[Closed] Commencal the new Crack n Fail

We call em commonfail at work..

Most manufacturers have frames snap or crack. Not sure a handful of frames makes for a trend particularly when the forum is for a manufacturer's owners group and would therefore attract people looking for help.

I know of 3 people (2 of them here with me in France right now) who have broken meta 5s. One of them has broken 2. One headtube, 2 failed welds on the top shock mount, all within the first year of ownership.
They do have a problem with quality. Commonfail indeed.

I know I wouldn't rush to buy a commencal 2nd hand

Mate of mine had a cracked Meta 5 replaced too......

I have one, 3 friends also have them and none of ours have failed. Riden DH trails in the alps and most places in the UK and the meta 5 has never failed me.

Would like to know what the actual % of cracked frames are and how many of them are due to manufacturing issues.

A mate of a friend of my brother read a post on a forum about Commencal frames cracking, so it must be true..........

I've had a meta 5.2 for about 5 years. Love it and still haven't seen anything good enough to make me (seriously) think about changing it. I heard that the old 5.1's specifically were a bit prone to this, including one at Glyncorrwg, but Ian Luff hits pretty hard, so it may be rider-induced rather than a quality issue...

no problems here (meta 4.3 and combi ht)

whats the customer service like in terms of replacement? I've seen a few Specializeds snap or crack and replacement was without question (for a nominal amount if due to a crash rather than failure as such).

Also seen 3 of 4 Ellsworths crack (expensive replacement scheme). And Chameleons (good replacement deal) etc. Inevitable Cannonfail, too. Its a fact of MTB life.

EDIT: Oh and DMR (Switchbacks).

(All of this within a group of 5 riding buddies.)

I have had a nose round the internet and there seem to be lots of frames cracking at the welds these days. I am looking at getting a new bike and its got me a bit worried is it just the makers have made frame tubes too thin to get weights down or is down to all these fancy hydroformed tube shapes they use these days.

Or perish the thought is it just a load of internet bollox and frames have always cracked, though a quick straw pole round my mates and none of us has ever cracked a frame unless it was a big crash into a car or tree then it wasnt a crack it was bent and broken.

In my useless opinion you cant beat the look of good old round tubes

A guy I ride a lot with has broken two meta 5s (not catastrophically, just cracked) and is now on his third. He isn't a heavy guy (10.5 stone or less). Pretty good warranty, though, and the headtube area looks considerably beefed up on his new one, and he likes the way it rides.

I had an absolut crack in exactly the same place as the ones mentioned on the owners club thread. Replaced under warranty but took ages to find a replacement frame

Well Commencal are known for a making a cracking Meta5 arent they?

Ah, IGMC

got to love the switchback bashing 🙂

Mk1's had a problem (bending downtubes), the mk2 was fine, and cheep as a result, as for cracking the seatubes, the guy in the shop summed it up nicely "well of course, if your 6ft tall buy a 16" frame that doesn't fit, then stick a 400mm post in it to make it 'fine for XC' you'r probably going to crack the seatube" 🙂

Ironic how the decade's almost identical, just more expensive, with cheeper tubing, yet seems to be very popular round these parts........

The design clearly works, so why change it?

I have an 09 Meta 5, though only for 2 months. No issues so far.

good luck with that st.colin
exactly how many santacruz do you hear of cracking? a large percentage of nomads? v10s?

buy the best and cry once.
cheap andorran rubbish and like it says on my knee pads "made in taiwan"

dasnut - and where to SC come from since mid 2005???

check your foot there may be a hole in it!

(heckler owner)

What I dont get is mbr completely odd reviews of each years Meta5. Head to head with this years Giant- the review read to me like the Giant slaughtered the Meta. Then the summary 'the 5 wins again because it makes us whoop'. Jeesus christ.

hora your trying to understand MBR!! you may as well figure out what women want... 😉

Dasnut - anything actually wrong with stuff made in Taiwan...?

A colleague had a Meta 5.whatever with one of the shock mounts welded on wrong. They fessed up and gave him a new frame. True, took three months, but they gave him it.

my nomad (2007) was made in california - I have the welders signature - maybe the low end stuff if outsourced to shitland.....
stuff made in taiwan had quality issues, how about the geometry on the orignal meta 6 being completely wrong?
but mainly the company being too small to offer lifetime frame warranties (specialized etc.) - happy that SC stuff only has a limited warranty, but it DOESN'T BREAK
commencal maybe cheap, but yer get what yer pays for. FACT

early nomad's were mad in USA yes. 🙂

had a riding buddy with odd sized chainstays one was 1cm shorter than the other!! no wonder it felt odd 😕

stuff made in taiwan had quality issues

you clearly don't work in manufacturing or understand qc. it has nothing to do with country of origin. whether the commencal factory does is another - unrelated - issue.

2 out of 4 Hummers have cracked round my neck of the woods, both in the same place.

[img] [/img]

seen 2 crack, a mech hanger which didnt snap and screwed the swingarm and i know 2 sponsored riders who go through them like sweeties.....

Wasn't there a photo of a cracked Ti456 on here a few weeks back? As a percentage of units made/sold, I guess that makes them completely unreliable? No "Made in Taiwan" sticker on that frame either.

I cracked my meta 5.5 2007 model. Where the upper shock mount meets the top tube, again, on a weld.

Im on my 3rd frame in just over a year.

I love the way the bike rides but i will never buy a commencal frame again.

"my nomad (2007) was made in california"

My Cannondale was made in the USA, it cracked. When Rockshox shifted their production from the States to the Far East quailty went up. Made in the USA means nothing IMO.

what length forks did those hummers have?

This post had me thinking, going to only be a few people getting upset over a low percentage of frames breaking, but then I thought I had better check mine anyway as looking to sell the bike.

Less than one year old Meta 5.5.2, already my second frame as the first one was mis-aligned and the linkage colliding with the swingarm. I checked the top-tube / seat-tube join 😥 I haven't got a lot of experience with this but does it look like I have a problem here, or is it just the paint cracking?

[img] [/img] [img] [/img] [img] [/img]

Yeh santa cruz's are ALL made in taiwan now as far as I'm aware dasnut. Commencal are a relatively new company so no they wont have the reliability that a longer established company like SC has. Does look like some quality control needs to be looked at from Commencal's side of things. No problems at all with my meta 552 2008.

Matt-P - You have a problem.

Matt-P looks like you have the exact same problem as the fella on the commencal owners club. The crack is in same place and even looks the same I would go back to the shop.

edit: think I will cross commencal off my shopping list

I've got a Meta 4 that's worked absolutely fine for the last three years. No cracks. I've had warranty replacements from Giant and Marin (eek!) in the past.

Anecdotal evidence does not a trend make. Meta 5s are one of the best selling 'proper' FS bikes in the UK. Not sure why I'd want an old Nomad - anyone mentioned yet that they look like a pooing labrador? 😆

matt-p ****ed. sorry,

Cheers guys, I kind of knew I did but I was hoping someone would tell me not to be so silly! Back to the dealer...

Yeh santa cruz's are ALL made in taiwan now as far as I'm aware dasnut.

Most of them by Giant no less...

i cracked my demo9 and my bmx last week(serious)

If bikes didn't crack from time to time, they wouldn't offer warranties.... Most manafacturers will have breakages from time to time! I don't think i could name a manafacturer that i haven't seen cracked at one point or another. Intense are incredible for it, yet their reputation is still going strong. It's like Ferraris and Lambos. Yeah, the doors will sometimes not close, and they occasionally burst into flames, but you still would!
Commencals (Comicals) are still proper rubbish though!

Those crack'n'fail's, IIRC, they all had 1" headtubes, welded to oversize frametubes. Not good. Since then, I don't think Cannondale have been any worse than any other company. Certainly I've heard nothing about failures from a mate who sells them. Or Trek and Gary Fisher, for that matter.

Maybe there are a number of Commencal frames failing because their branding encourages hard riding? There are bound to be some breakages now and again, surely?

Not much love for the Commencal brand here I see! I'll put it down to jealousy 😉

I'll not lie and say that the reported cracks don't worry me. However, some of these cases have been user error. Running 160mm forks on a Meta5 frame, leading to excess stress on certain areas of the frame. My 09 frame is a large, which has the shock mount on the seat tube only, not on the seat and top tube combined. Lets hope that doesn't lead to problems.