Originally Posted by
Crandrew
Just what I thought. Are non italian ones the lower grade aluminum? How would I tell?
The mass-produced version of the Gara - which was being distributed in the US by Leader last year - is made of standard 6061-AL and looks like
this. The Italian-made version is made of custom-drawn Dedacciai Fire 7003-AL and looks like
this.
While the two frames do appear to be very similar, the most obvious way to tell the difference is the dropouts.
edit: are you talking about the ones on eBay? If so, those are the mass-produced frames (Cog House = Leader). $415 for the frame and carbon fork is a pretty good deal.