On the Trans Cambrian Way in a day ride last month on my 7 month old Salsa El Mariachi, we stopped at Rhayader to refuel and then rode off on a flat bit of road. First hill after the stop, I went for the little ring and heard a loud rubbing caused by the front mech rubbing the tyre. After five minutes of boggling I realised the rear triangle was bent. Still not sure how it happened, best guess is that attempting shifting into big ring/big sprocket without enough chain caused it but I was pedalling fairly gently at the time although uphill.

I emailed Charlie with full disclosure and he got in touch with Salsa straight away, and they agreed that the frame shouldn’t have been bent so easily so offered me a replacement! Customer service and correspondence from Charlie was superb, and Salsa were extremely decent.

Only question I’m left with is what to do with a bent frame? It doens’t look obviously mangled, but the rear triangle is shifted about an inch over to the drive side. Could it be bent back by a frame builder/repairer? Even if weakened it might make a good commuter or something…

Throw it in a bin, preferably my bin ;0)

Given your history with ANYTHING mechanical can I suggest selling everything than can move of any description and take up knitting.

Sell it as a 2017 Boost 148 frame.

Nice that they didn’t want you to send the frame in. Feels like it’s got to be useful for something, right? Can you see which tubes are bent?

Actually no, you can’t see any damage really, it all looks fine except it’s way out of alignment. There are potentially a couple of iffy welds under paint on the chainstay bridge but it’s extremely minor.

EDIT They didn’t ask for the frame back, no – but I guess I should check.
EDIT #2 Of course they want it back, d’oh!

I would have said i’d expect them to want it back to investigate the failure to see if they need to do any investigations into manufacture batch, process or what not.

I think it’s so that I don’t profit from it.. which is entirely reasonable and I now feel a bit ashamed for thinking of it!

I suspect there must be a known problem for them to give a frame away so easily.

When Salsa recalled my Mukluk fork, Charlie asked for a photo of the old fork cut in two, I suspect they want to check the frame over.

without enough chain

[img]http://ittechblog.pl/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/double-facepalm-601×215.jpg[/img]

I suspect there must be a known problem for them to give a frame away so easily.

I dunnno, last time I e-mailed Charlie to get a hold of a replacement bit he e-mailed back 30seconds later saying yup he had the bit in stock and he’d post it immediately, and did I want him to e-mail me an invoice or did I want to make a warranty claim for it?

He really does do a good job of customer service.

Good old Charile and Salsa. Two brands I have a lot of time for.

Widen the stays out a lot and make it fit some 650b fatty wheels, big fork etc..

Instant (almost) fatbike.

I suspect there must be a known problem for them to give a frame away so easily

One of the good things Charlie did was to forward me what Salsa had said. They said they’d only seen similar when someone had been mashing out of the pedals and the adjustable dropouts had slipped. I guess they could’ve said ‘tough luck, you bent it’ but they didn’t – which is fantastic.

Scotroutes – agree with the facepalm 🙂

hammyuk – may I remind you that I fixed the car myself when you all told me to sell it.. which suggests I have a pretty good history with mechanical things 🙂

I never told you to sell it!

Interesting…

I wanted to buy a complete bike from CTBM but the trail went silent.
Not dismissing using him as he seems to have it together on Salsas obvs, just that he was getting mucked around by a supplier abroad I reckon.
Shame as it’s too late now as I had/went elsewhere and did a custom of a totally different type of ride.

sounds like good service all round for the replacement frame.

So you bought this bent bike of some geeza called the “bike monger”? Sounds dodgy.