FM066 (china carbon) vs BMC vs Giant

oddspam

I've read tons of reviews of FM066-SL and other china models. They are mostly very positive, but often in a way "Best bike ever! It's just fantastic! Tomorrow I'm done building it and will take it for a ride."

What I'm trying to say, is that there's so much hype about it. I've seen a test of china vs china, but do someone know about tests of china vs well established brands?

Especially I'm considering the FM066-SL vs BMC SL01 vs Giant Advanced TCR. Any thoughts?

And please. Let's focus on the ride. Price is another question.

cougie

So hard to compare. Unless someones taken the same wheels/tyres/finishing kit and swapped between all three - I doubt you'd get anything useful from a ride of them ?

Grill

No one wants to admit they bought a turd.

Ride Chinese open-mould frames at your own risk. With the money you save you can afford a full face helmet.

denniskwok

Grill wrote:

No one wants to admit they bought a turd.

Ride Chinese open-mould frames at your own risk. With the money you save you can afford a full face helmet.

With the money he's saved, he could buy half a dozen of them!

cycleclinic

That's scaremongering. The FM066 has plenty of happy owner and if you search there is no complaints of frames failing in any numbers. Even Giant and other big names get failures from time to time.

If the frame fits you well buy it. Chinese frame can and are very good in there own right. Ride quality is very subjective and it depends on many factors and of course the roads you ride on. All claims about ride quality should be taken with a pinch of salt as you will probably not replicate the test conditions. Also the kit that it is specced with determine how it rides to a large extent and with a chinese frame that is controlled by you.
Getting a frame that fits you well is the most important thing.

Grill

Would you buy a Chinese iPad?

True, all brands have failures, the difference is you have somewhere to go if your branded stuff fails. When your knock-off crap fails you have no one to blame but yourself. Buy cheap, buy twice.

oddspam

denniskwok wrote:

With the money he's saved, he could buy half a dozen of them!

You see, this is the problem I always end up in while reading about it. It's a question about how much money I save...

Where I live, most road bikes are 40-50% off now. In other words, the price difference between building my own bike based on FM066-SL and buying a entrance model from BMC or Giant isn't that much of a difference. Maybe it's even in the benefit of Giant.

My question is simply: Is the frame good, or is it just "good to be that cheap"? I don't care about how many helmets I can buy :-)

Grill

Is the frame good? No one can answer that as QC is a joke. You may get lucky or you may end up needing reconstructive surgery.

andyrr

Look on the roadbikereview and velobuild forums (to name 2 that I've frequented) to get some real-life opinions of Chinese direct-sourced frames.
Very, very few major failures - some people do have QC issues but in the main they seem to be minor ones of overpainting, internal cabling, headset fitment, slight misalignments etc
Look on other forums and see if anyone with a big-name frame has had a major failure - yes you have someone to go back to and make a warranty claim but not all satisfied by how they are dealt with.
If I was looking for a frame-only deal then I'd probably go Chinese, if I wanted a complete bike then with the deals presently on offer I'd probably source here since I would probably struggle to gain a major advantage when I then have to source the components myself and the frame is the only place where big money can often be saved on brand new current-spec items.
I built up my TT bike from a direct-sourced Taiwan frame (Karbona) and I have had zero issues since I got it and have ridden it in many races.

Crozza

Grill wrote:

Is the frame good? No one can answer that as QC is a joke. You may get lucky or you may end up needing reconstructive surgery.

That would actually be really handy for getting it in the car

racingcondor

I doubt you'll find anyone who has ridden all three, let alone anyone who has ridden all three with the same wheelset on each. Without that no-one can tell you much.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the FM066 measures up well against a lot of £1,000 framesets. Against a TCR Advanced though it won't have the same ride quality. The differences will be small but they add up so as usual the important question is what you're willing to pay and why.

Re quality. Personally I wouldn't buy one direct but that's because if I was looking for a cheap frame I'd go straight to Planet-X and buy something with QC added. I'm with Grill, I want to know someone has looked it over for faults.

mroli

And just to put Grill's picture into perspective:

Giant:


From hitting a pothole

BMC


From hitting, well, a car...

I'd tend to buy from an established brand, because if something happened to my bike I would want to speak face to face to them about it. But then I have bought second hand frames, that have no warranty

Grill

Yup, they all break. The difference, as I stated, is that you'll get a new one.

mroli

Not if its out of warranty. 3/5 yrs BMC. Lifetime Giant, but you don't have to look very hard to see the complaints about their returns department racking up.

I agree with you generally, but think there is some mileage in buying Chinese if you source and choose your product well. Possibility of getting something fairly unique (even if only the paint job) at a very good price.

johngti

mroli wrote:

And just to put Grill's picture into perspective:

Giant:


From hitting a pothole

Blimey - the pothole wasn't in the USA and called the Grand Canyon by any chance? Or maybe you were travelling at Mach 2 or faster...?

mroli

Not mine - just a quick google search for broken Giant frame....

spankwilder

So when your buying a carbon bike just ask yourself if you intend to ride over potholes etc - if you are I'd probably buy a cheaper one or an MTB

Grill

spankwilder wrote:

So when your buying a carbon bike just ask yourself if you intend to ride over potholes etc - if you are I'd probably buy a cheaper one or an MTB

Now this is just stupid... :roll:

ugo.santalucia

mroli wrote:

And just to put Grill's picture into perspective:

Giant:


From hitting a pothole

Is it the effect of the camera flash or it is a fake filled with glass fiber? Carbon fibre is black, if it's white it's fiberglass

cycleclinic

If the frame is cheap enough as chinese ones are then you do not mind about no waranty. Every one in the internet can find something that has failed.

I would not buy a chinese ipad as it would be a fake. A chinese carbon unbranded frame is just that - not a fake.

Grill

thecycleclinic wrote:

If the frame is cheap enough as chinese ones are then you do not mind about no waranty. Every one in the internet can find something that has failed.

I would not buy a chinese ipad as it would be a fake. A chinese carbon unbranded frame is just that - not a fake.

You clearly don't grasp conception of the open-mould process and carbon layups.

xrecymech

iPad components for the most part are made by Foxconn; in china. Like everything else, not all stuff coming out of china will be shite, and that includes bike gear.

cycleclinic

Oh I do grasp the process of making carbon fibre products and it turn out the chinese firms that do it for the most part are quite good at it. As for QC on of the best rims on the planet is the H plus Son archtype, it has the tightest QC of any rim they are so round and guess what - made in china.

Chinese companies like western one know a thing or two about QC. You will find chinese companies who do not care about there product and will sell any old trash like wise there are western companies who do the same. But there are chinese companies who know to break into a market they have to be on top of there game. The trick is knowing those companies. The only way to know is to buy and test the product.

Your comments Grill are scaremongering I am afraid to say and you are lumping all chinese carbon part suppliers in one barrel the bad one without caring to seperate the good from not so good. If you have never tried something it impossible to say it is not fit for purpose. You are basing your judgement on a few failures and an assumption because the frames are cheap and chinese they must be inferior. Assumptions are rarely true in my experience.

Some chinese suppliers try to pass of the frames as big name brands these are the ones to avoid for starting they are fakes and it undermines the brand. The ones that do not pretend anything but what they are are worth a look and should not be dismissed out of hand.

There are many happy owner of the FM066 - I am not one of them as I do not have one.

Grill

I have nothing against manufacturing in China, what I do take issue with is companies that not only profiteer off of others (most designs/moulds are stolen), inferior carbon, unknown expertise, and a complete lack of accountability.

No frame is infallible, but at least you have a way to go with actual brands. If all people cared about was price then everyone would be rolling around in Dacia Sanderos. If all people cared about was the look then Rolex would be out of business.

Don't even get started on knock-off/unknown fab carbon components. They're 100 times worse than the bikes.

cycleclinic

Derosa frames are open mold. I know who the supplier is. Derosa don't even design some of the frames they just rebrand an open mold design. So not all open mold designs are stolen. Also in industry everyone steels everything from one another. Think Samsun vs Apple it happens all the time.

Camcycle1974

Think it's the lower level frames like 848 and 838 that are open mold. I have a ribble 872 which is from the same mild as the 838. The Protos and king are made in Italy aren't they?

rolf_f

thecycleclinic wrote:

Some chinese suppliers try to pass of the frames as big name brands these are the ones to avoid for starting they are fakes and it undermines the brand. The ones that do not pretend anything but what they are are worth a look and should not be dismissed out of hand.

There are many happy owner of the FM066 - I am not one of them as I do not have one.

What is curious is that the makers of decent unbranded frames in China don't seem to attempt to create brands their own which, given the nature of the market, is the obvious thing to do. All you need to do is come up with a randomly Italianish sounding name eg Decrapolini, a natty black white and red paint job and a vague website with a picture of Lake Garda on it and there you are. The only snag is that you'd be expected to offer a meaningful warranty but you'd be able to double the mark up to cover that.

adamhicks

Grill wrote:

Would you buy a Chinese iPad?

True, all brands have failures, the difference is you have somewhere to go if your branded stuff fails. When your knock-off crap fails you have no one to blame but yourself. Buy cheap, buy twice.

Congratulations, your comment pushed me to finally create an account and offer my first reply. You do realize that all iPads are made in China, right? This idea that everything out of China is crap is ridiculous.

In case you're interested, I recently visited DengFu's sales office and met their staff. Nice people and very helpful in showing me all of their offerings. I'll be ordering a FM066 and a wheelset from them as soon as I finalize the design I want. I've also heard a few stories of easy replacements for defective equipment through them. They're a small company and may not have the ease of one of the mane brands to deal with, but they do good work from what I can tell. I'll be adding this road bike alongside my US-built Aegis Zaero TT bike. Decent bike, but their customer service was awful. They even sold me a frame that was the wrong size as they were going out of business and claimed all sales final despite putting the claimed frame size in writing. All I'm saying is, let's judge things on their individual merits when we can and not make sweeping generalizations, okay?

alihisgreat

adamhicks wrote:

Grill wrote:

Would you buy a Chinese iPad?

True, all brands have failures, the difference is you have somewhere to go if your branded stuff fails. When your knock-off crap fails you have no one to blame but yourself. Buy cheap, buy twice.

Congratulations, your comment pushed me to finally create an account and offer my first reply. You do realize that all iPads are made in China, right? This idea that everything out of China is crap is ridiculous.

In case you're interested, I recently visited DengFu's sales office and met their staff. Nice people and very helpful in showing me all of their offerings. I'll be ordering a FM066 and a wheelset from them as soon as I finalize the design I want. I've also heard a few stories of easy replacements for defective equipment through them. They're a small company and may not have the ease of one of the mane brands to deal with, but they do good work from what I can tell. I'll be adding this road bike alongside my US-built Aegis Zaero TT bike. Decent bike, but their customer service was awful. They even sold me a frame that was the wrong size as they were going out of business and claimed all sales final despite putting the claimed frame size in writing. All I'm saying is, let's judge things on their individual merits when we can and not make sweeping generalizations, okay?

I'm a nice person.. doesn't mean I can make a good bike though!

Monty Dog

Oh, the Xenophobes always seem to come-up with their unfounded prejudices whenever this is discussed. The Chinese ipad comment is priceless.
The unique 'carbon layup' is a further excuse peddled by 'brands' to justify their higher prices - anyone with operational manufacturing experience used to dealing with extended supply chains like in the bike industry will know it's a fallacy - you want the lowest cost solution with the ability to adjust your demand at the latest possible point rather than tying-up your working captial up in unique product you don't know you're going to be able to shift 6-9 months later.
Yes, there are some dodgy Chinese bike companies, but if you go through some research you'll find the majority aren't.
My experience of dealing direct with Chinese manufacturers has been trouble-free, unlike some of the bull$hit-merchants you find in bike-shops.