unless you've been holding out on us?

RPK79

Never heard of him. Maybe he's just trying to make himself look like more of an expert by talking down about big names in the industry's construction methods.