ddscyclist

Hey guys - been reading the forums for awhile. Good stuff.

Recently picked up a madone 3.1 and love the carbon frame. I was thinking of making a track bike with a carbon frame in order to lessen the vibrations and weight issue. I have a bad back so it's a enjoy to ride something that can take on more shake and rattle from the roads.

Has anyone messed with the chinese carbon frames? I'm just curious if I should waste my time on it or not...

carleton

They are probably fine. But of course it depends on what you get and from whom.

Maybe narrow the search to a few frames then ask if we know anything about them.

There is a lot of good stuff out there...a lot of crap too.

ddscyclist

Ehhh Im referring to the EBAY frames. I do not know if its kosher to talk about sellers etc

carleton

It is. Fire away.

TejanoTrackie 

Is this what you are talking about?

https://cgi.ebay.com/Brand-New-Full-C...item4155c3fa24

https://cgi.ebay.com/12K-Full-Carbon-...item519784e002

The frame is pretty light, but the fork is heavy.

Inertianinja

search the forums on this one, dude. been debated to death.

go ahead and get one!

jfmckenna

Personally I think they look hideous but then I have a penchant for lugged steel. To each their own but imho a frame like that looks like it belongs on the track. I'm sure it won't explode or anything though

TejanoTrackie 

Don't be so sure. I've seen no name cf frames fail in various ways due to bad manufacturing or design.

Scrodzilla

Holy ugly, Batman!

carleton

It's not much different than:

Scrodzilla

Sure it is. That Bridgestone has MUCH cleaner lines.

carleton

What about



I raced a planet X last season. (not my bike in the photo above, though)

I agree with you, though. Those ebay bikes are a bit much. But, there is a precedent for space age looking bikes.

carleton

I want a Bridgestone so bad it hurts. But they don't make anything larger than a 55cm.

silver_ghost

Another way to achieve this goal is to find a frame that will accomidate wider tires. Most race oriented bikes will only take 25mm tires, but a wider (say, 28-32mm) tire can be safely run at lower pressure, smoothing out a lot of the road chatter. You will also have better traction on pavement.
You may also want to think about a bike with more relaxed geometry than a purpose built track bike; relaxed road geometry will be kinder to your spine. Surly, Salsa, Bikes direct and others make single speed/fixed gear bikes that fit this bill. I've never owned a carbon bike myself, so I can't speak to the material's inherent dampening properties, but I know that slack geometry and cushy tires make for a comfortable ride.

I personally wouldn't order a bike (especially carbon) from an unknown retailer. Sure it might be fine, but if it isn't, do you have any recourse? Like carleton says, there's plenty of good deals to be had, but also plenty of **** from fly-by-night retailers who might have disappeared by the time you realize there's a problem with your frame.

ddscyclist

Lol, I actually looked around for a post about the track frames...I could find the ones about the road bikes, but nothing on tracks.

TejanoTrackie 

The requirements of road and track frames are very different. Vertical compliance is important on the road in order to absorb road vibrations, but irrelevant on the track. True track frames, be they steel, aluminum or carbon fibre, don't need to be vertically compliant, and won't do a good job absorbing vibrations on the road.

WoundedKnee

When is somebody going to make a bike frame of Lexan?

TejanoTrackie 

It's already been done.

MrJay

Obviously I can't really see much in that pic but it looks like that paint has a ****-ton of orange peel.
But maybe its just the quality of the pic.

muckymucky

^

What?! lol
EDIT*: *The.*.Are.You.Smoking?

cc700

i'm down for the ugly ebay frameset.

seems like it's a production challenge that some chinese factory was like "well, we need experience doing this so let's bang a few runs of these out before going into production on these here TIME/Look/Planet X orders.

Paultso

weight does not matter much for track frames. Unless you need bragging rights, and cant slay a hipster girl otherwise

evilcryalotmore

There is a big post/review on the road forum.

its called alright, What about this chinese frames.

or something similar. (:

Squirrelli

They look "better" after a new paint job.

cc700

yeah, check out the seat post clamp. those must have been an earlier run or something.

ebay sketches me out, but i doubt it is worse than any other 500 dollar frameset that accepts normal cranks.