Carbon repair: what would you do?

SamuelRemings

Well, after a week or so of pondering I took my Ribble to the LBS with suspected fractures on either side of the bottom chainstay where the stay meets the dropout. The photos below show these fractures on either side in exactly the same place. The response wasn't good with both mechanics - whom I trust implicitly - not being able to say that it wasn't a crack. So I ride home and get onto Ribble who were useless, telling me that my warranty was out; I bought the bike in 2011 and there is a poxy 2 year warranty on the bike/frame.

So, I look at the repair option and both Surrey Carbon Bike Repair and Carbon Bike Solutions (CBS) of Derbyshire seem pretty positive. The Derbyshire chap I spoke to went as far as to say it may only be a paint crack; the Surrey chap, who was very quick to get back via email wrote, and I quote 'The lug (carbon or alloy) is de-bonding from the seat stay. It is not bad at the moment but in time this additional movement will start to damage the chain stay and so on.'

So, first question, has anybody had this issue before in this part of the bike and what was the outcome.I don't think either of the guys are wrong - far from it - but I also know there's a lot of knowledge and experience here and wondered what you all think..?

If I go through the Surrey chap this is the situation, again I quote from email: 'If we don't see a problem the inspection is £50. If we see a need to restore the stay, and if it is possible then the total fee will be in the region of £150 from experience.' This was after seeing the photos.

So, the most it will cost if either does need work beyond an inspection is around £150 but this is a 3 year old frame - I know that's not old...but worse case scenario and I have to dish that out, is it worth it? In other words what would you do? You could buy a second hand frame for around £250, some new for a bit more. Whilst it seems a waste, the problem really is that in order to inspect the carbon fibre I'm already dishing out money which would seem pointless if I don't go the whole hog...

I know ultimately it's my decision but what would you guys do?

And I'm having problems attaching a picture which may help.

ride_whenever

I'd ignore your local guys and just send it to fibrelyte, they're magical pixies you cannot tell they've fixed a frame!!!

That said, it's not a brilliant frame. I'd be taking the excuse to upgrade and buy something snazzy. Maybe something which comes with a lifetime warranty and the associated price tag!!!!

Monty Dog

Without piccies hard to say - often the seatstay/drop-out is a bonded aluminium/carbon joint. The crack could be simply down to the flexion of brittle paint. More sinister would be an axial crack along the tube which could be attributed to galvanic corrosion of the underlying aluminium which is almost impossible to repair.

SamuelRemings

Thanks one and all.

ride_whenever, that's another good company by the looks of things and I've already contacted them, thanks. I hear what you're saying about the frame too and so a sensible decision will have to be made.

SamuelRemings

http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/carbon ... do.162764/

There are some photos here...I'm sorry, the pixels are too high to display here.

rolf_f

SamuelRemings wrote:

http://www.cyclechat.net/threads/carbon-repair-what-would-you-do.162764/

There are some photos here...I'm sorry, the pixels are too high to display here.

Need to be logged in to see those. Stick them on Photobucket and link to them. Works fine and nobody has to sign up to another site to help solve the problem!

FWIW, I had something as you describe on my Ribble Gran Fondo. They replaced the frame but I am certain it was nothing more than the filler cracking over the seam between the dropout and frame. At the time, Ribble said that none of the frames affected had been shown to have anything more than a cosmetic problem and I partly regretted getting the frame swapped. The new one, with a little less filler on the joint and black paint to conceal it has similarly cracked - I give it no thought and I've probably done 10000 miles plus on that frame since the cracks appeared. It is noticeable that Ribble carbon frames don't tend to have white dropouts anymore.

If you can get a really good close up image, you can probably diagnose if the crack is serious or not yourself. I did this with mine - the cracks are clearly flat bottomed - ie the top layer of paint has split but there is nothing under that split. They also appeared as separate short cracks rather than continuous ones.

I would also try calling them again - if nothing else to try to find out if your frame did have similar problems.

SamuelRemings

Thanks Rolf, here you go folks...

http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/prome ... sort=3&o=0

http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/prome ... sort=3&o=1

http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/prome ... sort=3&o=2

http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/prome ... sort=3&o=3

http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/prome ... sort=3&o=4

rolf_f

You need a much better camera than that to answer this one! Not sure where most of the pics I took of my cracks are but I found one reasonably OK one. It may help depending on whether my cracks look like yours or not! At full image scale they are clearly not deeper than the top layer or two of paint.

SamuelRemings

No, mine look nothing like that; yours look a lot worse than mine which is reassuring.

Thanks for your input Rolf; I'll try and use the wife's camera tomorrow and see if I can get some better quality.

rolf_f

SamuelRemings wrote:

No, mine look nothing like that; yours look a lot worse than mine which is reassuring.

Thanks for your input Rolf; I'll try and use the wife's camera tomorrow and see if I can get some better quality.

That was actually after some months - the cracks were initially rather smaller. Probably worth saving the photo and looking at it full size (hopefully that will work) as you can't really see what is happening at this scale - at least not on my screen. It's not about how many cracks there are or how bad they look but where they come from.......