Be on the Look out for Counterfeit 695 Carbon Frames

After inspecting a number of frames, fake frames always are a cut below the generic ones, some even come with major defects. They don’t have to protect their reputation, even generic frame suppliers have to protect their reputations with wholesalers.

Fake frames rely on hanging off the coat tails of a reputable brand, and hoping the buyers have low expectations because they’re a fraction of the price, and will be happy with something that looks more expensive than it is, like a fake Rolex.

Out one side of their mouth, they will tell you they are the OEM supplier for many brands, and the quality as just as good. If you bring up a problem, they’ll insist things like cracks, misaligned bearing seats, etc, are small negligible problems and justified by the low price.

It’ll be the most expensive bike you’ll ever own after the steerer tube sheers off during a descent and you need $30,000 worth of dental repair, $5,000 emergency room visit for your collarbone and a week or more of lost income. Don’t be the Fred who buys this junk.

I don’t like when they include the decals to make it look like an oem, but that being said, I own a raw frame copied from a Scott foil, and another copy of a bmc impec. They are super light, stiff, and have no apparent defects that I was able to find. Many of them are made by the same factories in China that the primal comes from. Keep in mind that the oem generally buys their frames from China as well, before slapping decals on them and marking them up for 400-500% of the price. And obviously, oem frames are not always flawless either. I think the “safety” issue is mostly just an excuse from the manufacturers to justify their absurd mark up. I’ve been riding the foil clone for two years now without a problem.

mark.

i had a guy bring in a fake pinarello to my shop the other day, he didnt know any better, but his headset was loose.

i took an extra second to look at it, and it was actually the frame… the fake one had an alloy insert bonded in to the headtube which came apart and was rattling. at the same time the headtube was starting to split down the front center too. customer had no clue…

the issue is that they try to cut corners with parts that dont fit together correctly, and their tolerances are way off. when there is an issue like that, they try to mask it with more epoxy or resin… doesnt work… as stated earlier theres no quality control.

this pinarello frame wasnt the first one i have seen either, nor was it the first one that i have seen with frame issues.

I don’t support counterfeits, but agree that the Chinese make solid frames. There are plenty of stories on how ‘legit’ carbon frames had failures, anyway.

@swim…@robert is correct….that 400%-500% statement is incredibly inaccurate and pretty ignorant.
Bike brands that purchase off-the-shelf frames work off of 30% margins, at best, if they sell wholesale to dealers and can squeeze out 50% margins if they sell direct to consumer….keep in mind, those are Gross Margins….GMs a lot different than Net Margins.

Go onto alibaba.com, you can find Pinerello Dogma’s for $700, bet you can find all the other knockoffs there also.

My true storys about buying direct from China:
12 Frames: one cracked frame after 6 months, (no backup)
15 Forks: 1 steerer separated from crown after 24 months. All front hub spacing out by -3/6mm
(no backup with any)
20 carbon rims: (all cracked when tensioned, no backup)
20 carbon seatposts (no problems with any)
80 Aluminium rims, 20 with spoke holes too big (no backup)

Would I still buy direct from China? Yes, (the odds of getting an adequate product are ok)
Do I know there is a risk? Yes.
Would I buy a counterfeit product. No, it’s a bit immoral really.
Do I think I am going to have any warranty on anything? No I’m that naive anymore.

To those who think there are huge margins in the bike industry. You guys have no idea. If a company makes 10% net profit at the end of the year they are doing well, very well. @kenai is correct, 30% gross margins at best.

wow!!! just another reason to not buy a carbon frame!!

First, I should say that I am a qualified expert and have testified in court for defendants and plaintiffs of carbon fiber frame failure that causes injury. I also have my own law practice where at least half of my cases are based on carbon frame and part failure that causes injury or death.

Second, counterfeit frames are incredibly dangerous. It is bewildering to think ebay still allows them to be sold. I have a clients who have suffered great bodily injury. They are not the same frames, they are not made in the same factory, or by the same workers. No bicycle company remain in contract with a company producing sub-par frames in their molds. The money made from the contract of producing authentic frames and the money made from producing counterfeit frames doesn’t come close. It simply doesn’t make any sense to risk losing it, especially when the barriers to entering the market are so low.

Counterfeit frames are actually clam shell molds from authentic frames that look similar on the exterior, but are far different on the interior. Sometimes they use foam or wood to replicate a real frame, then make the mold from that. There is no quality control or defect inspection. The types of carbon are far less quality and the frames are not tested. Most of the time, the testing photos you see are juts stolen from each other online and used by others.

When the frame fails and causes injury, It can be very difficult to locate the original manufacturer of the frame or part. It takes a lot of investigation and man hours to locate them. If you do find them and get a judgment for damages, it is very hard to collect. They are typically located in China. No, China is not Taiwan. Taiwan is very reputable and makes almost everything in the industry. Not that many counterfeits come from Taiwan because the manufacturing is actually more expensive than the rest of Asia. There are many resellers in Taiwan and ride on the name quite a bit to sell their products. It is hard to believe, but there have actually been counterfeit parts made IN THE US. Criminal penalties and civil judgments can be very severe, if they are applied at all.

In one case, I found through discovery requests, that nearly 50% of the ebay/ali express unbranded frames fail at either the steer tube, fork blade, chainstay, or a simultaneous downtube/headtube failure. I searched thousands of emails from angry customers around the world. The replies to them ranged from “You misused the product” to “We don’t speak english.” Many are constructed with fiberglass, cheap glue, even tape. You are probably thinking “I have ridden a hong fu frame for years and I am fine, so you are wrong.” Your instance does not represent the issue as a whole. I have seen photos of hundreds of broken frames, broken necks, legs, cracked skulls, punctured ribs. Just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it can’t or doesn’t happen. I have also seen people completely abuse them and end up being fine.

The truth is there is no such thing as a completely safe carbon frame. This is not an opinion, but something that arbitrators, judges, and juries have found to be a significant factor in many suits. This fact has been established by engineers and experts (not your LBS mechanic). Most of the people who experience failure on name brand, tested, and quality checked frames are bigger people. That is another issue. Compare it to a car tire. A safe, inspected, and tested car tire can be deemed “safe,” but there is always a chance it will blow a high speed and cause an accident.

The disturbing thing about the bike industry is that large companies still release products after “research and development”, have many failures by consumers, and never issue recalls. Sometimes the public is the research and development and companies wait till they start to fail, then create a new version based on the faults the public experienced. Specialized, Focus, Cannondale, and Zipp are terrible offenders of this method and only stopped doing it a few years ago. An Example is the Focus Izalco. It breaks so commonly that AG2R rides a bike manufactured by a company different than the one they give to the public.

EDITOR NOTES: It would be impossible for us to fact-check all comments, but since we have had a manufacturer contact us about this one, we’ll add this here:
Focus claims that they have had the Izalco Max sold commercially for 2 full years and have had ZERO frames or forks returned for having broken. Also, ALL of the bikes ridden by AG2R are in fact made in the same production facility as the commercially available versions; Izalco Team SL, Izalco Max, and Mares CX. The only difference in the team bikes is the use of a clamp-on front derailleur vs. some consumer versions’ braze-on mounts. Focus also claims that in 2 full seasons of races (from cobbled classics to grand tour stages), the team has had NO broken frames except FOLLOWING race crashes, which does happen.
OK, that’s all for us pointing out some facts.
Back to the comment.

Those are just frames too. Handlebars, stems, seat-posts, and wheels are equally dangerous. Even the Cervelo founder called for an industry awareness and action to brittle steer tubes. Companies love to dismiss product injury and warranty (which are two different concepts) by saying the product was misused, and they are not liable. The rep on the other line doesn’t know that even foreseeable misuse, like riding your road bike off a curb, hitting a pot-hole, or even crashing, is foreseeable and has been established law longer than carbon fiber has been around.

Last, manufacturing cost and sale cost is not the end profit. Even the counterfeit frames have substantial overhead to create the mold, but materials, labor, shipping, etc. Think about it as a prescription drug. It may cost 25c to make and $20 for the pill, but it costs hundreds of millions to develop it.

The best thing you can do is buy a brand name bike, even if it is a licensed or open mold frame. It is the cheapest insurance policy you can get. The company has a face and reputation to uphold. All manufacturers are bound by product standards in the US if their product is sold here or it is foreseeable their products will end up here. If you get hurt, you want someone to sue.

Before you go and rant about how we live in an overly litigious society, cycling is inherently dangerous, and all bikes are the same, think about this true story. A young 27 year old guy with 3 kids, wife, and parents to support works 10 hours a day 6 days a week as a tow truck driver. He is strapped for cash and worked Sundays for 6 months to save enough money to piece together an unbranded frame that looks like a Pinarello from a popular Chinese website. He gets up every day at 4:30 to ride because he loves it, rain or shine. He never raced, but had the fitness and talent of a fast Cat 2 racer after a year of riding. While on a big descent, his bike breaks in two with no warning and his limp body cartwheels so gruesomely, witnesses on the group ride thought it was a miracle he lived. Now he paralyzed from the neck down. There are no funds to pay for his care. His wife works 70+ hours a week at multiple jobs at minimum wage. His 80 year old mother and father make a few bucks from the state taking care of him. His kids won’t go to college and see their Dad suffer through his entire life. The manufacturer and distributor of the frame refuse to acknowledge any liability, or even show up for court. Even the judgement against them can’t be collected because the Chinese law refuses to cooperate. The careless construction of a knockoff/unbranded frame ruined his life and ruined his family’s life. That is how serious this unbranded/counterfeit issue is. Also, that is just one case. There are hundreds of injuries every year that are incredibly similar. It goes far beyond just having to find another frame too. If that doesn’t enrage you, tax payers will be shelling out more than $20,000,000 for care costs if something cannot be collected. I have a feeling the guy in China making the frames doesn’t have 20 million.

Only recently Chinese courts and authorities have been cooperating. It was only after a woman used a fake iPhone 5 cable that caused her phone to electrocute her, and she died. Another horror story I have heard is that the counterfeit cologne and perfumes form China are filled with known carcinogens, and some are even outright illegal to be in the US they are so unhealthy. Animal fur in clothing is from tortured dogs and cats who are brutally slaughtered. There is a 12 year old boy in Florida who got counterfeit beats by dre. headphones from his parents who thought they found a good deal online. He was electrocuted so badly he is now def. Imagine dealing with that as a parent.

There is also a cultural problem in Chinese business practices where many don’t feel responsible, legally or morally, to address the problem. Many cultural business experts claim it is the effect of capitalism on a culture that has yet to adapt to the rest of the world. Not my words, but something I have read. Interesting nonetheless.

If you want to learn more about it, check out the documentary called Counterfeit Culture. Interesting stuff.

Why is the post called “Be On the Look Out” when there is no information on what to “Be On the Look Out” for? Look needs to do what many other manufactures have done in the past and post some pictures that clearly show the difference between their frames and the “copy(s)” so we can “Be On The Lookout”.

AliExpress(Alibaba) is filled with tons of fake Look frames.
China who is the IP thieves of the world will stoop to the lowest level to make a buck. History of crap coming out of that (deleted) country proves this.

Several LBS bike shops and social ride meet-up groups in my area will kick out and won’t allow riders to participate in our group rides with known fake frames purchased from China or elsewhere.
Even debagged carbon is suspect and are told not to join.

Should be a standard policy amongst all LBS and ride groups to shun these fakers.

I’d rather ride a real legitimate cheap bike than ride a fake counterfeited carbon from China.

Get you Look 695, Cervelo S5, Colnago here…

http://disal.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-221369564/Carbon_road_bike_frame.html

There are no pics of the differences between real LOOK bike and fake ones because they just don’t want to show to counterfeiters how to make it closer look to the real product…

My elite/U23 team used to have a sponsordeal with a store who was an authorized dealer of bianchi.

He gave a huge discount for Oltre and Sempre Frame’s
About 8 oltre frames and 6 sempre frames were sold.

Now 2 years later,
– 9 Oltre Frame’s have been returned for warranty (yes, one broke twice) All warranty frames have been sold because riders did not feel safe.

Some were crashes, as that is common practice in racing. One was for sitting on the headtube before the race started.
Some cracks appeared after bumps in the road, One rear fork Failed during a mass sprint.
And one rider hit a pavement and cracked his just replaced oltre in 5 places.

For the sempre it was doing better, only two failures,
A crack with the derrailleur clamp (could be human mistake)
The aluminum dropout disconnected with the carbon frame during mass sprint.

They just wanted to make their frames too light.

Few people of our team ride chinese open mold products (not replica’s) some which i provided.
Many handspoked wheelsets over 40 pieces, (chinese rims). Only one failure, a crack after a puthole in the road. Not fatal in any way. I got instant warranty for this issue, so above mentioned you would not get warranty is not true in all cases , and to be honest, it was a huge puthole. For frame’s, no issues so far.
Also i got safety testing documents of all products i ever bought.

Mainpoint is, Cycling can be dangerous, riding a car, flying a plane can. Even buying food can. I would say it is one of the most dangerous sports out there. How strong your frame might be, having a flat downhill at the wrong moment and you are fu**ed.
Cars can too, any product can. Because they are all made and designed by human’s. And humans make mistakes. Fact remains. I do trust an open mould frame wich is sold by many smaller brands which are a little above 1000 grams and have been on the market for a few years more than the extremely lightweight products of some big brands.

Many may know FFWD a dutch wheelbrand, started out buying Chinese rims, and still do and are now sponsoring world tour teams.

What not many people know is that a few big factories produce for different brands. And many resellers buy from these brands. An good quality open mold frame could be as good and as save as any highly expensive brand bike. These factory’s are mainly taiwanese but production will be in china. And they shouldn’t be ashamed of it, the most expertese is in the biggest chinese factories.
(Some italian brands excluded)

Do not forget, high marketing cost, sponsorship, stock, distributors, bikeshops all need money without making the bike any safer or better to perform.

The point i want to make is that one chinese frame is not the other.
First i highly reject the use of replica’s as it is stealing in my opinion. And i truly believe that there are shitty one’s out there. and risk of bad quality frame is higher as if they don’t have any morals on stealing a brand, why would they have any concerning safety testing.

Fact remains, they are in the racing peleton a lot. About quality of the replica’s i can’t tell. But i don’t notice them behaving different or failing more. I have seen some broken carbon bike’s, believe me (mostly bianchi’s tough), But can’t tell that the replica’s are over represented.

And i promise you, you can find horror storys about any bike brand. no product is 100% safe. But you will have to accept that there are always things wich can happen. no matter what you do.

I have seen a local bike store set up a giant (authorized dealer), cutting the fork too short by accident but continue and putting the sam only 60% connected. I noted it to the owner, he told me to mind my business, and told it too the customer afterwards as it might endanger his life, he did not care really.
Bad manufacturing, assembling and low safety standards exist anywhere.

p.s. @Be Carefull,

If you buy 20 sets of carbon rims, you buy 1 to 3 sample’s first and test them i assume. If all rims cracked, that means the first sample rim did too. Why did you buy more if it had a 100% failure rate.

@Be careful

Along with JW’s comment above, I also wonder who you sourced your rims from, as there are a number of extremely reputable brands selling many thousands of rims which don’t crack when you tension them.

Let’s not get confused here between “Chinese manufacturers” and “crap manufacturers”, they’re not one and the same.

The ‘cycling market is over priced’ chestnut only demonstrates the average lack of any understanding on how a business is run.

Compare cost wise some consumable item from another industry (eg. car tires?) and look at those prices. Then consider economy of scale, level of engineering and material costs. Add low units and high aftermarket service demands by customers. The pricing in the industry, especially on hard goods, is completely in line. The only place to cut costs and not corners is to remove a layer of hands that touch the item (distributor or retailer) and then you have the problem of not having any hands to look at it when it needs any remedial attention.

Safety (your own and others), quality, continuing service and updated products et al is all sacrificed on saving a buck. The real irony is that it’s really not about saving money, we’re regularly wasteful in so many other areas of lives (just consider what we spend on fuel or heating/aircon). It’s all about getting a deal, getting one over/up/better, essentially at someone’s cost. Winning. There’s something really sad and tacky about it all.

Too often re-arranging prejudices is equated with thinking.

I am an actual lawyer who has worked at two major US based internet retailers. It is very clear to me that “@lawyerknowitall” is not a lawyer. To say that eBay “allows” a counterfeit to be sold shows a gross misunderstanding of legal and business realities.

I can assure you that both major US internet retailers I have worked for will take down counterfeits expeditiously. Counterfeits are damaging to a retailer’s brand and they cause significant/costly issues with with brand owners.

Alibaba appears to base much of its Ali Express cycling business on counterfeits. I assume they do not cooperate with brand owners in the same way US based internet retailers do. I can’t believe that such a widespread practice would go unnoticed by Alibaba CS/Legal/Management – or that it is limited to the cycling category. It is unfortunate that the market/analysts do not price this into the share price – or perhaps they have.

I mean, if you buy cheap, be prepared to buy twice.

Also, just remembered something else. I went to visit a Honda factory that had a collaboration with the co. I was working at. Such a contrast. The co. I was working at had a running joke, don’t buy car made on a Friday. The Honda factory was opposite. White floors not black, everyone wore nice overalls and caps. Free drinks from the drinks machines…I could go on. It’s no wonder the Japanese way of manufacturing became the model to aim for.

Do they make bikes in Japan? I know that they have some pretty high-tech carbon raw materials coming from there. The process and the attention to detail is the key.

Don’t get me wrong, if I new some legit factory with good processes was making some carbon frame in the spare time, great. Descending downhill at 45+ MPH (which I regularly do) on a chinese no name copied frame from ebay or alibaba…I think I’ll pass.

Why so racist and prejudice label copy frame as Chinese copy?
I think nowadays everything copy will be labelled as Chinese. Manufacturer will continue play the quality and safety card games when their price are marked up from China OEM manufacturer.

I don’t agree that ALL Chinese manufacture are bad. If this is the case, why large bike company still source from OEM manufacturer in China?

My 2 cent.

@a –
“And for all I know those could be exactly the same frames from the same factory, or from plans that have been “borrowed” from the original factory. That said, most people prefer buying from “well known” chinese manufacturers and generally dont want the “original stickers” on either.”

Well, no.

AFAIK, the look factories are in Tunisia, not far east. Same with the BMC Impec, it is the only bike in the BMC line that is made in Switzerland. They are obviously “cosmetic” copies.

That’s the main issue with these “clones”. Some could be issued from the same molds with a comparable quality controls, others do not. But from our computer screen there is no way we can be sure. I bought 2 frames direct from chinese and taiwanese factories but they were original designs, not copies. It made me more comfortable with the purchase but there were still some QC issues (mostly alignement problems). A mate sell some under his own brand and told me he had to send back a lot of frames when he started his company before the supplier increased his quality control.