I was reading an article in last month’s Bicycling magazine covering some of the downsides of buying generic chinese carbon frames, wheels etc. They pointed to one example where a guy using a chinese stem (or maybe handlebar) was seriously injured when the part snapped at high speed. I have now purchased many name brand frames and wheels as well as chinese frames, wheels, stems handlebars etc. I’ve had a couple bad experiences with the chinese stuff, but most of it has been excellent, including my mountain bike frame which just takes a beating after beating and keeps on ticking, is super light too!
So it seemed to me that the article may have been pointing out an anomaly with respect to the failures of Chinese parts in trying to make its point and perhaps the failure rate in the chinese goods may be just the same as the branded goods. They didn’t mention any known failures in brand name goods, even though we all know there have been many major recalls over the years. This got me to thinking whether there have been any studies done comparing the failure rates of the brand name goods to the chinese goods. I know there have been failures of both, but to simply point out an example of one and not explore the failures of the other, as the story did, seems somewhat biased and academically dishonest to me.
I don’t know of any studies but I think the two big issues the article pointed out are quality control and warranty. At the end of the day, you always get what you pay for, cheap now means expensive later.
Maybe so. I’ve had my dengfu for a few years and lots and lots of miles. Never had an issue and when I replace my TT I’ll go with another Chinese frame. Many friends of mine have also since bought from them with no issues either
How many recalls have their been on no-name frames or components? Why do you think that is? Hint - it’s not all about quality.
Even if you assumed that the quality is equal between the big brands and the no-name stuff, the bigger issue is that the no-name stuff usually doesn’t have a strong company behind the product. They couldn’t do a recall if they wanted to and probably don’t even have a good way to identify an issue since they don’t have a dealer network.
I’m sure some of the no-name stuff is great and you can get a great deal on it and never have an issue. For me, I’d rather pay extra and know that a big company (worried about liability) is standing behind the quality of the product and will step in with a recall if an issue is discovered. Big companies don’t neccessarily care more about the safety of riders, but they don’t want to be sued.
When you are buying no-name stuff, most of the selling parties are individuals or small companies who just take their chances and couldn’t execute a recall if they wanted to. The manufacturer doesn’t care either unless they are selling to a major brand.
I was reading an article in last month’s Bicycling magazine covering some of the downsides of buying generic chinese carbon frames, wheels etc. They pointed to one example where a guy using a chinese stem (or maybe handlebar) was seriously injured when the part snapped at high speed. I have now purchased many name brand frames and wheels as well as chinese frames, wheels, stems handlebars etc. I’ve had a couple bad experiences with the chinese stuff, but most of it has been excellent, including my mountain bike frame which just takes a beating after beating and keeps on ticking, is super light too!
So it seemed to me that the article may have been pointing out an anomaly with respect to the failures of Chinese parts in trying to make its point and perhaps the failure rate in the chinese goods may be just the same as the branded goods. They didn’t mention any known failures in brand name goods, even though we all know there have been many major recalls over the years. This got me to thinking whether there have been any studies done comparing the failure rates of the brand name goods to the chinese goods. I know there have been failures of both, but to simply point out an example of one and not explore the failures of the other, as the story did, seems somewhat biased and academically dishonest to me.
Thoughts?
Who pays for the majority of the advertising in Bicycling magazine, Chinese generic manufacturers or the big brands?
Even if you assumed that the quality is equal between the big brands and the no-name stuff, the bigger issue is that the no-name stuff usually doesn’t have a strong company behind the product.
Completely agree, no-name stuff don’t have a strong company behind them.
They couldn’t do a recall if they wanted to and probably don’t even have a good way to identify an issue since they don’t have a dealer network.
Here I think you may be overestimating dealer networks and underestimating ‘social networks’. There are many forums and sites discussing these chinese carbon companies, or at least the most reliable and popular ones. These companies depend on these forums, and even participate in them. I doubt many people buy from them without consulting these websites first. If someone has an issue, it will be known, maybe even faster than if it went through a dealer network. Remember Jordan Rapp’s post about Kona and the article he posted there called “The engineers lament”? Well, it turns out that if a defect goes through a dealer network and gets to a big brand company’s engineering department, this company may choose not to act on it, if their calculations tell them it is not relevant. On the other hand, for a chinese no-name company, the defect will be known to everyone in these forums almost instantaneously. These chinese carbon frames signal a changing economy in which dealer networks are unnecessary but on the other hand clients have to keep up with information, form groups and share their experience. It is not for everyone.
…If someone has an issue, it will be known, maybe even faster than if it went through a dealer network. Remember Jordan Rapp’s post about Kona and the article he posted there called “The engineers lament”? Well, it turns out that if a defect goes through a dealer network and gets to a big brand company’s engineering department, this company may choose not to act on it, if their calculations tell them it is not relevant. On the other hand, for a chinese no-name company, the defect will be known to everyone in these forums almost instantaneously. These chinese carbon frames signal a changing economy in which dealer networks are unnecessary but on the other hand clients have to keep up with information, form groups and share their experience. It is not for everyone.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. Surely if it gets to the engineering department, is properly analysed and then based on sound design/manufacturing knowledge it is decided that action is not required, then action is not required? Are you suggesting companies should make design decisions based on kneejerk public opinion rather than logical analysis?
“A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.”
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. Surely if it gets to the engineering department, is properly analysed and then based on sound design/manufacturing knowledge it is decided that action is not required, then action is not required? Are you suggesting companies should make design decisions based on kneejerk public opinion rather than logical analysis?
Basically what I am saying is that if it goes through a dealer network and the engineering department doesn’t act on it, regardless of the reason, nobody will know. But in a social economy, everybody will know about every single case of defect. I am definitely not making suggestions on how companies should make decisions.
My real question, though, is whether an actual study has ever been done. Is there any real conclusion, based upon any kind of concrete evidence (i.e. scientific studies), that on the whole branded is better than unbranded Chinese or vice versa. Otherwise, we always get to the same place, which is people are just throwing out opinions and anecdotes that don’t accurately reflect the big picture and are most likely based on an anomaly and everyone just starts yelling.
The Bicycling article, for example, cites a company such as Hylix when referring to the more cheaply made stuff that could break. I’ve used Hylix stems on all of my bikes for the greater part of 10 years and have never had a problem, not even a hint of a problem.
First of all, I am a fan of unbranded frames and parts. My experiences have been positive and I enjoy the process of building and wrenching bikes, so it just makes sense to me.
No systematic study has been done. But if anyone likes to poke holes in the counterfeit industry, it’s Specialized.
Clearly, Specialized is pissed and has created a campaign against counterfeit products (…and I completely understand why). However, their arguments always come across as anecdotal and not representative of the people that I know who are using ‘straight from China’ products.
Ultimately, it’s not even feasible to do a systematic study. You really would have to target each factory (not sellers), to which the end user really has no idea if they are buying a frame built from a more reputable manufacturer or not. Moreover, it’s not really in the cycling industry’s best interest to even do so; All they need is one knock-off frame to fail to create the message that they want to convey to the public. …and that message is ‘doubt’ about product quality.
I bought a frame from Miracle Trade /ICAN for $600 delivered. The frame was nicely finished, came with a really nice seat post and had my much preferred threaded bottom bracket. It was a rock solid racing frame: extremely stiff and confidence inspiring handling. On the other hand, the internal cabling rattled, was prone to friction, had poorly designed routing and generally annoyed the shit out of me after the first year. This minor issue actually became major after I started getting some un-repairable corrosion on the non-replaceable FD cable routing. I addition the RD hanger wasn’t straight when I got it, requiring a trip to the shop to fix (not a big deal but annoying). In the end I got so annoyed with the cable issues that I ditched the frame. This made any savings upfront meaningless.
I bought a carbon handlebar from Dengfu. It’s a great shape, is very stiff and is light as hell. I still use it. This is the one piece of Chinese stuff that’s worked out for me.
I bought a carbon stem, also from Dengfu. Despite extremely careful torqueing (less than 5Nm) of the rear binder bolts, the stem stripped on a ride. Very dangerous.
I bought a set of 50MM carbon/alloy wheels from Farsports with Novatec hubs. This is likely the most reputable of the generic Chinese wheelbuilders and Novatec hubs are fairly well regarded. When I first got the wheels, the freehub body kept binding and I was forced to disassemble it (something you’re not really intended to do). In the freehub body I found numerous metal filings which were causing the binding. Top quality manufacturing and quality control there. I had the laboriously clean out and then repack the freehub body with expensive, hard to find grease specifically designed for that job. After that, the wheel were OK except the the brake track wasn’t even (causing bumping) and the rear wheel lost true a couple of times. At about 2,500 miles, I broke a spoke. Another one broke 500 miles later. I weigh 155 lbs, this seemed a ridiculous. I didn’t really want to rebuild the entire wheels, so I went back to my trusty Shimano wheels which have 10K+ miles on them and are still laser straight. The carbon wheels now sit in my basement. This was the final straw.
So no, I won’t be buying any more Chinese generic stuff. It’s crap and I don’t have time for crap. Spend a bit more and buy good stuff.
My real question, though, is whether an actual study has ever been done. Is there any real conclusion, based upon any kind of concrete evidence (i.e. scientific studies), that on the whole branded is better than unbranded Chinese or vice versa. Otherwise, we always get to the same place, which is people are just throwing out opinions and anecdotes that don’t accurately reflect the big picture and are most likely based on an anomaly and everyone just starts yelling.
The Bicycling article, for example, cites a company such as Hylix when referring to the more cheaply made stuff that could break. I’ve used Hylix stems on all of my bikes for the greater part of 10 years and have never had a problem, not even a hint of a problem.
So what? Your experience is an anecdote. Bad quality control means the customer may get a unit that works perfectly or may get a total piece of shit. Imagine if a stem company had horrific quality control so one in a hundred stems suffer catastrophic failure with the rest working well. You could buy five stems over a few years and have a roughly 94% chance of having a great experience. Meanwhile, a name brand stem with a one in ten thousand chance of failure would have a 99.94% chance of a good outcome in the same scenario. The name brand company may even have designed their stems so the failures they do have are not usually catastrophic. You could recommend the bad QC stem company to all your friends, confident that they will have the same experience as you since five out of five worked perfectly, but if you have more than a few friends then chances are one of them will be eating pavement.
The fact that threads like the ones on RBR are not filled with tales of failure is pretty good evidence that the fear mongering is unjustified. But those threads also detail all sorts of issues with building up frames. While many of those issues indicate cost savings are achieved by leaving some of the finish work to the end customer, others make it clear that bad product is making it through. Having something like a cable hole drilled in the wrong location doesn’t mean a frame will unexpectably break, but it does make one wonder about how much testing, if any, is going on.
Some of this stuff is a real WTF. I recall a new fat bike frame being sold with the wrong dropout spacing. The designer had used the right dimension but applied it to the wrong location, leading one to suspect the frame was designed totally in a CAD program with a prototype never being assembled.
What I suspect is going on is that there is a lot of bad engineering and build quality going on, but the margin of safety with heaver carbon parts is such that catastrophic failures do not often occur.
It probably isn’t feasible, but on the other hand they could do something if they really wanted to and have the money to do it. What they have done and published has so many holes that their work is meaningless except from a marketing viewpoint, which is probably their only goal.
If they wanted to do something to make an impact they would buy a whole bunch of FM098 frames from multiple sources and donate a bunch of Venge low end frames. How many frames would be sufficient would be the only real issue and would vary based upon what you wanted to show - more frames would be needed to show failure rates less to just show strength and stiffness differences. Send all the frames to an independent lab and have them tested to failure and tested for stiffness. Then publish the entire results. The results would be limited and not applicable to all frames and all unbranded frame sources/manufacturers, but would still be significantly more meaningful that any of the other “studies” they have done.
If the results showed significant differences, especially from a safety viewpoint, that one study IMHO would do more harm to the unbranded carbon market than anything they have done to date. The problem is if the study showed that the differences were minor, subtle, and had no impact on safety, then they would have shot themselves in the foot. I kinda wonder if they have already done something like this.
Yep, they certainly could do this with a venge knock off (I think that’s the RFM106. The FM098 is clearly different and I used to own one). Sampling distributions show that 30 frames would be more than enough to closely approximate the population distribution. …But I really think that anecdotes of failure can be a powerful motivator when it comes to swaying those on the fence (much more so than a stiffness test).
The best you’ll probably ever see is a side by side comparison of a particular product. Even with that, who is going to fund that comparison? The only parties with motivation are either the big brands (to bash on no-name stuff) or the no-name guys trying to show that their product is just as good or better. Either way, they are only going to fund a study when they know the outcome will be favorable. It’s more about marketing than objective product comparison unless you get a non-biased party into the mix.
With that, it’s buyer beware. Even if I thought the quality of no-name and Brand name parts were the same, that doesn’t make me comfortable. Despite best intentions by the best engineers, parts will be designed and manufactured with flaws. For something like a bottle cage, I’ll take my chances on the no name brand. For anything safety related, I want a big company with a valuable brand and deep pockets to be standing behind that product. When a safety-related failure is identified, it is really hard for them to ignore it.
I’ve got several specialized bikes and I’ve been “lucky” enough to be part of their Tarmac fork recall and the Shiv bar recall. It was a pain in the ass for sure. I won’t debate whether those issues warranted a recall or not, but Specialized felt like they did and spent millions of $'s and took a big hit on the brand by doing a recall. Does anyone really think a no-name carbon frame with a handful of fork failures would be able or willing to issue a recall of those frames?
I’m not condemning no-name bike parts. I think it’s a great option to save some $'s and not have to pay for all the overhead and marketing associated with the big brands. In my younger days, I would have chosen the $400 Chinese carbon wheels over the $2k zipps any day. These days, I’m more risk averse and don’t mind paying for the peace of mind that comes with buying from a big company that is constantly stressing out about product liability and quality.
In the freehub body I found numerous metal filings which were causing the binding. Top quality manufacturing and quality control there. I had the laboriously clean out and then repack the freehub body with expensive, hard to find grease specifically designed for that job.
Almost as bad as finding this note in a pair of socks begging for help to be freed from torture in a Chinese factory. http://i.imgur.com/61SqydU.jpg
So it seemed to me that the article may have been pointing out an anomaly with respect to the failures of Chinese parts in trying to make its point and perhaps the failure rate in the chinese goods may be just the same as the branded goods.
Most of the branded goods are also made in China. So it’s really branded vs generic.
And it’s a no brainer. Buying a branded item from a company with a good rep is going to add security. They have a lot more to lose, more skin in the game, compared to some outfit who was the low priced bidder who will simply disappear and then reemerge if they get a lot of bad feedback.
So… at the very least buy from Chinese companies that have been in business a few years and have a good rep.
I think the article painted with a broad brush of all unbranded Chinese parts, but the article was specific in saying “counterfeit” parts, ie. it says s-works but clearly is not coming out of the specy factory. I think Dengfu and few others have gained enough reputation that a series of failures in one of the their products would be an issue to them, granted they don’t follow a western system of recall and warranty. I see the Dengfu and other more common open molds as being more like buying second hand… You are buying a product as is with no warranty explicit or implied.
