another lapierre zesty bites the dust.

popstar

I refuse being provoked into silly argument and agree on growing up :oops: .

Northwind

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I still maintain that the failures have to be far more common than other brands. There really are manufacturers from which I've never heard of a failure.

Yup. Though... There's definately a selection thing, frinstance Orange owners will tell you Oranges don't break, but I've seen a fair few broken Fives. The difference is, when a Five break people say "How weird is that! A broken Five!" but when people break a Meta or a Zesty they say "Bloody useless froggy crap".

supersonic

Same with Thomson too. I have seen more broken thomson stems than any other.

Anonymous

Northwind wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I still maintain that the failures have to be far more common than other brands. There really are manufacturers from which I've never heard of a failure.

Yup. Though... There's definitely a selection thing, frinstance Orange owners will tell you Oranges don't break, but I've seen a fair few broken Fives. The difference is, when a Five break people say "How weird is that! A broken Five!" but when people break a Meta or a Zesty they say "Bloody useless froggy crap".

Not going to completely agree with you on that either. I have no opinions on Orange frame reliability, but a manufacturer's reputation lives and dies with it's customers.
I've seen plenty of crash damaged bikes from all manufacturers, and it's true that some people will point the finger of blame.
But there are definitely manufacturers who have an impeccable reputation.

jam1e

Given that they pretty much came from nowhere in 08 to Bike of the Year/Best Buy etc in 09/10 in various mags Lapierre have created a massive buzz which isn't warranted by the numbers sold when compared to more established but less "hyped" brands. Now this buzz seems to be working negatively, the amount of failures appears relatively small but the discussion surrounding them is disproportionate.

For all we know 1%, 10% or 100% of Lapierre failures to date are on the bikeradar forum. However they've all been posted on the basis that people are interested in the new brand on the block. How many broken Trek threads reach 6 pages? None, because everyone just assumes Treks fail occasionally so it's not newsworthy.

Now Boardman appear to be going the same way, high profile due to their high performance/low cost reputation they've had a few well publicised (ie on the forums) failures and there's a growing sense that they're in some way shoddy despite no-one having any figures worth talking about.

Until we know what the actual failure rates are for all manufacturers, the brands du jour are always likely to be disproportionately represented in any discussion of failures. This is the price they pay for being high profile. Obviously certain brands will be more reliable than others, I just don't think internet hype is the best way of judging it.

popstar

+1 to Jam1e, pretty much covered it all, nothing more to add.

Anonymous

Wow, you know what? You're completely right. You have bought a perfect bike from a brand with a perfect track record. No, better than perfect, they're so good that even bikes that have simply been in the presence of one will magically become less likely to fail.
Everyone who's seen, owned, witnessed, taken pictures of, or heard about one failing is lying AND has been fed lies.
And besides there is no such thing as a perfect track record, unless you're talking about your chosen manufacturer of course.

There, happy now?

jam1e

Er what?

supersonic

As much as I understand that these things can be taken out of context, and we should take the reports with some caution - would I buy a second hand Lappierre? Like hell I would.

Anonymous

was aimed at popstar, Jam1e, not you.

And yes, I'd still advise the guy who started this thread to get the hell out of Lappierre, doesn't matter what reputation the company has, having so many failures on something you've bought is never a good sign. Give it back, and get something else.

popstar

Jam1e, plz ... it seems this thread turned out into some kind of trolling. Clearly yeehaamcgee had a very bad day. No point to clash around with personalities.

Anonymous

fcuk you popstar, you're the one who started flinging shite around. bugger off and cuddle your beloved bike you deluded little nitwit.

supersonic

Lol, ok lads.

I think everyone has to make their own mind up based on what info is available

Black

Northwind regarding the approx Orange 5 frames breaking are around Two a year
on average, but how or where I dont know.
LOL The Bike Chain seems to be getting very worried and trying to save sales and
his business But regarding the Arm chair tool shop comment YOU MONKEY

All you need is Lapierre to come out with a comment and say that all that do break will
be replaced or fixed even after a year or two after the warrenties run out and all be
forgotten, and dont! go down the say nothing Commencal route as I would'nt like to
guess how much business they have lost since.

Northwind

Black, out of curiosity are you Grantway? I've personally seen one broken Five frame (cracked at the swingarm) and a mate broke the head tube off another (XC racing at 10 Under the Ben of all places), so was that every single Five that broke last year? Perhaps I am cursed

I'm not trying to turn this into a "bash orange" thread of course, they're very reliable solid frames- it's just a useful comparison. You can do the same with, say, Fox and Rockshox- if a Fox breaks people say "Bloody Fox", but when the 2010 Rev Teams had all the u-turn issues everyone said "How odd", and gave them the benefit of the doubt. People's brand opinion isn't always all that based on fact, it's based on perception. There are people who would't buy a Commencal hardtail or Meta 6 or older Meta 5 because they "know" that Commencals break.

I'll stick with my Hemlock, it's not broken yet therefore on my sample of one I calculate a failure rate of 0.00%, therefore it will never break

Anonymous

Northwind wrote:

Black, out of curiosity are you Grantway? :

the formatting of the posts does seem familiar

Northwind

Ah, he totally is, check out the profile. Welcome back dude!

allthegearnoidea

iirc the majority of issues witht he frames were 08/09 frames?? for which i thought lapierre committed to replacing said broken part wiht in resonable failure useage or to that effect?? the only trouble they have is Lack of parts due to the popularity of the models!
my lbs has the last large 514 available from hotlines and the last couple of large 314's, there are No more new mediums in either to come! such is th epopularity of them,

the failure rate of them seems to be a small quantity of bikes over numbers of them made sold etc. - of which i have No figures but have heard of maybe 6-8 individual cases,

now, iirc, last years Mega avalance winner (or atleast one in the top 5) did the race on a Carbon Zesty frame with a Spicy shock and his own custom forks, if he's willing to hurl himself down a mountain on a carbon frame has to show some confidence in it!

if you look at it in terms of a different context, think back tot he renault clio bonnet catch issue couple of years ago, the issue was raised about 'faulty' catches which as was a case of Poor maintenence, too much grease being applied on old grease with out cleaning area up, thus causing a sticky catch, as old grease will do, Watchdog kicked of about it and got very little distance out of it as in terms of Overall numbers it was something like 2000 cars for well in excess of 350,000 cars made, something less than 2% overall,

i 'suspect' that the lapierre's are in very much the same boat, the percentage of issues arrisen from it are very few, i know my lbs has never had onereturned for anything other than servicing or warantee on the forks, and they are one of the top 3 lapierre sellers in the uk. (especially in zesty's)

Jam1e pretty much put the final nail in the lid for this,
would be interesting to see what the failure rates are for the top company's like trek, specialized cannondale etc. but thats another thread!

Anonymous

It would be very interesting to see failure rates from all manufacturers, true. It would make very interesting reading, and might spur everyone to put more thought into QA.

I'd also like to see figures for frames breaking under crashing, since quite a few bikes seem to be very fragile, and get damaged during what should be considered "normal use and abuse" of a mountain bike. these things aren't meant to be ridden gently, after all.

Northwind

I guess that depends too. It's pretty reasonable for a race frame to have limited damage resistance, since it's specifically supposed to be light, and you're not supposed to crash much. But a "burly rig" like this just has to be decently durable and crashworthy, it's not fit for purpose if it's not tbh. Bikes built for more challenging work are going to crash from time to time, and when they do it's probably going to be a big un.

Anonymous

True enough, but if we could see these details, we'd still be able to draw some conclusions. For example, I wouldn't expect a Giant anthem X to survive a crash as well as something like a Norco Atomic.

Northwind

It's a shame any such stats would be completely crooked really But you're spot on, it'd be fascinating to see. Even more interesting if it had comparisons of warranty claims honoured and time taken to restitution. Warrantys are all well and good but not when it takes months to replace the part. Fair play, sometimes stock is hard to come by but a warranty that leaves you bikeless for the summer isn't much use. It's like we're supposed to be grateful for the warranty support we've already paid for.

Anonymous

I'll let a quote from thebikechain close this thread:

"I rarely get involved in posts like this but for the love of god - a few frames have had a few problems out of thousands sold.

Put it this way - we are a small shop and every Lapierre we sell is important to us. They comprise a major part of our turnover and therefore profit.

If they were snapping left right and centre then we would not sell them. Simple.

Buy with confidence. Great bikes, amazing geometry and handling. If you see what a good rider like Crawford Carrick-Anderson can do on his Spicy then no one needs to worry about the strength of them."