Thanks to Justin from Dirt Rag for the photos, http://www.dirtragmag.com/gallery/v/interbikeday4/?g2_page=10
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- Album
- Our-Bikes
- Category
- Bikes - DH
- Date Posted
- Sep 28, 2009 at 17:33Sep 28, 2009
- Location
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Portland, Oregon, United States
- Trail
- Interbike 2009
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- any
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33 Comments
- 1 0
seraph
(Sep 29, 2009 at 0:07)
On the Intense bikes with the "Works" paint job (a misnomer, of course), I noticed a fair amount of oxidization around the welds, eventually leading to catastrophic weld failure. Are you not worried about this with your frames?
- 1 0
if the frame is properly treated before it goes out it won't be an issue. It helps to have a nice tubeset too.
- 1 0
Easton is a great tube set, not saying anything bad about the tubes or the construction I love Jeff and his crew and I have nothing but respect and love for him and Intense.
I am not inferring anything at all either but what I am referring to is the actual tube properties and material: i.e. 7000 series vs 6000 series, hydroformed and manipulated butts formed into the tubes vs drawn sheets that are brake pressed into shape. I love monocoque structures and have plans on making bikes that way as well as hydroforming.
It can be more difficult to work with and the actual aluminum can be harder to work with because the tolerances are different. With hydroforming we can come within .001 tolerances as it is all computer controlled from the bare liquid material to a hard sheet then to the exact butted and tapered forms we want.
Some aluminum is better than others and because of that, some can oxidize faster and more extremely than others. Heat treating and finishing play a huge roll in the final properties of the tubeset as well. I know Jeff and crew are masters at their craft and probably know a bit more than I do about the metallurgic properties of aluminum.
In short, proper treatment after final fabrication makes all the difference in the world and the ones you say failed from Intense were probably just a flook occurrence or may have been early on in their production of the "werks" finish.
I am not inferring anything at all either but what I am referring to is the actual tube properties and material: i.e. 7000 series vs 6000 series, hydroformed and manipulated butts formed into the tubes vs drawn sheets that are brake pressed into shape. I love monocoque structures and have plans on making bikes that way as well as hydroforming.
It can be more difficult to work with and the actual aluminum can be harder to work with because the tolerances are different. With hydroforming we can come within .001 tolerances as it is all computer controlled from the bare liquid material to a hard sheet then to the exact butted and tapered forms we want.
Some aluminum is better than others and because of that, some can oxidize faster and more extremely than others. Heat treating and finishing play a huge roll in the final properties of the tubeset as well. I know Jeff and crew are masters at their craft and probably know a bit more than I do about the metallurgic properties of aluminum.
In short, proper treatment after final fabrication makes all the difference in the world and the ones you say failed from Intense were probably just a flook occurrence or may have been early on in their production of the "werks" finish.
- 1 0
I'm not saying that Jeff's frames are nice. In fact, 60% of the Intense frames at my friend's shop had defects that required warranty action.
I was just curious.
I was just curious.
- 1 0
Also what sucks is that Intense has a back-asswards warranty system. You claim a warranty, send the piece back, they send you a new one, charge you for it, and then later they credit you. Only sometimes they don't credit you, and instead send you a bill...
- 1 0
Got any good images of a medium built up? I might be somewhat interested in getting one for my next trail bike.
- 1 0
We didn't make any 17" frames in the initial batch. those will be coming in the next run so hopefully by Jan. All of us are over 6'3" so we need the bigger bike so we made them first. As soon as we have some mediums done I'll post pics everywhere. We have a 15" Genken frame that we are not sure if we will sell it or if we will build it up