Hold up, you waited 7 months and he didn't even start building the frame yet?

For the amount of money you paid that's kind of ridiculous. I know Stanridge is busier but it took 2 1/2 weeks to get my frame for Spicer, thats from the day he started building it to the day the frame arrived at my door. I also have a friend that went to guchis framebuilding school and he finished his first frame in a few hours. How many frames could he possibly have queued up to build?

It always could be worse; you could be in queue for a bishop....

Let's not even mention Richard Sachs.

...he had to close his queue. 7+ years, everyone.

Man, sorry to hear about this. Adam is actually a cool guy, but a very busy one that is fo sho

At least you're not throwing it anymore.

The 7 month wait is to be expected, that had nothing to do with it. I knew going in I could be waiting as long as 9 months. And yeah, if you follow him on instagram he seems to build frames fairly quickly, it's hard to believe there's really only going to be 50HSPs out there, mine was only #30 or so. But he also builds road and cross frames and is really into making sure he has a racing team out there now too, as he's sponsoring some cross rider now and now that Evan just won RHC on his bike, I'm sure the orders are about to take a jump again. The fork the racers use on the HSP is a full carbon leader btw (didn't know that originally), and he didn't know the brand of the tapered fork I was upgrading too

Could be worse, I could be waiting that long for a non custom LOW!

ziiiing

Never heard of them.

http://www.bikeforums.../attachment....3&d=1351224956http://www.bikeforums.../attachment....1&d=1351224956Polished them fugly white fsa wings!

how long did that take^ I ended up buying Ritchey bars for the road drops I wanted to be in silver (was only like $45 or so on PBK)

@Leukybear: they're pretty underground, only the best riders know about him!

It took around 2 hours tried paint stripping them but it didn't work, so then i started sanding them with 100 grit, 1000, then 1500 and finished it with mothers polishing compound

hope you only polished the exposed parts, haha.

Yep thats what i did. Waited like an hour just for the stripper to not work its thang.

Bench grinder + buffing wheel + polishing compounds ;)

I guess I'll never be legit enough to cop one for the mad swag :(

Ride to work, 70 degrees and sunny with a tailwind. Ride home, 45 and raining with a headwind. Guess which one I dressed for.

Today I installed windows 8 on a storage partition on my desktop and well let's just say it's different and change is bad. Do not want. Maybe this won't be the case with a tablet but I find tablets to be non-exciting and incapable of what a full fledged notebook is capable of. If you're installing it via disc, you'll find the background during the procedure quite hilarious with it being the all too familiar BSOD shade of blue.

update: he's already "ordered the tubes" (wouldn't they be the same tubes for any HSP?) and won't make a cut until I approve one of the mockups. This was the response to me emailing this:

If you felt okay abandoning our project and returning the deposit, I am comfortable with that. I started talking with a builder down south here, when you started second guessing whether you wanted to proceed, which to be honest, reading that, tuned a lot of my enthusiasm down.

So to be perfectly honest, it's what I would prefer. I think just parting amicably would be good, if you were okay with that.

If you aren't, then I'll proceed with the build.

Thanks Adam
Kasey

Either way, basically during the CAD process I constantly felt like I was annoying him, which was weird because prior to it being my turn I felt I had a decent relationship with him and thought he was a super chill guy. When I went with him he approved 3 colors and my ham logo on the frame for the 1800. When it got to me I was told it was a 2 color max and that one color needed to be black, the logo would be $50 USD (most recent pdf says $80/hour) and that pearl or metallic paint is an additional $50. He originally sent me an email on the 18th of September, saying we were close and he wanted to nail down something by the 21st to be ready. I felt the first mockup had too long of a headtube and that I wouldn't rock a rise stem, so he leveled everything, an improvement and I just asked for something in between the two to sign off of. That took until the 13th, I almost always responded to his emails immediately, I just needed a little guidance through his fit process.

About 2-3 weeks ago how to know which pantones I could look at to get a sense for what colors he could match, then said sorry for all the questions but it was my first custom and since he does things very differently (measures contact points, not my body, zero measurements of my inseam, etc) that I was trying to make sure I didn't make a gaff. I even started the email with "no rush" as I wanted to start playing with some colorways in photoshop

His response was

You're right. In the past when we've fielded this many questions before a build it has ended with a unhappy client. So,with this in mind I'm beginning to question this entire frame build. Give me the weekend to think this over. If we decide not to move forward I will return your deposit in it's entirety.

Weekend came and went. I waited until Thursday to send him a follow up email. Telling him I was just anxious about the process, not to confuse curiosity with difficult and that I hoped we were still moving forward. He didn't respond.
Another 5 days went by and I had to send another follow up email asking him to please let me know one way or the other. He told me he was going to build it, but by then, the damage had kinda been done, for me at least. If I drop $2k on something I kinda want to feel if not appreciated but at least valued. I also promote the **** out of his bikes. Even during times of incredible frustration I kissed his butt I felt like, because I really did want this frameset for a long time, but the last month has just made me want to look elsewhere.

During the early email exchange I was told I was two away, after 3 weeks went by and he was done making his vimeo video I sent a follow up (I follow him on IG so I see him building quite a few HSPs). He then told me I was 7 away. I don't know, I felt like I was being ****ed with a lot. I approved his 3rd mockup fwiw, but he didn't read my email where I said "looks good, what do I need to do now?" I guess and considers it in limbo, not in a huge rush to approve it again either.

I know most of this is just me being butthurt, but there's a lot of quality builders out there who don't think answering emails is too heavy of a burden for someone's frameset I'm sure and would be happy to take my money. Hell, I assumed until the build began that this was probably a pretty common thing. I explained I was a measure twice cut once type of person too.

My RL friends always ask for updates and just about everyone of them told me to file a claim with paypal to get my deposit back. I haven't decided totally what to do still

edit: attaching the three CADs to show I was exactly asking for the world in my modifications. first one was done from the below measurements of the bike I "place the most miles on" (I took both of my bikes and found a common average for some though). I basically just said I wanted 5mm off the TT and not an extreme aero angle to it, since I log long rides on my track bikes

the measurements he asked for

1. Saddle top to center of BB.
2. Saddle tip to Stem/HB intersection.
3. Top of bars to ground.
4. Length of saddle.
5. Stand over of current bike - top of TT to ground, measured in the mid point of TT between HT and ST.

got organized.

http://i.imgur.com/iej5ol.jpg

This is the way Adam is in RL.

how exactly

I can't get into details, but he f-ed up a frame build for a friend of mine. Shipped her something that should never have gone out the door - was to the point of being unsafe. Eventually made it right by making her a new one but... still.

...and then she got hit by a car and the new frame broke. But that part wasn't his fault.

It seems strange to me that a custom builder would design a frame without doing any kind of body measurements, even in a rudimentary fashion. Why go custom if you can't get custom fit?

Pretty sure with my friend she did give him body measurements, and part of the problem was he didn't do a good job of translating that to a frame. She's hard-to-fit (tiny like me) and he admitted up front he didn't have experience making such a small frame.

I remember someone posting about that, like a 700c wheelbase on a 42cm frame or something crazy like that. I'm not necessarily worried about his ability to make the frame, and truth is he's a grand cheaper than a lot of the other 'hot' custom guys, but his level of CS, when it mattered, really got me butthurt

Also I feel like telling a potential buyer than you do your fit off contact points, that x color costs more, etc are the little details that are worth mentioning before someone plops down the dough

how did she like the frame before her accident?

she liked the second version, though she only had it a few weeks (sob) before the accident. she also didn't pay full price for it - got a deal in exchange for marketing/promo stuff she did for him, which is why i can't get into tons of detail about it.

That's insane. Dodici built my Gara using custom geo and even though they state an 8 week waiting period on their site, it arrived here in 5 weeks.