Maybe that's why Canon doubled the shutter life in their new camera by making it out of carbon.

If you want to troll, they set up a subforum specifically for that.

It went out with a whimper, not a bang.

A light press fit, if they made it correctly. At the LBS, we have some bearings that are a skosh oversized for the frames that have a sloppy fit with the normal bearings. Pro tip for anyone planning to install one: put it in the freezer to shrink it, and warm the frame to expand it, before you attempt the pressing. The bearing is oversized because there's a super-thin shim on the outside, and it can crumple quite easily. Oh, and it's not BB30.

On the original topic, what would irk me is having my bike be offline while getting this taken care of. If you're missing training, racing, or important rides, it's not strictly no-harm no-foul anymore. Also, the customer is supposed to pick up the tab on labor, which would come to about $150 where I work.

Fortunately I have other bikes I can train and race on. It will end up costing me a bottom bracket and headset and the labor to install these.

I took the frame to the shop today. It will be a week or more before I get a response from Trek's warranty department, but the guys at the shop were almost 100% sure it would be covered and I would be getting a new frame.

From what you described, I'd be pretty confident they'd cover it too. We've had to really lean on them for coverage on chainstay breakage, however.

Always get a kick out of this comment from guys with carbon forks. FWIW I've broken a bunch of steel frames over the years. And doing some research a few years back steel components were around 75% of the most recalled bike parts.

And aside from the obvious dogma, "steel is real" is bad writing. It indicates that all other material is not real, and therefor imaginary or an hallucination. I've taken enough drugs in my time to know that the welt I got from getting clocked with an aluminum baseball bat in a brawl was not something I conjured up in an altered state. The three breasted stripper was.

Especially if those products fail on a regular basis.

Like this.

Governer Petomane said it best: "We have to protect our phony baloney jobs!"

Incorrect. Brazing is done with brass on bike frames. If you've never played with it. brass is considerably softer than steel. The effective result of brazing is quite similar to glue. Welding comes with it's own issues. And your presumption that carbon is softer than steel shows you haven't been paying much attention to bike parts. Or at least never rode an old steel frame.

I didn't get a "harumph" out of that guy!

I simplified slightly for the audience. Brass, yes, is softer than steel by some margin, but not orders of magnitude softer as is the case with comparing carbon composite to any metal. The metallurgical bond between brass and steel is also quite a bit stronger than the bond between glue and metal or even glue and carbon composite.

As far as carbon composite being softer than steel; of course it is. Two issues:

1) you confuse the nominal strength of a strand of carbon fiber with the overall strength of the bulk composite. Carbon strands are incredibly stiff, but they are set in a relatively soft epoxy matrix. The bulk material property is the combined effect of these two materials.

2) you are confusing structural strength with a material property. The advantage of carbon is you can shape it in such a way as to make a very stiff bike frame for the weight. Obviously if you were not weight constrained, you could make a very much stiffer frame out of steel.

No, I'm not. If you're talking carbon strands vs. a metal in it's manufactured state then yes, metal is "harder". But carbon is never used as a "stand alone" in bike frames, it's obviously laid into epoxy resin, the end product, depending on that resin can certainly durometer out harder than a whole bunch of metals.

And you're dead wrong about brazed joints being stronger than glued, certainly for shear strength depending on joint clearances and design. Some industrial epoxies can produce double the shear value of your average brazed joints. I'm probably one of the few people commenting on this that has worked with both BTW.

Epoxy can frequently be stronger than the material it is gluing together.

Um, I have a spool of carbon tow sitting on my desk that would suggest that carbon fibers are actually quite soft and supple - not even as rigid as a hair on your head. It is when they are brought together as threads, woven into fabrics, and introduced into a matrix that they begin to have much structure. Individual carbon fibers are simply nylon fibers that have been altered through chemical and thermal treatments.

First, epoxy is actually the softer of the two materials in CF composite. It makes no sense for the matrix material to be harder than the filler. I mean, does anything improve if you make a composite out of steel matrix and cooked pasta noodle filler? On the flip side, how about a matrix of cooked pasta (or other soft material) with steel strands? It does make sense to cushion a strong but brittle material with a softer material. It would not surprise me if the bulk material property of carbon strand is stronger than that of steel.

Again, this is confusing geometry with material properties. Epoxies can have huge shear values because they are laid up in extremely thin layers and cured in place. Brazed joints, to my knowledge at least, have to have a comparably loose fit in order to wick the brazing material up into the joint. Make up a bulk (say, 1/4 inch diameter rod) tension test sample of any epoxy and I don't think it will show higher tensile strength than brass.

That is... on very well brazed/welded. If the temperature of brazing wasn't proper, contamination, etc... well... brazing/weld doesn't really... hold it...

my bike is made from [-((carbon fiber)^2)]^.5, thus my bike is non-real.

The carbon fiber (which doesn't resist compression very well) adds tensile strength and the epoxy (which doesn't resist stretching very well) adds compression strength. Like rebar in concrete. (I suspect you know this but other people might not.)

Current carbon frames are more like the "monolithic" structure (except for the bonded-in metal bits). They aren't just tubes glued together (anymore).

Resolution:

The warranty claim was accepted and I'll be getting a new Madone 4.6 frameset (closest in tech to my original 5.2). I'm a little bummed because of the geometry change Trek made to its mid-line bikes; the headtube is a full inch taller than my old bike (including headset) which means the new frame will have to be a 56cm instead of the original 58cm. The original race geometry is available only on the top of the line 6.x series Madones; just a head's up in case anyone is looking at buying a Trek for racing purposes.

Good to hear. So a 58cm with a slammed -17 stem wasn't better for ya than the 56cm, eh?

Not too stir up trouble. Isnt 5 series over 4 series? Did you ask to upgrade for a cost to the 6 series?

Already have a slammed -17 stem. An 18cm headtube is the tallest my position can utilize (stem is positioned 19cm from the crown of the fork). The 58cm "H2" fit has a 19cm headtube. If I left the bearing cap completely off and put the stem right down on the bearing itself, I could get away with it, but this is only really acceptable on the track where the bike doesn't see water (not to mention the bolt of lightning from the gods of aesthetics).

It is, but the bike is over 4 years old and technology has moved on. It's fine with me actually; I'm a bit old school and external cables and a standard seatpost match my aesthetics better than the internal cable routing and seatmast featured on the 5.x frames. I was given the option of accepting a $1600 discount on any other frameset, but I have no desire to spend a big chunk of money on a frame at this point.

All that makes perfect sense to me.

If it's Treks we're discussing here, they're still tubes glued together. The head tube, seat cluster and BB area are glued to the tubes.

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=238320

Brian, so you had the H1 fit and they moved you to H2? Wow, that's annoying since you actually need H1 for your fit to work. You might want to point that out and ask if they can get you onto the 6-series that actually fits... after all, the 5-series used to be a US-made bike too. You bought in, they should move you up if that's what it takes to maintain your fit. And there's a chance they'll say yes, we've had a few successes at the horse-trading approach before.

I see the point, but I am disinclined to make a stink. Trek has been pretty accommodating; frames wear out and I believe this one did exactly that. I am convinced that CF does not a make for a lifetime bike for a racing cyclist. Trek has the balls to offer a lifetime warranty on a CF frame; it means they are not targeting racing cyclists that put a lot of high stress miles on the bike, and their decisions on geometry offerings, groupset offerings (other than their 6.x series, their bikes all come with compact cranksets), etc, reflect that choice. They accommodate racers simply by swapping the worn out frames every several years until the frame dies in a crash or the racer loses interest. I'm not trying to get ahead on the transaction. To put it in perspective, my Velo Vie race frame (great frame; as stiff as a Cervelo is aero, and marketed for racing) only has a 3 year warranty.

Besides, I looked at the geometry numbers pretty closely; I can make the 56 work fine just by moving the saddle back a few mm. They get the smaller frame by steepening the seattube by 0.3 degrees and slacking the headtube by 0.2 degrees (and, of course, lowering the top tube by 2cm). I can get the exact same fit by moving the saddle back 4mm and the handlebars forward 4mm; since stems don't come in these increments, I'll just move the saddle back 4-6mm and call it good.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7204/6...ea2b7abb37.jpg

New bike built up after its shakedown ride. Trek came through for me. Happy that they fixed it; sad that my old bike is no more.

On a fit note, it is a good thing I got the 56 rather than the 58; the stem is sitting on top of the headset even on the smaller frame. Something to consider when going with Trek. They no longer have a true race geometry at any level other than the 6.x series.

Overall though, nice bike.

weird looking bike

Looks sweet! Enjoy... You have long legs dude.

Yea... well... your face is weird too. :)

lol, hey what did you mean about when u said the stem is sitting on top of the headset even on the smaller frame, isnt it like that on all bike? what do you mean?? sorry im new to road cycling

Head tube height, and subsequently, handlebar drop, was an issue with this frame. My original bike was a 58; the new bike is a 56 for no other reason than the inability to get the bars low enough on the larger frame.

Normally there are spacers under the stem, that's what he meant.

Post #2.

Glad it worked out as it should.