I’ve had my new R2.5 for about a week now, and taken 4-5 very enjoyable rides. Tonight, though, I feel like I am wobbling a bit throughout the whole ride. When I get home, I grabbed the rear wheel and tried to twist it, only to discover that the right chainstay has started to separate from the rear dropout. Now on this frame, the metal dropout fits inside the carbon stay and is bonded in (or was). As I twisted the wheel, I could see the dropout back out of the chainstay, yikes!!!
I called the shop 5 minutes before closing time and told them about it, they said that they would start on the warranty process tomorrow. I am pretty confident that they/Cervelo will replace it without much fuss, but this ain’t building up my confidence…
I’m new here, so please forgive my ignorance… sounds like Gerard is a Cervelo employee? If so, I have a gripe to air here. First, I love my Soloist Team. Love it. I ride it 5x more than my Colnago C40. On to my gripe. The front deraileur mount is vertical (i.e., 90 degrees), on the 73 degree seat tube. This means the FD isn’t sloped back the way it’s supposed to, making the tail of the cage higher than it should be. Thus, any bounce in the chain means noise. Very annoying. And it will throw the chain off more often as well. Very very annoying.
I’ve looked around, and I can’t find any others that are this way. My numerous contact attempts w/ Cervelo were rather curtly replied, and ultimately led to a “take it to the shop, they’ll adjust it corectly, and if need be send the frame back.” Well, I know how to adjust a deraileur, the shop is far away, and I sent pictures already. Plus, I need the darn bike and can’t just hand it over for them to potentially take their time replacing. So, what did I want them to do? 1) to be nice about it rather than argumentative. 2) offer some other kind of option – I told them I could use a dedicated TT bike, so give me a deal on a closeout 2004 P2K or something. But they just stopped responding.
In summary, I wouldn’t trade my Soloist as it is a perfect fit, I’m going to live with the chain throw and noise now and then. And I just may get a P2K or P3 for TTing. But I’m also going to give Q-Roo and others a better look than I would have.
Gerard Vroomen and Phil White founded Cervelo together. Unless I missed something huge, Phil is still around - but he lets Gerard handle us forum monkeys.
Ari – Sorry to hear about your frame. That sucks. I’m sure Cervelo will take care of it. I don’t think this reflects poorly on Cervelo. This is a new model, and new models always have problems in the beginning until all of the production issues are worked out. I bet they get you a new frame in a hurry, and will use yours as a sacrificial lamb to figure out why it failed, so it won’t happen again.
I had a similar problem with my frame when I got it last summer. I had a defective fork, that would not allow the headset to stay in adjustment. The steerer tube ended up cracking. Once I replaced the fork, all problems resolved and I love the bike.
Oh ya, the R 2.5…As much as I love my Cervelo I think I should point out that over on roadbikereview.com there are a few stories about R 2.5 frame failures. This may be more of a statement about the type of material rather than the company, the quality of my aluminum frame is amazing. CST
it’s not a new bike but it sounds like you are open to a solution.
setting the front derailleur mount on a bike can be a little tricky. a fraction of a degree out can cause a big distance down the derailleur cage several inches away. as a mechanic i routinely cut a tiny rectangle of plastic coke bottle and slip it between the front derailleur and the braze on. in your case putting it on top of the bolt will drop the rear end down. it’s amazing how much it will drop for a thin shim. tighten the bolt and it will be secure and your probelms will be solved. if your good you can cut the piece to the perfect size so no one will see.
again it’s not a new frame but it will save you a rebuild, ship cost, and time all for a $1.50 (but come on you were going to drink that coke anyway).
How many people remember back when the OCLV came out? Remember how they all cracked under the bottom bracket. Stuff like that happens. That’s why I’ll always stick with a brand that will stick behind their bikes. A lifetime warrenty says “don’t worry buddy I’ll be there when you need me.” Sniff… I think I’m going to call my dad.
Are you saying, that just because Cervelo is going to back up on their product, it is ok to sell it before it is tested long enough to confirm it´s strenght and potential weaknesses?
Hearing about carbonframes with lousy bonding isn´t new stuff. Maybe all you carbon-freaks should think about that when you lust after the newest, hottest carbon-ride.
Time to give those lovely titanium-frames a closer look, huuh?
ouch. assuming the stories at roadbikereview are similar in nature, it sounds like a processing issue (i.e. poor bonding practices) first, or maybe a bad batch of adhesive. these frames are, generally, too new to have been exposed to the elements long enough for a corrosion reaction to be occurring at the interface between the stays and the dropout…but out of curiosity, did you notice any “powder” or pitting in the metal?
it was either Gerard or Ves who I remember going on record as saying his designs (and fabricators?)were extra careful about consistent bondline thickness, galvanic corrosion barriers (i.e. a layer of fiberglass between the aluminum and carbon), and the like…and that not every company out there doing carbon stays paid as much attention to these things.
in any case, let’s wait to hear the story from Gerard and see what the root cause is. like others, I’m confident he’ll bird dog this until he’s sure it’s fixed.
As an owner of both the R2.5 and the P2K I can tell you that both are very quality bikes. I love both of the. I ride the R2.5 more at this point in the year. I have only had them over just over 2 months (aint my wife grand, bought me 2 top bikes the same day, I love her) and have not had a single issue with either one. I’ve got maybe 400m on the R2.5 and it’s not had any problems. I can’t say enought about the ride of the carbon R2.5.
Problems happend and I’ll stand by a company that will stand by me.
Maybe I’m a little dense… Are you saying that the hanger for the front derailleur is turned 17 degrees to the downtube? If so, Wow!
I had a problem with running a triple on my 2003 Soloist, in that its hanger is mounted too far forward. I had to have a huge (20mm) shim made to push the derailleur rearward. But my hanger does run parallel to the downtube.
“and what was the reason Cervelo put those carbon stays on there again?”
While you have a point about the carbon stays…let it be noted that the ONLY bikes Cervelo makes with carbon stays are its FULL CARBON FRAMES…They don’t do the carbon stay thing on their aluminum bikes.
So your small dig at Cervelo is off base. Your obvious bias against carbon bikes blinded you to that “small” detail.
I see your point about not buying carbon bikes due to failures, but I once rode over a guy who had his new, high end steel bike break for no apparent reason, I’ve had an aluminum chainstay crack, an aquaintence had a ti bike break, the early Mg frames all broke… I never heard of a Be frame breaking or a bamboo one, but only a dozen or so frames have been made in those materials.
Yes – the FD mount is perfectly vertical, while the seat tube is at 73*. A wedge isn’t going to work for this, as it’s way WAY too big of an angle to try to create. I’d need an offsetting wedge on the other side of the bracket, of course, which makes it all the more of a kludge.
Clearly, Cervelo messed up on this. And I’m getting more and more annoyed at it (even more so when I think about how they stopped responding to my emails on the subject).
I’m sorry to hear about your problem. As you may know, the rear dropout area is traditionally a problematic area on carbon frames (some of the other posters in this thread have commented on other brands), so we have gone to great lengths to develop a system that avoids these problems. The result is that this kind of problem is now very rare on an R2.5 (keep in mind that thousands have been sold). That said it will continue to have our attention and in fact, we recently developed an additional test that checks the bond of the dropouts even more accurately. We’re sorry yours slipped through our quality control.
If you would like, feel free to e-mail me your information and the name of the shop you are dealing with, and I will make sure your frame is replaced asap.
