Brendo said:Further to my thinking regarding money spent on bikes, are aluminium
frame road bikes pretty much of a muchness?
No. The really cheap ones can be (and some of the expensive ones
too ...), there's a book that comes out of Taiwan or somewhere (I
haven't seen it; but know of its existence) that allows a
'manufacturer' to pick & choose various shapes etc and 'build' bikes
by the numbers from the book, but not all 'manufacturers' use it. The
bigger name brands that I know of don't. Trek & Cannondale I know
don't, they have, at least, their own designers, and all the
Cannondales were, and I think still are, but am not sure about the new
Synapse's, made in the US *except* the CF synapses! Trek's higher end
Al Alloy frames are US made too but the 1x00 series frames are
Taiwanese made. I *think* that Inexa use 'the book', but am not sure,
I don't know enough about other brands to say. 'made in Taiwan'
doesn't necessarily mean thrown together out of the book, although
there's a distinct chance that it is.
Quoted message said:At the lower end of the
scale (sub$2500), I don't imagine that many brands would design a
frame in house, as there would be little to no margin in the sale
after gruppo's and accessories are taken into account. If considering
upgrading a frame, would you need to look at (ballpark) $2k for the
frame and fork before you found a 'better' frame that wasn't just
bought blank and had stickers slapped on it?
No. There are good frames at the sub $2k range, and there are
dungers. Go testriding, you'll be able to tell. I have a sub $2k Al
Alloy roady at home that's been very good to me.
