My one year old Trek TT frame now has a structural crack across the downtube near the headtube. It appeared within a week of new, but was originally thought to be cosmetic. It is now definitely a structural crack. The frame is now flexy and the crack opens up if you apply any twisting effort to the handlebars.
Does anybody have prior frame warranty with Trek? Will they try and fix this, or will they just replace it? The frame is just over a year old.
Impossible. Everyone knows that carbon is perfect.
I had a warrantee issue many years ago with a Trek 2300 (carbon model), They repaired and re-painted my frame. The aluminum lug for the seat post had cracked. The frame was about 6 years old when this happened.
You will have a stronger frame after it is repaired. That is the wonderful thing about carbon.
The frame will be X-rayed, in which they will try and determine whether or not it was a void in the composite. If it looks bad enough, it will be replaced.
Bring your frame to your local Trek dealer. They will take care of it.
If you want to save some money take all of the parts off of the bike yourself but, Do leave the cable housing in the frame. Wrap some tape around the ends so they don’t come out. Trust me.
Yes…It is a pain in the ass sometimes.
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Thanks all who had something relevant to contribute.
I purchased the frameset and built the bike up. Bicycle Sports sold me the frameset, but they are now gone. The crack is right at the lug joint near the headtube. My initial thought was that they would literally just glue it back together. My concern is that there are similar cracks at some of the other joints, but they don’t appear to be this significant. However, this is how the problem crack started. I’m not sure when it went from cosmetic to structural, but all of a sudden, I noticed that the frame felt unusually flexy on the trainer. I raced it this past weekend the way it was. When I hit a small pothole in the road, the front end made a thumping sound I’ve never heard before. Fortunately the bike stayed together. Now I’ll be stripping the frame down to send back. I’m hoping it won’t take too long.
I remember reading that Gordo cracked his and got a replacement.
They would not just glue it back together, but reinforce it with fabric. I imagine that you would NEVER know it was repaired.
On my white one – bought it third hand so no replacement. It’s a very expensive ornament now. Tom Evans had the same model year and same crack. He was the original owner so they replaced it.
On my current one – paint cracks are normal where the frame is put together – down tube and seat tube.
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