I ride a Felt. I have a Felt aero bar. Its not an IA, but at the same time it is Felt. While I am concerned about the integrity of my bar, I am more concerned with the apparent lack of concern Felt is showing regarding this matter. I would think they would want your bar to examine at the very least. Have they not requested you send them the bar??

I am curious. What more out of Felt do you want? The Senior Product Manager has responded to his forum post within 24 hours and confirmed that the OP and he are having an conversation off the forum. I know if I were in Dave's position I would rather have this conversation out of a public forum just to avoid having other people muddying up the conversation. Then once the facts are known and the effected parties have been taken care of I would hope they publicly say what happened and what they are doing to prevent it in the future. But all of this takes time, and it is unreasonable to expect it to happen immediately.

Something really bad happened, someone got hurt. Let the people who can effect change do so in a reasonable amount of time. These parts are not just thrown out into the wild despite what some people would have you believe. They are designed in a computer, prototyped, and tested at multiple stages before the company commits to a production run and putting them in consumer's hands. If the company, Felt in this case, had a history of putting dangerous parts in people's hands they would cease to be a company in short order.

now thats just rude.

SD's already responded and it appears he's in contact with OP to sort this out.
He's not denying that there's a problem, he's not doubting the OP and he's responding.

His initial attempts to contact Felt seemed to have been unsuccessful. In other words they didn't respond. SD did respond once he posted on ST which is good. But then SD's response to the second IA owner with a possible cracked bar in the same spot wasn't what I would expect. I would think instead of just saying "if in doubt replace it", he might say "do not ride your bike with that potential problem, Felt would like for you to send us the bar to examine and in the meantime we will send you a replacement"?

I realize I may be expecting too much but after all its a newly released bike with one know bar failure and a possible second one.

The second owner started off the conversation with "The guys at the shop thought it was superficial...." So the people that the represent the company in the field already made a call on it. Diagnosing a carbon fiber crack in person is hard, over the internet with non-professional (and I'm not talking about portraits here) photography is damn near impossible. Calls for a recall and replacements are significantly premature here. So far it is a one time event. If we start seeing more of these I reserve the right to change my opinion and I'll jump in here with a sharpened pitch fork and join the mob.

In the interest of full disclosure I own no felt products and have no relationship with them. It just irks me when I see people who I think are doing the right thing being lambasted for not giving away the farm.

But in order to determine "if" there may be a potential problem, wouldn't an examination of the failed bar AND a potential failing bar be one of the best ways to make that determination? I just would think Felt would be requesting both of these bars and looking at other bars specific to this bike.

I'd spend more time in the aero position. I think the problem is they are riding on the horns to much.

We don't have an IA on our website for sale either. You need to use the same place you purchased your IA to acquire any IA replacement parts at this time.
-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Yes of course Felt is in communication with the dealer and this consumer. The owner of the IA (not the OP) bought the bike from a dealer and the owner happens to be on holiday (as do I) so there was some lag in the initial claim on that end.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

*year's

Do you think the customer service department is also responsible for product launches?
Do you think the global marketing department also handles the USA distributors dealer needs?

What is the purpose of your post?

-Dave

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

While I would prefer that the OP would have contacted Felt rather than expose our brand to trial by internet I'm also content to let the situation be tossed to the ST lions for the haters to observe the process and outcome. Unfortunately I'm on a short summer vacation with my family and my job at Felt is quite a bit removed from consumer/dealer direct interaction so I can't simply reach into my magic bag and ship out a new IA handlebar. Of course I'm happy to circulate this forum dialogue to the distributor of Felt bicycles based in Buffalo in the USA who handles these cases in North America and to the engineering department who developed the IA bar for the global Felt Brand based in Irvine, CA because I do have direct contact with those individuals.

I'm optimistic for a positive outcome but like everyone else here, I'll largely observe the process.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

I can't speak on behalf of Felt's customer service department in the USA, I do not have any authority to tell them what to do. I think the posted commented that he was indeed concerned about the clear coat chip in the photo he posted. As he is concerned, as I would be; I'd replace it and I recommend he do so also.

I don't have an R.A.#., I don't know his dealer's name or address or where to send an IA bar, further I don't have any IA handlebars to send him.
Like the OP he should contact his dealer to process his order.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

You're a good man, Super Dave. I still want your IA.

Maybe something involving a helicopter and ninjas repelling from ropes from said helicopter?

I respect your honesty. And it makes me thankful that I don't work at a company that produces consumer goods :) That helicopter and team of ninjas would be really hard to justify come tax time unless you were Academi (Formerly known as Black Water).

Are ninjas no longer tax deductible? I hate Obama's/Bush's anti-ninja stance on taxes. When will we get a pro-ninja deduction tax platform from a president? I am willing to create many ninja jobs!

I think the ninja lobby is still in full force...ninjas might still be tax deductible.... but Obama's hatred of the upper class means helicopters and jet fuel are a lot harder sell now. /pink (flame suit on)

Thread == successfully derailed!

I agree SuperDave takes way too much grief on here. He puts himself out there and helps when he can. Impossible for him to diagnosis all of our problems over the internet! And I'm sure he rarely gets all of the information.

IA is a great bike, I'd buy it again. Just want to make sure I avoid an Xray of my shoulder!

MC

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http://www.mctriguy.blogspot.com

Thanks Dave. My purpose in posting my picture wasn't to further fuel the fire but wanted to confirm with OP that that is where his broke as it was still hard to tell from his picture. I noticed the issue a couple of months ago but after shop looked at it I haven't been too worried. But I saw this post and now of course I can't help but think about it when I'm in the drops. Love the bike, it's fast and would recommend it to anyone unless you're in my age group and doing Nationals next weekend.

MC

And this porpoise agrees with you.

Anyone looking to NDI this sort of issue should really be looking for pulse (or flash) thermography. X-ray is difficult to use when you have widely varying thicknesses, ultrasound heads are usually not fine enough to inspect this inner radius region, and dye penetrant (presumably would work, but generally is not used on composites because - I assume - surface micro porosity). Pulse thermography will light up a delamination like Christmas and they should be able to do it while the bar is installed (not a luxury afforded to x-ray in most cases)

As far as tap testing, the proliferation of this recommendation on the internet is a welcome to anyone in the medical profession. I've seen tap testing done (probably) hundreds of times and that has been enough to convince myself not to trust myself to do it on something I'm concerned about.