I always suspected the sunglasses were fake, but I’ve gotten a few sets of “Oakleys” and “100%” that have come with all packaging, soft bags, spare parts, warranty literature, you name it… so I’m not so sure anymore. That’d be a whole lot of effort for a $15-20 fake I would think.
On the broader topic, I’ve had a set of carbon no-name 3T replica track bars for 5 years and 88mm generic carbon track wheels for 5 years. Never had any issues, granted these are used on a velodrome, which is much higher quality than the road. Also just built up a carbon BXT track frame as a pursuit bike. So far so good, although the seatpost wedge isn’t the greatest and I’ve had to do a bunch of work to get the post not to slip.
A friend bought a Carbonda and seems to like it. He was like $1200 out the door with shipping, fees, custom paint, spare hanger, etc. I’ve looked at the Winspace (none in stock) and it seems kind of pricey at $1600 or $1900 with a handlebar.
I think I’d rather get something like a Fezzari. It’s made overseas like almost all frames but backed by a US company. Any warranty issues are going to be smooth.
I’ve also been seeing Basso Ventas on sale:
$1000 for a made-in-Italy frame is crazy. If you look around and go off the beaten path a little you can often find deals.
My gravel bike has took a lot of beating the last 2.5 years. It’s a Chinese frame and I couldn’t fault it, except its inbuilt tracking device can be useless at times
I’ve got two sets of BTLOS wheelsets and one set from Farsports. All built with DT350 hubs and either Sapim CX Ray or Pillar 1420.
The BTLOS wheelsets have held up quite well. I’ve got maybe 5,000 miles on one set that’s used for my gravel bike’s “road” set up. Rim is 22mm internal and 30mm deep set up tubeless. I hit a deep pothole a couple years ago fearing rim damage much less a pinch flat. Nothing but a small chip on the edge of the rim. The other set is for my MTB that’s 29mm internal width. No complaints.
The Farsports wheelset is my “gravel” set up. Rim is 24mm internal and 30mm deep. Again, very satisfied with it over an equal number of miles.
All sets were roughly $750 USD back then, but I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another set in the future from either company if I were in the market.
Anyone have experience with Trifox bars? Looking at these specifically:
I saw a few videos on the Coefficient Cycling bars and the $400 price tag is a bit steep, but these look fairly close and seem to be from a company I’d expect to have SOME level of QC.
I have a 100% chinese bike excluding the following parts;
Sram Group set
Shimano XTR brakeset
Raceface Crank
BB Infinit Bottom Bracket
Jumbo Jim Tires
This is a Chinese Fat bike Frame/fork, Chinese wheels with DT Swiss hubs, Chinese Handlebars.
The manufacture is NEXTIE and I have tons of gravel and road wheels from them too. I absolutely recommend them, the customer service is amazing and product is good.
I am 200lbs and my fat bike has seen XC to AM trails and been raced in the snow/ice with studded tires. I would say that the finish quality of the frame is 95% of what a main-stream brand name company would have. You need to work with them a little bit.
I would say that the wheels are 100% as good or even better than mainstream brands.
I had no problems with my fat bike until I had a crash (this is after 3 other minor crashes) on it and broke the seat stay and handlebars. This had absolutely nothing to do with the manufacture’s, I BROKE it. Nextie was great with the process and communication after I broke it.
The new frame build should come in about the same weight or slightly heavier as I am changing out the single-piece handle bar (im trying to not be so aggressive)
I also had a really nice experience getting my Carbonda 696. Nice back-and-forth communication before the purchase, custom paint was exactly what I wanted, and I got the bike just slightly more than one month after paying the invoice. $900 delivered, for a carbon frameset with a custom paint job… I’m really happy with my purchase. there is a huge thread about this frame on the ridinggravel.com forum.
I’ve purchased 2 sets of carbon wheels from elite wheels website, dtswiss 350 hub / sapin cx ray spokes with 45mm rim profile x 28mm wide rims and Elites own brand hubs/ cxray spokes and 60mm rim profile x28mm wide. Customer service excellent when specifying what i wanted. Both are the rim brake version running tubeless continetals on each. Have around 2000km on both in all weathers with no issue. Very impressed with build quality. Delivery was about 6 weeks from china. Would not hesitate in buying their wheels again.
They are just some off brand ones I found on Aliexpress.
They have taken tons and I mean tons of tree strikes and the “only reason” i consider them broke is because I ripped the computer mount out (which I actually may repair with some epoxy and rivet)