epic fails in bike mfg
07-14-15, 11:12 PM
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epic fails in bike mfg
Ran over my road bike a month ago – forgot it was leaning against the passenger side of the car. But the good news is that BD was having a sale on full Ultegra Kestral Evoke.
Within the first couple of rides, I started hearing a noise that sounded a little like my shoe brushing the crank, but it wasn’t. Tried different shoes and pedals; sound still there. The bike has a bb30 crank on it and research indicated these bb’s are prone to noise.
So I took the crank off and realized that I wasn’t familiar enough with the system to want to take the bearings out. Left that for the ace mechanic at local bike shop to do since I had already made an appointment to take the bike in.
He pulled the bearings (actually adapters to a 24mm spindle), greased things, and put things back together while asking me if I had any extra washers. No, I had paid particular attention to what I was disassembling. But there was a gap between the crank and the bottom bracket – he had to put spacers in Evidently, Kestral spaced the bottom bracket by only pressing it in part way and it was the unsupported bb that was making the noise. I had noticed the bearing projecting, but had no experience with bb30.
Ok, $!-!i+ happens, but I’ve worked assembly and process are closely control. No way people should have been taken that type of shortcut. To my way of thinking, that was a major fail. I am defining a major fail as being systematic and repeated.
Examples:
Way back when, one of the gang got access to frames by Witcomb. They were evidently moving some production to the US from England where they were a respected brand. The price was very attractive, about 50% normal retail. 5 were ordered.
Every frame had a little raised blip opposite a braze on for water bottle cages where somebody had been ham handed with the drill press.
Reynolds made fork blades in two style: one that had a constant taper, and one that had a small step in the middle. One of the bikes had a fork with one of each. My frame eventually broke at the down tube / head tube lug because the brazing hadn’t penetrated that deeply.
Back during the bike boom of the mid 70’s I tried to open a shop. There were many problems with the venture which I won’t detail, but one was bikes were hard to come by. One practically had to order a container to assure stock and there were many odd bikes trying to fill the demand.
One was a bike called a Cazenave which was actually listed as a ‘Best Buy” by one of the consumer mags. It was a typically equipped French bike with Simplex ders, CLB Mafac clone brakes, and an orange peel paint job. Gearing was the typical 52/42 coupled with a 14/28 fw. More than you may want to know, but significant to the story.
The chain stays were half domed at the freewheel end. Unfortunately, there wasn’t clearance to the 14 t cog which rubbed. They corrected this by putting a thick washer on the axle. This threw the chain line off, so the bike was more than just prone to dropping the chain on downshifts to the small chainring. The situation could be improved, but not full corrected, by loosing the cotter pin and moving the chain ring inboard as allowed. I had occasion to open up the bb and found they all had sand in them.
What horror stories to you have? Looking for systemic problems that left the factory. Lambert / Viscount is too easy to qualify.
Within the first couple of rides, I started hearing a noise that sounded a little like my shoe brushing the crank, but it wasn’t. Tried different shoes and pedals; sound still there. The bike has a bb30 crank on it and research indicated these bb’s are prone to noise.
So I took the crank off and realized that I wasn’t familiar enough with the system to want to take the bearings out. Left that for the ace mechanic at local bike shop to do since I had already made an appointment to take the bike in.
He pulled the bearings (actually adapters to a 24mm spindle), greased things, and put things back together while asking me if I had any extra washers. No, I had paid particular attention to what I was disassembling. But there was a gap between the crank and the bottom bracket – he had to put spacers in Evidently, Kestral spaced the bottom bracket by only pressing it in part way and it was the unsupported bb that was making the noise. I had noticed the bearing projecting, but had no experience with bb30.
Ok, $!-!i+ happens, but I’ve worked assembly and process are closely control. No way people should have been taken that type of shortcut. To my way of thinking, that was a major fail. I am defining a major fail as being systematic and repeated.
Examples:
Way back when, one of the gang got access to frames by Witcomb. They were evidently moving some production to the US from England where they were a respected brand. The price was very attractive, about 50% normal retail. 5 were ordered.
Every frame had a little raised blip opposite a braze on for water bottle cages where somebody had been ham handed with the drill press.
Reynolds made fork blades in two style: one that had a constant taper, and one that had a small step in the middle. One of the bikes had a fork with one of each. My frame eventually broke at the down tube / head tube lug because the brazing hadn’t penetrated that deeply.
Back during the bike boom of the mid 70’s I tried to open a shop. There were many problems with the venture which I won’t detail, but one was bikes were hard to come by. One practically had to order a container to assure stock and there were many odd bikes trying to fill the demand.
One was a bike called a Cazenave which was actually listed as a ‘Best Buy” by one of the consumer mags. It was a typically equipped French bike with Simplex ders, CLB Mafac clone brakes, and an orange peel paint job. Gearing was the typical 52/42 coupled with a 14/28 fw. More than you may want to know, but significant to the story.
The chain stays were half domed at the freewheel end. Unfortunately, there wasn’t clearance to the 14 t cog which rubbed. They corrected this by putting a thick washer on the axle. This threw the chain line off, so the bike was more than just prone to dropping the chain on downshifts to the small chainring. The situation could be improved, but not full corrected, by loosing the cotter pin and moving the chain ring inboard as allowed. I had occasion to open up the bb and found they all had sand in them.
What horror stories to you have? Looking for systemic problems that left the factory. Lambert / Viscount is too easy to qualify.
07-15-15, 02:23 AM
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07-15-15, 07:50 AM
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Yes, if you buy a cheap bike in a box with a BB30 you're destined for trouble, at least, that was my experience when my BB30 BB failed after 150 miles of riding. Luckily with a bit of loctite and some $20 bearings, everything is fixed up and working now.
07-15-15, 08:30 AM
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SuperGimp
07-15-15, 10:17 AM
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07-15-15, 10:39 AM
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I got 99 problems....
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Does this mean ISO:9001 is not working? Holy crap.
07-15-15, 11:04 AM
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I see many road bikes with SRAM components.
Epic Manufacturing Fail.
Epic Manufacturing Fail.
