good luck.

Don't make the mistake of confusing open mold frames with frames being dumped on eBay.

Open mold frames can come from factories with QC, EN testing and PLI. They are not always cutting edge in design but are manufactured to standards that mean they are solid, reliable products.

The frames being dumped on eBay may be fine or they may be either QC rejects or cheap crap that will asplode down the line. They most often don't have EN certification and the shadowy sources fronting them don't carry any PLI.

Roll the dice.

I'm always amazed by the americans' blanket assertion that made in china is crap, but even I would be a bit concerned about buying no-brand China made stuff, not just bikes. Where it is certified and inspected for recognised standards or better still if it is OEM for an established brand then Chinese made is not an issue. If it is all a bit murky as to who is making it then I'm wary.

I just bought a new carbon fiber Colnago Ace w/Ultegra groupset. The bike is a "Product of Italy" with the frame coming from Taiwan. My understanding is that Colnago only makes their top two model frames in their factories. I'm not quite ready to spend 9K plus on frame not made in Taiwan/China.

It seems that every year it gets harder and harder, but it is important to me to try and not support China if I can.


I don't know much about Colnago stuff, but it is my understanding that Trek's 6 series frames are still made in the USA which is the frameset I would probably buy if I went to Carbon. The frame being made outside of china is only one reason, the other and more important is that my kickass LBS is a Trek dealer. In fact, they have a pretty sweet 6 series ultegra bike in there right now priced at $4600.00.

I didn't mean to confuse other people, just assuming that the majority of the ebay chinese frames are from open mold designs. I agree with you that it is a risk, so that's why if it were me, I'd much rather buy something like a CAAD frame/frameset for basically the same price off ebay.

I wonder if there really is a big advantage in some of these chinese carbon frames over something like a CAAD9/10 (or some other big name frame for the same $) for the purposes most people are using them for?

Serotta HSG is around $5k, Calfee Tetra is $3k, and Calfee has a custom "sell-off" frame for under $1800 on their website right now. I'm sure there's other USA made carbon frames available for less than $9k. Time framesets are under $5k, not sure what the BMC Impec will be but probably not $9k. Even the Colnago C59 is under $6k. Okay, those numbers are a far cry away from $400-800 chinese carbon frame, but...

You are correct in stating that there are some USA made carbon frames for less then 9K. However, my Colnago was less then 3K completely built. I'm not all that good wrenching nor do I have all the proper tools for it, so for me buying a frameset and then the components would have meant letting the LBS build most of it. In the long run it doesn't matter as I've always wanted a Colnago anyway. I just needed an excuse to get one.