Originally Posted by
TenSpeedV2
If this were me, I would have gone down to a local bike shop there in Hawaii, purchased a bike, and taken it home with me to ride that day. I cannot imagine anything of quality coming out that box from Alibaba or whatever.
Have you ridden any frames from China or Taiwan? Wait...............................before you answer that. Trek, Cannondale, Fuji, Felt, Specialized, etc., etc., etc.* are all made in China and/or Taiwan with exception to possibly a couple of the highest end models.** Most likely, the great majority of folks that post on this Forum ride bikes from the factories there that have a "Badge" from a well known bike maker. I have four (4) Chinese carbon framesets*** and all have performed flawlessly. I race with them as well. The first one I bought is not young either at about 8 years old. I have 3 sets of carbon wheels from china as well (two tubular/one clincher) and again, all have performed without issue.
I will tell you two issues though. A set of fixed gear training wheels was laced improper at the valve stem. It was purely cosmetic but it was inexcusable. I build wheels and it bothered me a bit. They ended up giving me a nice discount and I have been using those wheels for over 6 years with thousands of miles. The second thing is, I'm a hobbit at 5'6" and about 155. My Teammate who is a Track National Champion bought a set from China and he is a big guy/Watt Monster. He had difficulty with perfect true after a few hard training rides and ended up changing them out.
So, yes, in general for me, I can imagine quality coming out of those boxes as I have been running multiple Chinese/Taiwan Carbon for over 8 years.
Edit Post: For reference, my brother EP'd me a Cervelo S3 a few years back. Did take the stock wheelset off and put on some Zipp 404's. It was most definitely an excellent bike and terribly fast. I can tell you after comparing Chinese carbon to the S3, for the price, the choice isn't even close. Heck, the last Chinese frameset I bought, I haggled with the eBay seller and got him down to $300 shipped. Steal.
*etc.....etc......etc......etc.....
**my Brother was the head Mechanic for a Trek Store a few years ago where only the high end Trek frames were made in the U.S. when i went to go visit him in the shop, he took me to the back and showed me a pile of Trek carbon framesets to be cut up because they cracked at the joints. Those were all the one's that were made in the U.S. He said not a one came back that was made overseas
***two track and two road