You may remember my post about 4 months ago stating that whilst cleaning my Intense Spider XVP I noticed a nice crack on the weld of the seat tube. Out of warranty so I purchased a 2nd hand 5.5 EVP off the classifieds section.

What a nice Father's Day suprise, the 5.5 EVP has also cracked. I only weigh 11 Stone.

That's Intense for you.
They've got the image, make some pretty cool looking bikes, but for such a small outfit they've got some shockingly bad quality issues.
If you have a straight frame, you're lucky. If it doesn't crack, you're lucky…

Is this a real common issue with there frames cracking ?

If I can track down the guy who sold me it, I will try and take it up as a warranty issue with Intense. It is a 2008 frame.

M1s were known to crack on the stays, nothing else has a particular record of cracking. The QC issues are pretty common though. Having said that, I love my intense, and they're good at warranty.

I'm feeling your pain flanagaj.

I'm on to my third rear linkage on my Tracer vpp, apparently they have addressed the rear linkage failures on the Tracer. They(Intense)tell me I now have an updated version.. lets just hope this holds up as the warranty runs out in December.. only time will tell..

the mrs cracked her spyder frame on the seatube as well, intense quoted £700 for a front triangle and said she must have run the seatpost not deep enough which was bollox as she had a 400mm post with only 180mm showing and 220mm in the frame, i'll never buy one of those again
turner on the other hand sold me a new 5 spot front end for less than £400 with a full bush kit, faced and chased, seatclamp and a spare set of decals post inc, they even posted it before the cheque had arrived in the usa
guess where my money will go next
anyone need a spyder rear end

That is the reason I won't buy an Intense. They are loverly looking bikes that ride really well but to fragile.

One interesting thing I was told (not sure if it's true)…most manufacturer failure rates are around 2%…Commencal had a bad year recently when it hit 4%????

They have more issues with alignment than cracking. Obviously both of those aren't positive.

On further reflection the frame I bought was already f!cked and I should have spotted it a mile away. 2008 Intense 5.5 EVP painted a non standard red colour. I have never seen an Intense that colour red before. So my guess is that it was already cracked.

Sad thing is, I bought the frame of the classifieds on this site. W!nker

Just because it had been repainted doesn't mean it was cracked

thats the problem with buying posh s/h kit

What happened to your turner Khani?

Just because it had been repainted doesn't mean it was cracked

Given one of the bearing houses had been centre punched and the frame resprayed does not fill you with confidence that the frame was not a dud. I will never purchase another 2nd hand frame.