cleon

I see them quite a bit here but don't know anything about them. Based on this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesis_Industry they seem to be on par with Felt, Trek, Raleigh, Jamis, et al.?

Grasschopper

Sundance89

This sounds an awful lot like Yogi Berra.

Macster

Can you get more trollish? Gawd!

Kurt Erlenbach

Used to be one of the great names in bike manufacturing. My first real bike, in the 70s, was a Motobecane, and I wish to this day I still had it. The name was bought years ago, and now they are BD bikes - good, but nothing special.

Walter

Check out BikesDirect.com for their line-up. Quality is solid and prices range from good to very good.

Kurt above is right aout their history (my 1st "real" bike was a Moto too and I bought a vintage Gran Jubilee awhile ago for nostalgic reasons).

Op you will be accused of shilling and if this thread becomes a flamefest I'll shut it down.

BillyD

Ditto.

LowCel 

Uh huh.

cleon

Thanks guys. I really had no clue about them but just noticed that they were popular, and they were priced well. When googled I came across that link that pointed out all of the brands manufactured under the same tree so was really just an honest, albeit perhaps naive, question. Thanks for the replies. That's all I wanted to know.

motobecane69

honestly, in the past year this forum has started giving them a lot more respect. people finally had to just admit that they are paying too much for their CAAD's and other aluminum bikes. Not to say that CAAD's aren't good bikes or that they aren't better than a Motobecane, but your not getting an Ultegra equipped CAAD for $1000. They are great bikes, I just sold my grand sprint with carbon seat stays to upgrade to a carbon fiber immortal. $1900 for full SRAM Force group and 1500 gram Ksyrium elite wheels stock? how I can I go wrong? My friend just paid 3200 a few months back for a madone 5.2 with 1900gram Bontrager Race wheels. Dont get me wrong, the madone has some sweet improvements like internal cable routing and the carbon is molded to automatically hold the speed and cadence sensor for his bike computer which is really neat but its not $1300 neat.

At the very least, it's a great way to get a great groupset. I'm going to sell my ksyrium elites cuz i'm a clyde and go with my existing set of 32 spoke fusion wheels and 50mm low spoke count carbon tubulars. if another brands really nice carbon frame comes up for sale on ebay, I'll consider snatching it up. Also, if I crash and break my immortal frame, I can buy a new one for $500. I can crash this bike 3 times and still have less invested than my friend does in his madone.

cleon

Hmm..it looks like my original link didn't even work so I edited it to point to the correct source. The info I was looking at said this..

"Kinesis Industry Co. Ltd. is a manufacturer of aluminum and carbon fiber bicycle frames, forks, and components. Based in Taiwan, it has a plant in Guangzhou, China, and an American subsidiary (Kinesis USA, Inc.) in Portland, Oregon that generates $5–$10million in annual sales[1]. The company was founded in 1989 by former employees of Giant Bicycles, and is headed by Tom Jeng. Kinesis manufactures and markets it own brand of frames, forks, complete bicycles and accessories[2] which are available only in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. [3]
Brands also manufactured by Kinesis include Diamondback Bicycles, Felt Bicycles, GT Bicycles, Schwinn, Jamis, K2, Raleigh, Trek, Kross and Kona — as well as the brands marketed by the U.S. company Bikesdirect.com: Motobecane USA, Dawes USA, Cycles Mercier, Windsor America."

At the risk of being tarred and feathered, beaten, then re-tarred...I'm going to ask one more question. Does this mean those brands are literally under the same manufacturing process and quality assurance protocols? I understand the design specs might be different, but had no idea so many brands were sourced from the same place until recently...and yes... I realize it's probably old news, but it's been over a decade since I've shopped for a bike.

LesterOfPuppets

You'd be amazed by how many different makes and models have been manufactured by Giant over the years.

tagaproject6

Your source is WIKIPEDIA?!?!

:

cleon

Lol..yes. Wikileaks was under investigation and shut down by the CIA so it was my backup.

oldbobcat

Not necessarily. Primary responsibility for the quality of the product rests with the company whose name is on the frame, and a single manufacturer can have different protocols, procedures, and levels of autonomy with each of its clients. That said, Kinesis has been around for a long time and they distribute components under their own brand.

My experience assembling bikes from bikesdirect.com has been mostly positive and improving. The main drawback I've seen is that the frame designs are a bit long in the tooth and some of the finishing kit selections are made based on cost over ergonomics.

garate55

I've got a 2010 Immortal Ice with 2600 miles on it with only a new cassette and chain with of course a change of tires as well. Only as of late have I had an incessant ticking noise from the bottom bracket and I have had it serviced right after it started a few weeks back. It had been a great bike so far and my first real road bike since I started riding early last year. I just couldn't justify spending 2200 on a well known name brand and I didn't know enough to buy from craigslist or ebay.
Just thought I would throw my 2 cents in because obviously thats all I can afford.

mazdaspeed

More like motobechang.

gregf83 

It sounds like Kinesis is a contract manufacturer. They don't design the bikes and wouldn't need to own any of the intellectual property associated with any bikes they make. If they were building for Felt they certainly wouldn't be able to transfer any of the designs/technology that Felt provided to other bikes they made.

This is very much like Apple computers/phones being built by the same contract manufacturers that build for other major computer brands. Intellectual property and quality control protocols are unique to each company hiring the contract manufacturer.

cleon

Ok, it sounds like a generic brand then is NOT necessarily just a rebadged name brand, which is kind of what I was getting at.

motobecane69

This is a very good statement. I'm a big bikes direct fan and a lot of fans are quick to say "They are kinesis frames. kinesis makes frames for BLAH BLAH BLAH, so they are good frames" Well that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Kinesis is a business like any other. IF someone has money to spend they could conceiveably make frames to lower standards if that is what is requested. Time has shown and proven Bikes Direct frames are in fact every bit as good as your major vendors frames.

I also agree about the frame designs being long in the tooth, at the same time, that doesn't make them BAD designs, just not the latest and greatest. For example, my girlfriends 2010 ford focus has microsoft sync that lets us play music from my droid through bluetooth, talk hands free through the cars speakers, and charge phones with the usb port in the dashboard. Other vendors have cars in a similar size that don't have those modern features. They may just have a cd player and am/fm radio. The key purpose of the car is still there, to provide transportation from point a to point b. If you can afford the added features, great. If your on a budget and really are just concerned with getting around, get the cheaper car. The immortal bike that I am buying appears to be the same immortal frame that they were selling 5 years ago while other companies are churning out latest and greatest items. I'm 240lbs. it doesn't matter a whole lot if my frame weighs 1.2 kg or 900grams. I love the sleek look of internal cable routing in carbon frames but when your riding your bike, do you really notice if the cables running along the top and down tubes? I don't, I'm more interested in how my bike rides. One thing that it does give me is reassurance that I'm buying a good quality frame because the design has been around long enough that if there were major flaws or issues with them breaking, I would have heard about it by now.

JSMaxwell

Did they check the bearings in the BB? A broken bearing (I'm told it happens) will make a ticking each time you pedal.

motobecane69

regardless of the issue, the bottom bracket has nothing to do with the frame brand, it would have to do with the actual bottom bracket used. now granted, yes they are spec'ing out the parts that go on them but how much does an outboard bottom bracket setup go for? $30 not a big deal. I thought I had a bottom bracket issue, changed it cuz I had one laying around and found out that it was actually just me not tightening my new titanium skewer down enough!

cleon

Maybe that's where the brand becomes more of an issue? When they spec lower priced parts to hit a price point (or maybe just lower QA standards)? I'm guessing that's ultimately where the real differences might lie vs frame construction (realizing the DESIGN might still be different). For the record, I bought a low cost carbon frame mail order and moved all of my 105 components over to build my training bike and am very happy with it so have no particular bias. Also love my Cannondale, Trek and Giant bikes.

joe_5700

My question is whether the same $ is invested by BD for each frame as say Trek, Cannondale or Specialized?

bobbycorno

This is common in the bike biz, from BD all the way up to the "big kids". And ditto for frame geometry, especially in big sizes: 73.5 seat angle? On an XL frame??? Give me a break...

SP
Bend, OR