Yeah, back in 2007 I spunked my hard earned savings on a malt 4. Lovely little xc bike. Couldn’t work out why my rear cup & cone hub needed rebuilding as the wheel kept on wobbling around like it was pissed. Eventually after a 30 odd mile ride I noticed that yet again the hub was loose and the tyre had actually started to eat through the chainstay, rendering the frame useless. I then bought a malt 1 cheap to run as a cheap singlespeed. When I stripped the malt 4 down I noticed the decking thing was bent – the rear triangle was at a slight angle. I took it to lbs who agreed, contacted merlin, who requested the frame for examination. They admitted it was bent, but claimed I had “dropped it” or transported it wrongly. Then they denied it was bent and claimed I couldn’t put a rear wheel in the drop out properly.
Guess what, I never had any problems with the malt 1 frame, despite how many times I removes the rear wheel.
I’d never buy anything from either merlin cycles or kinesis now. Money grabbing parasites.