I have a trek 2200 that a few years ago the night before RAGBRAI I decided to clean my bike very well. I cleaned it in detail and much to my surprise I found the front fork was cracked down both back sides. I even found the bonding point of where the legs go from alu. to carbon were cracking there as well.

I gambled and rode the bike the whole week of RAGBRAI with the fork very cracked. My point in this is even as much as I cleaned this bike previously I never really got up so close as to look for cracks anywhere.

Trek did warranty the fork but since the model color change had happened I would have to wait for an extened time for them to paint a fork to match the yellow old one. Trek paid for the cost of me to get a fork of my choice and I switched it to a threadless headset then and went with an Ouzo Pro.

I am not sure that most people would be looking for a cracks on thier frames. I never thought to and have rode now over 20K on this 2200. So before this guy gets compleletly hammered on this as he alread has been.

I know when these intergrated headsets came out our LBS suggested they might be more prone to failing do to the stress of the way they are designed.

I am trying to read the rest of this thread and keep getting errors when I go to the next page?

I personally could see how this could slip by a person if it was covered in paint as you said and only scraped it off to verify the crack. Heck I probably put over a 1K on the cracked fork and never even knew it was cracked.

I hope you get this resolved the right way.