Originally Posted by
TiHabanero
Our shop is no longer inspecting frames for crash damage. It started with a carbon frame that harbored a crack for 3 months and then it catastrophically failed in the down tube. We never experienced that before with aluminum or steel frames, so now we simply decline crash damage inspections for all frames. We tell them to contact the manufacturer or if it is one of ours we will contact the maker for them.
If they contact the manufacturer, I assume they will in turn tell the customer to deal with the shop where it was purchased.
I assume at that point the customers only recourse is to have that shop disassemble the bike and return to the manufacturer for inspection. If it passes, it gets sent back to be reassembled. $200 all told ?. Or gets sent back for the customers choice to use/discard/fix. Or maybe a biggie like Trek pulls a “if you send to us for inspection and it fails, we destroy the frame” policy. A CYA policy.
In truth and short of ultrasound or CAT scan, X-Ray, etc.... it’s a bit of a crapshoot for a shop to inspect a carbon frame and declare it to be sound, when in reality you can’t tell what’s really going on under the paint.