Unfortunately, this is a repair request we see WAY TOO FREQUENTLY: shipping damage. No matter what you do to pack your bike safely, snugly and correctly, there’s always a chance an accident can happen. In this repair case, the set of handlebars smashed into the bottom half of the headtube, causing a slightly-larger-than-quarter sized crack. Luckily, we’re here to help. This carbon fiber Felt F2X arrived at the shop after losing a chunk off the bottom of the headtube. There wasn’t a huge (read: explosive) amount of damage like an impact break. But there was cracking and we had to ensure that everything transitioned together smoothly for the correct repair quality. The meeting joints of the races, where the headtube meets the top and down tubes, etc.
So, we stripped everything back off the entire headtube rather than just applying a small patch which, would have sufficed honestly, but we wanted to be completely thorough about the repair. After, The layup had to be really precise from each bearing race at the top and bottom of the headtube. It was so smooth we could just lay it up in several precise, niiiice pieces of carbon.
By now we’re certain you’ve heard us muse about our true love of painting, so we’ll spare you some of those details and give it to ya quick. Normally on bike frames, there’s a large gap to transition the color that we recreate to the color that already exists, but because we’re painting the headtube it has the exact same paint and graphics as the fork. Therefore, it’s a stark hardline, so you truly have to nail the color instead of spraying a transition all the way down and over other areas. Pretty tough stuff, really.
Unfortunately, shipping damage can and will happen to everyone at some point in their cycling travels. Luckily, we’re always here and happy to help keep broken bikes out of landfills and to get them back on the roads and trails where they belong.
