Folding Bikes - frame broke in half on 2003 dahon boardwalk 6 speed

the bike broke in half at about 2" before the folding hinge as i was going uphill.
anyone have experience with dahon's frame warranty?
do they cover the cost of parts transfer from the broken frame?

I have a Boardwalk made in the same year as yours. If you act now, you could claim the warranty that covers the frame on all Dahon bikes-providing that you are the original owner and meet their own requirements. Check on their web site under Warranty for more information and phone them directly to discuss your problem.

Any official word on what Dahon will do to honor the warranty has to come from them. The full warranty can be found in your owner's manual; the one on the Dahon web page is abbreviated.

Worst case, you might have to pay a bike shop to strip the frame, and ship it to Dahon, and also to put the old components back on after it comes back. This might be a requirement even if you have the necessary tools and knowledge yourself. That's fairly standard practice for the honoring of frame warranties, but it can add up to a big percentage of the original cost of an inexpensive bike. It's how I read the warranty in the manual, though. If you bought your bike through a shop, rather than on line, then the shop might not charge you, or charge you as much, for stripping and reassembling the bike. That would be between you and them.

But don't take the word of anyone here, including me. Contact Dahon and see what they'll do for you.

the bike broke in half at about 2" before the folding hinge as i was going uphill.
...

Wow... or rather ouch... did you get hurt /// sounds deadly especially if there was other traffic behind you..

luckly i wasn't going fast and didn't fall off, just some scrapes and a bruised calf.

the bike is sitting at my LBS now, waiting on dahon to reply about the warranty.
if approved i'll have to pay the labor cost of transplanting the parts.
the shop said there's rust on the bottom of the break indicating cracking prior to the break.
anyone with similar models should probably check their bike for signs of crakage before too late.
my boardwalk wasn't even used often or hard and i'm well within the limits of the specs.
make me wonder if dahon replace this model due to prior knowledge of the problem.

Do you have any photographs of the failure you could post?

i brought the bike in before i can take any pics.
here a link to another broken boardwalk just like mine.
http://www.tomw.net.au/2005/bbb.html