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Pre tariffs you could get a whole Carbon bike frame from CN (including stem, handlebar, fork) for $500. And while I'll give that there was variety between vend

Pre tariffs you could get a whole Carbon bike frame from CN (including stem, handlebar, fork) for $500. And while I'll give that there was variety between vendors, some of them were doing sophisticated layups with multiple grades of wave that withstood a torture tests far beyond the ANSI bike tests. In fact you could argue they were overbuilt compared to Western brands (at a cost of 100 - 150g) since they didn't want to deal with warranty claims. Truly amazing, cheap, good quality mass market carbon products.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> In fact you could argue they were overbuilt compared to Western brands (at a cost of 100 - 150g) since they didn't want to deal with warranty claims. That's the single strongest advertising for a product I've seen in a while. As a customer, I also don't want to deal with warranty claims. Overbuilt = as it should be. Excessive optimization ("value engineering") = bad, waste of resources, and producer of trash. (Excessive optimization also limits what you can do with a product, and is potentially unsafe, as normal use could exceed structural or operational limits of the product, breaking it, and potentially hurting the user.) (Okay, I feel like I'm gearing for a long rant about sorry state of physical goods on the market, so I'll just stop now.)
- nextts 2y ago
  Yeah why can't I get a trash can that lasts more than a year