The duo returns for the third episode of the “FSC”; while not much happened in the world of cycling last week, Oregon has some excellent high school MTB race news. This week’s main topic is the Ruckus used bike buyers guide; tips, tricks, hacks and when to walk away from a used bike. As always, the #carbonqueries rounds out the episode.
Dan: 00:00 Hello again everybody and welcome to the third episode of the fiber side chats by Ruckus composites, the nation’s leader in carbon fiber repair and inspection. We’re your hosts, Shawn small. I’m Dan stinely. On this week’s episode we’re going to be talking are used bike buyer’s guide. Are you interested in picking up a used bike this holiday season? Stay tuned and we’ll give you some tips.
Shawn: 00:31 Today’s episode this week in cycling, not a lot going on now. It’s December. It’s quiet as a. most people are. It’s actually a beautiful day in Portland. It’s not rating blue skies and 50 degrees weirdly. We’ve had four days of sunshine. Yeah, I almost took my fenders off. Just getting that would rather ends back, surefire way to bring back. I’m also a bad guy, so I’ll take funders will take them off for awhile. Five bolts. It’s really not that hard. No, it’s not that hard. Those zip ties though, don’t know. You’re not a zip tie guy today, right? Yeah, that is true. Zip ties are helpful in cable management for Electronics, especially when you make your own lights. More on that later. More on that later if you want to see Shawnnw wrapping a, a bunch of wires around his handles bars, but this time, other than showing, making his own lights, there’s really not that much going on this weekend.
Shawn: 01:24 Cycling know there’s some great local news. Oregon has joined the national interscholastic cycling association. That’s a High-school Association for Mountain biking that apparently has 14,500 students across 800 schools as well. Awesome. I mean it is really awesome. I wish there was something. Was there. We had a lot of a and cow judging. I grew up on a very small rural Wisconsin cheese making as you might expect to. You were having different competitions. Animal races rather than mountain bike races. The animals didn’t raise, but a cow judging was definitely a thing. What do you do for cow judging? Oh, there’s a lot. That’s a whole big thing. Next episode, kind of judging. You want to know a lot about holsteins guy. It’s pretty cool though to be able to race mountain bikes in high school. Yeah. I didn’t get into racing or biking really until joining your Ma. My collegiate team had been amazing, you know, I think the first time I went mountain biking, um, I had tow straps on. It sounds like a great way to start a. yeah, you were trying to tow straps. They get a can’t get your foot in the darn thing out of it. So I took it over a bunch and then it got stuck on everything and it darn near killed me. I was 20 years old. Yeah.
Shawn: 02:54 Thank you to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Cycling Team for not making fun of me too much, at least to my face. I didn’t always have behind my back, but everyone was great. Where did you go? Where did you go? We’re walking river trails. Oh, C really? K bramble towns. I got stuck on everything. Yeah. Someone and it’s all sharp. Sharp. Oh yeah. The nice thing is someone just gave me a parable that’s pds. That was my first period. Feel bad for you. They were like, you’ll, I think you might like the sport tig these. Yeah, they were super nice. Yeah. They’re just like, hey, I got, you know, they were already into the sport quite a bit. So they had you acquire a lot of years, you still have them. Do you still have those pedals? No, I’m sure I pass them on to somebody. I still have that tiny little library of pedals.
Shawn: 03:43 I slow love three pairs, stds right now. Not for everybody. So they’re getting young kids into sport. My question is what, what, what does the coaching situation look like? This other trend to help provide them, but as I come through the schools, does that come and looks like it looks like they’re just trying to. And I’m sure they have them from everywhere. Both private and school support coaches. Oh, I don’t think it’s a private coach. I think it’s more of like a high school cross country team style coach of like very supportive being like here’s some basic. At least that was my high school cross country cottage. Very, very supportive man. Yeah, there’s, I guess key helped us just love the sport at our, you know, I feel pretty lucky that he was their coach. Hindsight is 2020, but I could see high school Dan really liking the idea of a weekend mountain bike race trip.
Shawn: 04:38 Oh yeah. Same thing that you’ve been racing in college. It was the cheapest, I think it was. Ah, well I think it was $20 for an entire weekend and that’s too racist, you know, it was a road seasons. So that was a crit and a road race and our school help cover lodging and transportation. I mean we had to put like nine people in bikes into a minivan and then drive for eight hours to go to school. High, high down. That’s all college when you live with nine people in one house and [inaudible] people in one van that much of a strategy or a swish pattern. But then you throw up on nine bikes in the trunk and you’re like, all right, everybody take every. We’ll throw hit by the railroad. He old Rusty Dodge Caravan will get you there. And we had the school vans even better.
Shawn: 05:31 Yeah. I mean there were still many vans but they weren’t like a big conversion van or anything. Um, no. It looks like Oregon is a, just joined this year. Um, they say 2018 is going to be a building year, so they’re probably just going to be getting school signed up. Coaches sponsors me, looks like tracking Shimano and swam our national sponsors, which, you know, thanks to those three companies for doing that. I know that’s wonderful thing. They helped build the sport of 6,300 coaches, which is crazy in 10,000 volunteers. Says that the game really involved. Ah, I’d never actually heard of them before this. The great to see if we can find a way to get involved with them going forward. I mean getting more people on bikes. That’s great. Makes sense to us. If you’re out there listening to this in Oregon and you are involved in the nic, please reach out. We would also love to be involved.
Shawn: 06:30 So this weekend repair, we’re bringing two funds. One Fun story of a modification to an older bike and one interesting repairs. Three on a brand new bite. First off, we’ve got an older specialize asks works epic mountain bike for Jesus. The way we described it in endurance racers, in endurance racing, it’s very efficient. I’ll say that. The mountain bike to ride when you want a pedal all day long. Yeah, if you’re doing a hundred miles or less. I mean really I will say they’re cool but. But this is a little older. Maybe 2014, 2013, maybe 20, 13. Still Great. Still [inaudible], you know it’s got everything you need in a full suspension. Cross country bike. Really even come in for repair. Being so old. The reason that it came in is well, you know, easiest way to update and mountain bike is a gravity dropper. Go from a rigid seat post of yesterday to a, drop her up tomorrow.
Dan: 07:31 Go from rush to plush. You know, ask yourself why? Why is z and have your a little Tom Sawyer and you don’t want to drop that seat. We’re here for you. But. So the gentlemen came in, brought his bike in and he has the new box. Drop her as nice internal routing. So what we’re going to do is basically set it up for him. We’re going to find a way to go through the inside of his frame and mountain bikes offer you a lot of options in theory. Easiest ways to go inside the down tube and then up through the seat tube straight to the drop her. Um, sometimes we’ve had to go through the bottom bracket as well. Yeah, everything’s great. He actually wants us to internalize everything at this point. He’s really anti zip tie, which I totally respect. I’m also anti zip tie because I’ve crashed my mountain bike and strangely cut myself pretty good on the inside of my leg once on a mountain bike, tire pros, zip tie, and I sand down the tops of my zip ties when it crashed.
Shawn: 08:29 I don’t get caught. Was it all depends. How would they fall? It looks good to honestly getting everything internalized. It’s amazing how much of a modern touch. Just putting everything on any side of the tubes. It’s like, oh, well, you know, it’s that double take, triple take. Oh, you finally see it the fourth time he looked like, oh, everything is internalized. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. And kind of the, you know, what the mountain bike it gets it out of the elements to. I mean it’s full, like the full length housing, but you know, with hydraulic you don’t have to replace it, you know, you kind of have to screw around and setting it up once and then just delete it.
Dan: 09:00 It is definitely one of the cleanest examples of a mountain like that we’ve seen.
Dan: 09:06 It’s so clean. No chips. No, it’s definitely.
Dan: 09:16 So one of the things that we do here is we take customer problems and make custom solutions. As we said no to. Mountain bikes are going to take the same internal routing. So if you have an older bike that you want to modernize a little bit, it’s a great way to do it. A look at our final, final product with this specialized, make sure to check out our repair blog, uh, for the final product.
Shawn: 09:38 Yeah. Just as a professional tip, do not just drill a hole yourself. Um, the way we do it safely is a, we ultrasound the area and the main reason we’re using ultrasound, there’s, we get a very accurate thickness measurement down to a thousandth of a millimeter. So we map out that area specifically and then we actually put on new material to help reinforce where we’re going to make our insertion point. You had to give you just drill a hole just like last week, you’re just putting holes in your bike and you’ve got to make problems that takes up this segment. So what else we got here this week, Dan,
Dan: 10:19 we have one of the new [inaudible] explorer bikes, which is of the new trend of bikes. People are trying to make the one bike to do it all so you can run it and he’s size tires and it’s up to how big though? Um, you can put 20 niners in it while I was tired though, I think two point one. Yeah. Clearance up to two point one inch mountain bike tires all the way down to 26 inch tires if you’re a Weirdo like me. A overall it seems like a pretty cool bike. Uh, very similar to the open up cycles. I’m in shape in geometry, in bigchain state drop ass swag. Yeah, similar bike, really cool. But this one came in for a crack on the seat to kind of right by where the seat posts is installed. And this takes one of the wedge style clamps, Right Sean?
Shawn: 11:23 Yeah, it’s an insertion, a expanding wedge, or you tighten the bolt from the top of the top tube and what that does is it expands it and pinches the squarish c posts to the frame.
Dan: 11:36 Our guests is a little bit of over tightening is what caused the crack.
Shawn: 11:40 Yeah. In theory, it’s a really good method for holding cbos and carbon bikes and you see a lot of companies doing this now, giants done at God’s, done it. And who else has obviously open as know, there’s open around know it’s a great way to hold a posting except because it’s too flat. Surfaces pushing upon it, pushing up against each other. Yeah, totally. And it just kind of allows for, hate to say slop, but a looser tolerance a little bit because that wedge can really. Or the expansion wedge can really take up that space. Has done it for years, kind of what bike the ass owe us a Zarella. Um, but it’s kind of a cool bike. You know, I love this modern form factor. Uh, I’m personally a big fan of the, uh, is I like to joke, I call these carving crosschecks because thoroughly kind of made this bike very popular.
Dan: 12:31 You know, I can do it all right now. The carbon cross check, but the cross-check doesn’t have real fast tm square. Our dynamic technology shown. No, it doesn’t, nor do I even know what that is. But um, it’s upon, I believe a square square square is aerodynamic. It also sounds like a little ground a mammal. One of our other favorite features of this bike is the hang loose hanger. Yeah. Rear wheel can be a real pain with a disc brake. They make it easy. Forget the derailleur focused on the disk. Is that what they say? Huh? I guess that’s nice. That’s a cool bike. Yeah. It’s got some, a hard attachment points for owning a frame bag, which is how I think that’s kind of a cool way. I don’t think they sell a frame bag, but it’d be cool if they had one that was specifically for their bike.
Shawn: 13:20 There’s a lot options out there for Fran bags already for top tubes, but they have three water bottle bosses on the down tube out of the party cage. Well that’s for under. I don’t think it has one underneath. Does it? Don’t know if. No, I don’t think it has the true party case. You’re right on the top side of that down to there’s three so you can mount a bigger bottle or move it around or repositioned as needed, uh, to why your legs on it. We think so generally. That makes it. That’s the main reason why you put them on your fork. That’s a really cool. We definitely got it all patched up and ready to go. Getting re painted white in no time. So make sure to tune in to our repair blog to check out the final product on this three explorer. Really cool bike.
Dan: 14:06 Pretty easy. Fix for us, hang loose real fast. TM technology. Checkpoint Charlie, what? The checkpoint. I’ve seen this on a couple of bikes now. It’s that little hole in the frame so you can see that your seat post isn’t far enough. It’s on the front of the seat. Do you see it? We saw it on the checkpoint. Charlie. Yeah. We saw it on a. those opens, but then we see it on a roadie there. Rodeo labs have one. Don’t they have a hole there? It’s kind of. It’s kind of a funny problem. I mean it’s kind of an interesting solution to a problem you I’ve never thought about honestly not sitting in your seat post in far enough. Yeah, I guess I don’t know that that. Well that’s a must be more of a problem than we think it is, but we don’t really see damages related to that surprisingly.
Shawn: 14:48 I mean occasionally mountain bike, but it doesn’t seem like that’s a problem if you’re buying a bike that fits you well. That’s one reason and especially with a bike with a specific [inaudible]. I mean, one thing, if you had a frame that could take [inaudible] and you know, a lot of bikes come with really crappy seat and you know, they’re worth just recycling and I’m throwing something nice, very fancy having a problem of getting, like, let’s say you bought one of the shorter Thompson’s and you needed more of it out, but I don’t know yet. Again, it’s a cool feature, but it seems like number one I really thought was necessary. No, definitely not. Checkpoint Charlie, that wraps up this segment. Let’s, uh, head on over to the main topic,
Shawn: 14:48 So it’s early December. What do a lot of people like doing this time of year? Dan Not riding their bikes and not be out? Right? Looking at next year’s models, but you know, for a lot of us also the holiday season is a good time to think about gift giving or gift receiving or treating yourself all of the above are totally fine by us. You know, one of the easiest, most fun ways is getting yourself a new bike, a new. It could be brand new, new could be used. There’s still a lot of value in a used bike. Not a lot can really go wrong with a frame
Dan: 16:12 in our eyes. Buying a used bike is perfectly acceptable for every reason. As long as you get the right one, 20, 16, 20, 15 bikes, you’re not going to see significant model changes all the time, you know, in only two years or so. If you’re buying a couple of years old, you know, they’re just a couple of things to look out for more than anything, you know, safety being the most paramount. Make sure the bike is in good shape,
Shawn: 16:37 but check to make sure your components fit. You know, I’m still a most. My bikes are a 1:35 quick release. Rear ends doesn’t make sense for me to change because I have four frames that are that same. We’ll standard and all my wheels are that. As long as you’re committed to what you want to ride. Yeah. If you’re not interested in upgrading to boost anything, then [inaudible] quicker leases. Great. Or even if you’re a [inaudible] or if you’re looking at a new cross bike, you know, there’s a lot of great cantilever cross bikes out there that people, a lot of people move to the desk, you know, if breaks are fantastic, but it takes a lot of equipment. You know, you need different cables, you need hoses or different levers. You need different wheels, you need disc rotors, you need all these new things that can make, you know, buying used by get pretty expensive. Oftentimes it’s better to just buy
Dan: 17:31 complete bike rather than try and parse it out. Yeah, exactly what to look for. Well, what are we looking for when we want to buy used bikes? Obviously the first thing you want to start with a physical inspection, you look
Shawn: 17:44 for, you know, there’s two different sales options here. You’re, let’s say you’re buying it off craigslist, you’re going to look at it in person, which is honesty, always the best. Um, what we recommend if you are directly in front of the bike. Um, our favorite tool here is just an inspection flashlight and take it with you. Look over the frame closely or user or use the lead on your iphone. Oh, that’s great idea. Yeah, exactly. Inspection Line. Everybody’s got in their pocket and basically shine, added on an angle and look at any scratches being a used bike. It’s probably going to have some chips in the paint, some scratches in it and you just kind of want to get a better look at those. If there, if anybody has any stickers or duct tape or tape over part of the bike any way. Take it off. Um, we’ve heard a lot of sad stories and someone buying a bike and there was tape on it for whatever reason or some events sticker and it turns out that was covering something and we’re here to help you. Uh, we can definitely fix that. But knowing advances, but it always makes it a lot easier to swallow. Being surprised with it.
Dan: 18:51 It’s better to walk away from a broken bike obviously and look at another one because there are plenty
Shawn: 18:55 or use it as a boy to bring down the price. You know, if you’re like, hey, this is actually got something weird here, hang offer a lower price,
Dan: 19:03 another thing you can do, and this is we realize this is kind of a pain in the ass, but if you can and you have a the tools and be the technical know how to take apart the front end, the cockpit of the bike. It’s a carbon steer tube. We see hundreds and hundreds of broken carbon steer tubes year. Pop out the steer tube, give it a once over with the flashlight. These things can break all the time. The, we see a lot of over clamped steer tube areas from the stem. So just give it a once-over. Like I said, we realize it’s going to be kind of a pain, but this is an opportunity either to get a lower price if you find something, uh, to ensure that the bike is safe or to walk away altogether. So five to 10 minutes can end up saving you a lot of time, money and hassle in the long run.
Shawn: 19:49 Yeah, exactly. If you’re, you know, looking at a great bike and something seems weird with the fork, talk about it right away. That’s not something you want to play any games with. You know, if you do lower the price and still buy the frame or bike, whatever the case is, you know, if you need help finding a get in, get a hold of us, we can find forks. Um, we have a lot here. We can get a new forks pretty easily if you care about what they look like, we can get a wanted painted to match the frame originally. So lot of options there always yet again, play it safe. And one thing that’s obvious, um, depending on what city every city’s a little different is trying to look up the serial number. If a deal seems too good to be true. We have heard a lot of weird stories where people have in their bikes get stolen, then they get broken and then the owner gets it back like three years later and you know, they’ll bring it in and we repair it.
Shawn: 20:41 That’s great. I’m a ton of bite registration sites, so yeah, check the serial number, give it a double check to make sure that the bike you’re buying and actually is from the person selling it seems too good to be true. It probably is, you know, with E-bay could be harder. Um, yet again, we’ve heard hundreds of stories that people buying a bike on Ebay so the bike arrives and boy there’s something that wasn’t shown and you know, most of the time the seller has been pretty good and it’ll be like give him some money off or refund them or take the bike back. But we’ve also heard the opposite where the seller disappears and you know then this person is stuck with a broken bike or are they somehow claim that was damaged in shipping? I don’t really know. But yet again, if they’re, you know, if you buy a bike off E-bay v even before you want to box it, take a photo of the box.
Shawn: 21:38 You know, if there is anything that needs to be claimed in a shipping insurance way, you need those photos of that box where right away that’s actually surprise. It’s a boring photo because it’s a photo of a box, but it’s amazing if there is any sort of crush marks or if it looks taped or mishandled, that’ll really help expedite your claim process thing that we hear all the time relating to the boxes. Small parts falling out too, so yeah, check all the seams. Make sure it’s well taped up. Like I said, we’ve heard anything esoteric and weird here, so these are just firsthand examples of things that we’ve seen. Yeah. On that same thing with small parts. When you’re looking at a bike in person, make sure they’re all there. If the bike has a specific seat post like an Arrow seat post or just a basically a non-standard one that isn’t around, you know, make sure the seat post itself is in good shape.
Shawn: 22:25 I’m. If it’s not, you might have a hard hard time down the road finding a replacement. A lot of those specific arrow shaped posts don’t exist after a couple years or they’re very hard to find. Some of the companies seem to stock them for quite a while or they’ve committed. I think Scott, like on the oils have committed to one size and they’ve stuck with for quite a few years, but some people, smaller brands like Kubota, I think it was one of my favorites for changing the post every year and then not making very, not making any replacements and then people, you know, sometimes the see post brakes for whatever reason. Now your whole frame is trashed. You have any questions about what you’re buying at any time you can send us a photo. It might be hard to answer because we do have correspondence a lot of people in a day, but we are happy to, you know, at least give our two cents.
Dan: 23:11 Sometimes. Another thing that our customers do all the time is they buy a bike online and ship it to us. Once they get it, just keep it in the box. You know, a lot of times we hear customers say, well, you know, I actually saved a whole bunch of money buying this, so why don’t you guys give it a full inspection just to make sure. And for us, full inspections actually are pretty quick process within a week turnaround time. So if you buy a bike, ship it to us quickly upon after buying it, you still might even fall within the 30 day warranty period for anybody that you buy online. So if you can find something through an inspection, you know, then you have verified,
Dan: 23:46 well this was actually broken. You sold me broken bike, you know, just kinda protecting yourself. And we have seen that a couple of times. Luckily we haven’t gotten anything broken from people that have bought on Ebay. Protect yourself more than anything else.
Shawn: 24:00 Great Advice. Yeah, set it to us first. We can give it a clean bill of health or
Dan: 24:04 diagnosis upon. Yeah, buff it up or clean it up to make it feel like a new bike to another thing to do once. If you aren’t going to go down the road of online shopping, make sure you ensure the shipping on. That’s not the place to save money.
Shawn: 24:21 No, that’s not worth it. You know, let’s like all insurance. You don’t need it till you need it. You hate paying for an advanced. But yet again, if you’re buying something from a third party or somebody you don’t know, insure it, I think most shipping companies are about a dollar. If you pay a dollar for $100 of shipping insurance, give or take. So you know, to have a thousand dollars onto it, it’s 10 bucks.
Dan: 24:46 That’s, as we said, that’s not the $10 you want to save. We see so many bikes broken because of shipping damage. So make sure you take the time to do that. That’s probably one of our greatest recommendations for buying anything online. Really.
Shawn: 25:02 Yeah. Especially this time of year, holiday season. I mean, you know, there’s still plenty safe with things, but they have to deal with double the volume. Very short time period. And then there’s just a lot of things that can go wrong and shipping more than that you wouldn’t ever never know. So yeah, I, you know, quick takeaways a look it over as best as you can. Ask us any questions, we can help point you in some right directions or boy, if you want us to inspect it, send it straight to us or bring it straight to us and we’ll give it a full once over and you know, kind of give that third party eye on it and make sure all is good to go or you need to return it
Dan: 25:36 and grill the seller as well. You know, if you’re buying a bike in person, make sure you talk to the person asking the questions. Don’t be afraid or shy to do that. You’re there to purchase something off of them, so make sure you’re getting exactly what you want. Otherwise walk away.
Shawn: 25:49 Yeah. Typically since you’re buying a used frame, you’re avoiding the original manufacturer’s warranty. Um, I don’t know of a single warranty that’s transferable so that it’s one thing to keep in mind as well. But we’re here to, we’re here as your second warranty. Um, if you need anything, we offer a full limited lifetime warranty on all our repairs. Hopefully you don’t need that from us, but you know, we’re here if anything ever comes up. So you had, again, if you have questions just reach out to us and we’ll do our best.
Dan: 26:18 Yeah, good luck. Make sure you get a good bike. Low Ball. Just enough to get the offer. Classic haggling. Dan, the, you never paid full price for anything on craigslist. Come on.
Shawn: 26:18 now is my favorite part of the podcast. It’s kind of a q and a session. Um, call it our carbon
Shawn: 26:44 queries. You can reach out to us on Instagram, twitter, facebook, or connect with us on linkedin. Use the Hashtag carbon queries. All right. First question comes from twitter today. What is your response to claims that carbon fiber repair is not safe? Daniel, don’t take this one.
Dan: 27:02 Yeah, that’s a really great question. Uh, we kind of see it a couple of ways. Um, we can see it definitely from an old way, but we also see it from our way and the one way we, we can understand why [inaudible] would say that repair is not safe because knowledge is power, right? It’s an oem in one stands for original equipment manufacturing. So big brands, um, you know, would be considered non people. Making things, the actual company, the actual, yeah, the actual companies themselves, but yeah, so at an oem level we can see how they would say it’s unsafe because it’s about protecting themselves and liability and knowledge is power. And so if one of these brands said that repair and was OK, a lot of people would try and then start doing it themselves and most people cannot do it properly so somebody tries to repair their own bike, they hurt themselves on a bike they repaired poorly and then turn around and try and see the company under, you know, under the guise of, well you said repair was OK, well, so we could see that being a whole storm of litigation for a lot of companies so we can understand why that they would want to do that.
Shawn: 28:11 You kind of reiterate, there’s a lot of complexity to the process to do it safely. Um, yet again, what makes us different? We’ve invested a whole lot of time and money in developing skills people and new technology. We don’t ever want to see anybody have a problem with our repairs either. So yeah, for us it’s definitely a safe thing to do. Yeah, I mean that’s the reason why we ultrasound everything pre and post op kind of say. And could we get a confirm invalidate all of her own work as well?
Dan: 28:40 Yeah. Addressing the concern that carbon fiber repairs. Not Safe though. That’s just. It can be. Can Be done. It’s done space x does it. Boeing does it, you know, it’s exactly. Repair composites. Repair is a thing to call it unsafe. Well inherently that’s the question, right? It’s not. It can be done properly, but if not done properly then it is on sale.
Shawn: 29:04 Yeah. Fixing anything can be unsafe if you do it yourself, unless you’re a professional
Dan: 29:09 national, unless you’re a professional. We kind of see it this way. What we say around the shop is, you know, you’re a carbon fiber frame. Is, is the chassis of your car? Are you. Most people aren’t going to go underneath and try and weld broken parts of their chassis back together. I hope you can do small engine work and repairs and stuff like that. Oil changes, oil changes, you know, timing belt. If you’re really, really savvy or depending on how the car, but yeah, that’s a long, long story short. It is safe when done properly, but we completely understand from an oem or a manufacturer saying that it’s
Shawn: 29:42 not just trying to protect their brand. Oh yeah. There’s an interesting Lamborghini has a, what they call the flying doctors, um, their, they call them doctors technically, but uh, they’re carbon repair technicians that they fly around the world and they do on-site car repair essentially, you know, it’s easier for them to, you know, you’re not going to ship a car when you can, but it’s cost prohibitive so it’s easier to ship to people and have them knew the repair on site and when did or that wasn’t Lamborghini. Yeah, we are Lamborghini in Seattle and they talk a lot about repair and Boeing’s there and I know they have a massive repair a facility and I think there’s like 50 people there in the Washington branch. It’s common. Yeah. Really great question. Thanks for the submission on that one. All right. Kind of a general question. Someone just wants to know what a typical repair can will cost them.
Dan: 30:36 Another good question. The problem is, do we have a typical repair?
Shawn: 30:43 Kinda wish we did, but everything’s always kind of them.
Dan: 30:46 Definitely case by case basis. Roughly. We have a couple different prices for your normal tube repair. We start around $500 depending on the severity of the damage, the complexity of the repair. Does it need an aesthetic wrap to finalize? Is it covered in twill a text dream for example, and also how difficult it is to paint. All those things are factored into the, to the pricing structure of that $500 price. But we also offer a lower price entry, same quality repair with not the all the exact same finishing work. That’s our back end black policy where we, we perform the repair, it looks beautiful, but we spend less time on finishing and a lot for a lot of people that’s what they want. They don’t care what it looks like, they just want it to be fixed. So we’ll spray black for them. Three 50 out the door dropouts. Uh, as we went over last week, very, very expensive process for us. Those are usually around $650, but we are the only company performing that service safely in repeatedly. Uh, we also do inspections, so $50 for a spot check, $250 for a full bike inspection. Both of those use ultrasound.
Shawn: 32:00 Yeah. What a spot-check is. Let’s say you crashed or not crashed, but like something fell on your bike and you just have an area that you’re like, you hope it’s not damaged but you just want somebody to verify. And that’s really why we have that simple model of like, we don’t want to look over the whole bike. That takes a lot of time. Um, what did we say? It’s about what, three inch diameter, which is actually large, but yeah, three inches. Yeah, I think we called it the beer really, you know, that’s yet again, we just, if you have one spot you want to look at a rock, hit it, you know, just one area or you know, uh, for her, something we’ll do that full inspection is, you know, if you’ve had something major happened, have you rack your bike in a very major way, have you been hit by a car and drive your bike in your garage on your roof rack and it looks OK, but you’re like, Ooh, it shouldn’t be way more than meets the eye when it comes to delicate carpet down.
Dan: 32:59 So it’s always better to be safe than sorry. And that’s why we offer those to offer those to inspection services as well. Another great question. Thanks for that one. Yeah, I’m, yeah, if you have any questions, there’s always contact us for a quote that’s, we can really tailor it any way you need or want to spend. This next question comes from facebook. Will my bike be heavier after you repair it? That’s a good question to take this one, John. That’s a great question. You know, we have, we do weigh some of our bikes, we don’t on everyone because it’s not a concern. Um, and w the reason why it’s not a concern is we remove all the original damage. Um, so that removes a bunch of weight and we know exactly how much we’re removing from the damage location. And I designed all of our repairs to be 10 percent over.
Shawn: 33:48 Um, we did that originally to, or the intent there was to basically structurally blend the repair with the remainder of the frame. We can make very, you could, we don’t, but you can make very, very localized repairs, you know, if you’re damaged spot is the size of a quarter year repair could be about the size of a half dollar. Uh, we basically accepted to the size of a dollar bill. And the reason why that again is to help transfer all the stress loads around the repair site into the rest of the frame. Um, you know, we have measured a few and you know, it’s about 10 grams heavier and sometimes that’s listed in body work and new clear coat on the frame. Mostly paint. Yeah, it’s not much. When was the last one, Joel, but I think it was 14 grams. Yeah, it was 14 grams. It was a pretty big repair.
Shawn: 34:37 You know, it’s interesting if you go onto our website, we have a specialized torch mountain bike on there and that was when we elected actually to make it heavier and again, heavier and carbon [inaudible] means like 50 grams. And the reason why we did that as airaid, the damage was massive. It was huge. And that’s one of the, you know, with mountain bikes we like to go a little heavier and the reason why is they take impact and that lay up, you know, the bike is thick so we kind of want to prevent more damages on certain. Yeah, there’s certain areas on a bike where we’re going to yet again tailor our repair to help prevent future problems as well. Let’s say you keep crashing your down to something which is where this damage was on the down too, so we’re going to overbuild those. Yeah. But that’s another reason why I think we’re probably a little different is we try to not only fix problems, but I would say correct for them as well. Right. Is that a good way of saying. Yeah, we try to think it out for you sometimes. Will your bike be heavier?
Dan: 35:38 Not much. If at all. If at all. Thanks for the great questions, everybody. As always, you can submit through Instagram, facebook, twitter, or linkedin using the Hashtag at carbon queries. That about does it for this week’s episode. As always, please make sure to like, share, follow, and repost us. You can also give us ratings on itunes, soundcloud, Google play and Google play. So we are everywhere all over the Internet. But yeah, please like and share and help get the word out about the podcast. If you have an idea for an episode, let us know. Please keep submitting those carbon queries will see you all next week. As always, the only moment we have is the president. Make sure to check into it every once in awhile.