Boardman Team Carbon

garyheiss

Anyone who is shopping for this highly rated machine..beware! if you buy one from a Halfords Bikehut I would advise you get it checked over as soon as possible by your local bike specialist.. or else buy direct from a dedicated Bikehut (like the one in Ave Maria Lane, London). My wife bought me one of these as a surprise and I took it on a bike maintenance course run by Downland Cycles in Kent. Here I learned to strip and rebuild the whole machine and to my horror (and that of Martin the instructor) found all the torque settings totally over tightened, no grease on any bolts and poor set up of SRAM gears and headset!
Considering its a £1000 machine and receiving rave reviews I would be aghast if I were Mr Boardman to see the poor set up of his great specification bike!
The manual that is supplied with the bike also is lacking in correct torque for Carbon frames, listing settings that will damage such a frame... this should be amended ASAP Mr B!
Basically its a great bike, great spec and rides well but you really need to own a torque wrench and some savvy about settings to make sure it lasts!
Downland Cycles are in Canterbury and run a two day weekend course which means I now don't ever have to go to Evans or Bikehut for a service ever again!! Yippee!

guilliano

Bear in mind that the majority of assembly will be done in the factory, so it's not Bikehut that are at fault for the greaseless bolts, it's whatever factory they chose to make it for them. It would be great if the bikeshops had the time to do a complete strip and rebuild instead of just the "British Standards" PDI, but doing so would end up putting about £100 onto the price of almost every bike sold.