You need to ride more frames

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Baum Ristretto, Baum Mondrian Corretto & the '89 Merckx! | "If you could eat it in one sitting, hold your line." | twitter.com/Tinea_Pedis

Here is my 2 cents on all of this.

I decided to buy a copy frame. Why? Because I could not justify the cost of even a used carbon frame. I no longer race, weight is not the ultimate objection and I liked the look of the frame I got. Basically I wanted something that I would be hapy with without breaking the bank. I knew full well going in that this would not look or be finished like a top of the line frame. To be quite honest the fiish of the carbon is quite nice, no off layup marks or anything else.

Now for the bad news. As reported on other sites the B30 shell is not perfect. I chose BB30 because I have 2 set of cranks that are B30 and my SRM is bb30, along with I got a set of black SI's for virtually nothing. The non drive bearing pressed in pretty normal when compared to my canondales. The drive side was almost pressed in by hand, still had to use a press but it took very little effort. Installed with the 609 green loctite and figured I would see how that went.
More bad news, I ran all of the cables and for being internal they all went in smooth and easy. As i went to adjust the r-der i kept adjusting for more tension. Seemed a little odd so I pulled the cable tighter by hand and still had to add more tension using the barrel adjuster. I took a closer look and noticed that the cable housing was pulling into the frame and the shifting was getting worse and worse. Would take 3-4 shifts to get the r-der to move at all. Basically the cable housing stop was not bonded to the frame and just kept moving around. The internal liner was bunched up and there was basically no shifting....damn. I dare say I could of figured out how to fix this, but as it is a new frame I figure it should be a "warranty" issue

Now for good news. I contacted the seller with a rather pissy email, they said they would look into it and asked for pictures. I sent them a series showing the issue. There was no response for a few days and I sent them another email asking for an updated. They have responded that the frame is bad and they will repair/replace and they will pay for shipping back to china. To be honest I have not had time to box it up, but at least I have received some customer service. Once I get it boxed I will update what happens.

After reading a lot of threads on various boards this seems to be a pretty odd failure and truly seems to be a defect much like you could find in any frame from any company. I hope that this will get resolved and i wont have any other issues. Over the years I have had plenty of things fail so I am not worried that this falls into the chinarello category of paper in the steerer tube horror stories. But it also highlights that these are not the same quality as the name brand frames. Could this happen to a name brand...yes...but I kinda doubt it as they might have engineered a better way to do the cable stops.

You cannot afford a descent carbon frame but you have SRM ?

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Wilier Cento Uno
Colnago Master X-light
Wilier 18carati