Well that's terrifying.

I wish they would have performed the EU 14781:2005 tests for fork (section 4.9) and frame (section 4.8) on the replica. I don't see any objective evidence aside from specialized hearsay about the bonded alloy cups failing their destructive test. Either the replica frame can pass the EU standards or it can't... that is the objective measure. The showed that there was less stiffness in the frame and the carbon has a lower tensile modulus... but this doesn't mean the bike is unsafe. I read this article as a bit of fear mongering with difference to a velonews advertiser.

Tried to read. Got a full page popup over top of the content. Closed window.

Agree, the 'results' do not necessarily mean unsafe.

To form any sort of naive conclusion (I'm not very knowledgable on bike engineering), it would be nice to know a few additional facts:

1. what was the actual deflection? 10mm-11mm is a lot more movement than 1mm-1.1mm.
2. what is the deflection of a non sworks high-mod carbon frame? It looks like the non sworks uses different carbon.
this means it's at LEAST heavier, if not more flexible than the SWorks version.
3. what is the modulus of the non SWorks for comparison?

I'd personally rather ride a 'real' frame than a knockoff, but that's me. At least I have somebody to complain to when something
goes (not horribly) wrong.

The Specialized web page on the various carbon weaves used, is not that useful.

http://www.specialized.com/bc/microsite/fact/materials.html



SWorks frame description: S-Works SL4 FACT 11r carbon, FACT construction
Plain Roubaix frame description: Specialized SL4 FACT 8r carbon

I agree... the article felt like it was more about stoking fear than informing. So it's less stiff and uses lower modulus carbon than the s-works model... well... specialized themselves sells lower versions of the tarmac that use lower modulus carbon... how does it compare to those?

I previously had a frame with alloy headset cups that i came loose due to me not noticing the fork was a little loose and riding it like that for a bit. I re-epoxied it back in place and put another 5,000+ miles on that frame, never had an issue with the headset again.

That said i'd never buy a knock off anything cause I don't trust a company that sells knock off anything and anyone that buys one of those frames expecting them to be the same as a legit Specialized frame is a fool.

So the counterfeit frames, these are considered different than the oft-discussed open mould frames, right? I'm talking about the Deng Fu, the Velocite's, etc. Or do people lump those into the same category?

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Nobody's constipated on race morning

Interesting data, and yes, I believe it - but what the reader should consider is -

What would the results be if you tested that counterfeit "Tarmac" against a brand-name typical middle-of-the-road LBS road bike that thousands of people ride?

After all, the real Tarmac uses "hi-modulus CF", but I'm doubtful that all those other middle-of-the-road carbon bikes do as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the counterfeit Tarmac actually outperforms some of those very bikes from similar brand-name companies, and as well, there has definitely not been a rash of failing frames left and right that have all been shown to be counterfeit.

And yet we do not hear of prolific frame failures in the field..

Agree the testing was whilst accurate, not indicative of actual performance / capability as a structure....

Also that a range of branded products should have been tested to place this in relative terms across a range.. ie a 9R and 10R frameset for comparison....

I don't care who buys or uses what and acknowledge the increased risk with relatively unsupported product (from a warranty and back up perspective only)..
But "test" information ought to be relative to use.. other wise its just information from which no meaningful conclusions can be drawn..

Given that it's not uncommon for manufacturers to claim 40% increases in stiffness for new models -11% doesn't seem like a big deal.

No idea what effect the differences in modulus has.

It's interesting that there are few meaningful, objective measurements (other than aero and weight) that can be made that determine the performance of a frame.

And yet we do not hear of prolific frame failures in the field..

Or speed wobbles, which this article claims as typical. Got about 35k miles on my generic carbon frame with a similar weight, and I exceed 50 mph nearly every day I ride. No worries. Nothing wrong with the headset cups or anything at all.

11% less stiff than a S-Works? How about something farther down the line? Not surprised that they haven't used super hi-mod fibers like the S-Works, but how about a cheaper Spec frame?

I have a low opinion of counterfeits BTW. OK going cheap, but don't pretend you own an S-Works.

^^^^^^This.


So suddenly speed wobble = dangerously unsafe frame?

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

I would consider them to be separate. Deng Fu, et al, are not pretending to be something they aren't (at least to the halfway educated eye). Others may disagree.

This. LOL.

Same..

FM-066 had since they released..
Its clocked over 90kmh.. ridden from Brisbane to Townsville (1800kms in a week)..
I use it as my work travel bike so it is not pampered (relatively)..
Its a sub kilo frame, 370gms fork.. and i am 80kgs in kit.. no issues at all..

I notice they didn't test for deflection at head tube and BB, and as mentioned to any EU standard criteria.. or publish the result if they did..

That is hilarious. I stumbled on DHGate by accident today looking for a Primal Schlitz Malt Liquor jersey. They didn't have it, but they had tons of pro-looking kit at unbelievable prices. I wasn't even going to ask if it was legit because it looked like Alibaba. At best it was the real deal that snuck out the back door of a factory, at worst completely fake and uncomfy.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

You're telling me that a magazine that is primarily funded through advertising of name brand companies didn't provide results that said open mold frames are as reliable and safe as their name brand counterparts?! Who would have guessed!

"I would consider them to be separate. Deng Fu, et al, are not pretending to be something they aren't (at least to the halfway educated eye). Others may disagree."

if you read what we wrote here, last month, then at least the et al is pretending to be something they aren't, which is a factory. what seems clear is that deng fu, hong fu, et al, are, essentially, mail order retailers. but they don't buy from manufacturers, rather directly from factories.

yes, they cut out the middleman, which is the brand. but too many people think that middleman isn't adding value, and i think that's a breathtakingly naive assumption and a huge mistake.

what i have not read yet is a single account of anyone in a position to know saying that any reliable self-policing of QC exists at these factories. it's not that hong fu is producing frames at disreputable factories while specialized is using a reputable factory. it's that even legitimate factories can be horrible and dishonest at QC. there may well be some exceptions: giant, yes. merida, yes. probably you could add fairly, martec, kinesis and some others. still, regardless of the factory you HAVE to have your own QC crew, if you're a brand, and that's the case with frame factories, forks, cranks, brakes, handlebars, all of it. a QC crew means rejects. i think it's fair to ask what happens to those rejects.

there are a pair of truths that, to me, are hard to reconcile and need to be fixed: 1) everyone contemplating buying via a non-standard process needs to understand the dice they're rolling when they buy frames where there is no demonstrable QC process, warranty process, engineering, testing, etc., in place; 2) frameset prices charged by legitimate manufacturers (legitimate meaning to me the companies that have all that stuff i mentioned) are too high. unreasonably high. unsustainably high. companies cannot keep charging $6,500 to $10,000 for framesets. i don't know if i should feel insulted by prices like these but i do, just from the POV of the customer.

to those who mention this, no, we don't hear about a barrage of catastrophic failures from brandless frames, but i don't think you can therefore conclude that there must not be these failures. i am not that worried about frame failures but i'm very worried about fork failures. i have heard about fork and front-end failures. i'm researching one such situation now, really scary. just because you haven't read about it doesn't mean it isn't happening.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

 
i'll note that you are rolling the dice not just in terms of your own safety, but also that of the friends (and enemies) you ride with.

i'm never happy to realize i'm in a group with a bunch of people with no-name bikes.

Great post Dan. Maybe I should draw the distinction between open mold and counterfeit frames more on the buyer's end, more specifically, the uneducated buyer's end. My point being the distinction between someone (again, uneducated) buying a counterfeit 'S-Werks' branded frame thinking that they are getting a steal on a legit Specialized, and someone buying that same frame knowing they are inherently taking on additional risk.

With the open mold - I did not mean to say that people are not taking on additional risk (they are, for the reasons that you point out), but that no one is going to buy an unbranded open mold frame thinking they are getting a genuine Specialized. It's pretty difficult IMO to buy an open mold frame thinking you are going to get anything other than an open mold frame. Whether or not people understand the risks inherent in that is a separate issue, one that you are working on addressing.

You make some good additional points on the unsustainably high cost of frames. One interesting thing coming out of your discussion on QC is that what makes a Specialized a Specialized (or a Cervelo a Cervelo, etc), is not just the R&D, design, materials and manufacturing - it's also the QC. Maybe if they need to help justify the exorbitant costs we can hear some marketing on how one brand's QC process stands head and shoulders above the others.

"Maybe I should draw the distinction between open mold and counterfeit frames"

yes. very true. a counterfeit frame is definitely pretending to be something it isn't. an open mold frame isn't masquerading to be a specialized or cannondale, what have you.

i do think there's a varying level of unspoken assumption about all these frames. i asked hongfu a number of questions, these questions remain unanswered. until you uncover the answers to these questions these questions of warranty, who pays freight back and forth, and of course how these frames came to be available and sold, there are a lot of unknowns.

some of these frame and bike sellers are missing opportunities, in my opinion. if one of these companies was to really step up with attention to QC, warranty, customer service, then it might become a brand.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Yes, perzactly. I'll spend the extra $1000 or more to get a frame from a well-known manufacturer. If I were younger, I might have a road bike built up on a cheap carbon frame, but not now. I've had seat posts crack, forks crack badly, bottom bracket area crack, etc. and just on well-known frames, so what would I expect for a cheaper product? One guy I know had a fork break at 40 mph. He's still walking funny. Also, major manufacturers have been working for years to advance cycling engineering, and along comes some folks from China ripping off their designs? That's just not right....

When I'm screaming downhill at 20 mph I don't want to have to worry about my bike.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

To play devil's advocate, here, the major brands seem really bad at providing information on (much less marketing) their QC/engineering/testing processes. I just visited the Web sites of some of the biggies. Pretty much crickets on those things. There are some examples of QC tech companies marketing their stuff for B2B sales, and mentioning bike companies. I'm sure they do have rigorous QC, et al, because, after all, they're Trek/Specialized/Felt, right? But based on the easily available information, the average consumer wouldn't know the that they do any more than Dengfu, et al.

Warranty is different - the biggies do have transparent warranty policies.

And that's just the biggies. There are myriad small bike boutique manufacturers/sellers that seem to get the benefit of the doubt because they don't have Chinese-sounding names, etc. I'm also sure they do lots, but how am I supposed to know?

I get it. Manufacturing processes are boring. Consumers want sexy, shiny baubles like integrated center-pull front brakes.

But it's hard to go after the open-mold, direct-sell types for lack of transparency when the whole industry is pretty opaque.

You're an insider, so you know. I'm not. How am I supposed to know?

Maybe the bike manufacturers could form a consortium with a set of minimum standards, like destructively test every 100th fork or whatever. And if you adhere to those standards, you can put a shiny "FuckingSafe" logo on your bike, or something. And the standards would be transparent.

Edit: Cervelo has some stuff. And apparently their are government standards. But even Cervelo's stuff there is pretty lightweight. Anyone can put something on a Web site....

"the major brands seem really bad at providing information on (much less marketing) their QC/engineering/testing processes"

i disagree with this. they are VERY interested in providing this information, but the cycling media is not that interested in writing about it, because readers aren't that interested in reading about it. i am routinely invited to look at the processes by felt, cannondale, etc.

we treat these kinds of things like sports governance or anti-doping. we write about the occasionally, not very often, because while you SAY you know they are important, when we look at our reader stats you don't READ as if they are important.

and it's not just the engineering and QC, and the warranty. it's the recall. i just facepalm when i read about the lack of recalls on open mold and other off- or no-brand frames. exactly! there is no good recall process for brandless or small-brand bikes. the very fact that there are recalls speaks to a process that protects consumers.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Although QC is very important, it isn't sexy. Weight and widgets (and to a lesser extent aero) sell, not safety. The average consumer doesn't care what's going on inside their frame. Have your LBS display a bunch of frame tubes of differing quality sliced in half so you can see the internal finishing.