My shiny new malt 4 is gettin wrecked!

yup, pretty normal. You can buy helicopter tape to protect some areas and have you fitted a chainstay guard ?

Exactly. Less paint, more speed

To be fair, the finish on my mate's Malt 4 is absolutely appalling, the thing looks like it's been sandblasted. My £300 Carrera had better finish. It's still a very nice bike though, and it just means that it looks like he's incredibly dedicated and hardcore

No need to be a sarcastic Cnut tho is there, sounds like naievety on the original posters part - a straightforward response is fine, it's not STW forums you know

Have you guys not tried Ventureshield? Its available in sheet form will heat and shape nicely?

Splottboy wrote:

This is why I'm a bit afraid of going Carbon next year.

Wrote to GT saying, why don't you "armour" Carbon frames with a sprayed layer of Ti or something similar, to repel stones/chips. !

WTF? Spray a layer of ti!? Companies do often put reinforced bits where they're likely to get hit, Titus have the 'Replaceable Under Belly' plate on the downtube.

It's just not really a huge issue though! I've had carbon MTBs for 9 years, and it's not been a problem.

Invisibleshield is just 3M clear tape I think, same as what we call helicopter tape. I had an old Ventureshield kit as well and it was the exact same stuff- just the thin version. Seems like a lot of these things are just rebranded 3M clear film.

Splottboy, most carbon bike parts are self-armoured, that is, the top layer is non-structural. So, even though it chips, it's only cosmetic. A lot of people think that as soon as carbon's chipped it weakens but that's not the case. Some carbon parts even have a nonstructural layer of weave as well, which gives them pretty huge protection (and tends to make them look nicer!)

colintrav wrote:

And nobody has mentioned the fact that the bike in question came out tops in last months magazine ...

Did it? Never saw that. Like I say, it's a lovely bike, just saddled with terrible brittle paint. But who cares, all bikes scratch, it just does it worse than most, it still rides lovely.

it is annoying when new bikes get chipped, i really really hate it (moreso on my road bikes as theres definately no need for that) but unfortunately, its the nature of the beast. Would be iterested to see how merlin handle the issue for you.

Merlin paint jobs aren't the best and mine lookied like it had leprosy. Copter tape and variants therein are an excellent idea as is the chainstay protector. If you sort these out then you can also disguise the chips!!