Evening all
I've taken delivery of a new Titus Goldrush today, which looks great out of the box. On closer inspection, I'm a little worried about the level of clearance between the chainstay and the non-drive side crank arm which is about 1mm, maybe 2mm max.
I'll drop them a note in the morning, but I thought I'd check on here in case others have encountered a similar concern with this frame. FYI it's an XL frame.
Is it one of the Goldrushs that have the rocker drop outs that allow you to adjust the position of the rear axle or run the bike singlespeed? If it is, its possible the axle isnt straight so you need to undo the two bolts either side, reposition the axle/wheel and tighten up again.
I had those drop outs on a frame out of the same factory in China and they slip very easily so you have to really tighten them up to stop the wheel slipping in use. Bit of a poor system really.
How will re-aligning the axle change the position of the crankarm?
^^ Yeah, guessing he thought the op meant tyre/ chainstay clearance?
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMZtz_-7aZhNYe_MBpRN7qoCNW0d4dlndsPfc1-
Cheers for your initial thought guys - hopefully you can access the photo to see the issue. The tyre clearance is fine on both sides of the inside of the chainstay. It's the non-drive crank arm, which currently sits far too close to the outside of the chainstay for my liking. I can see it easily getting impacted by dirt as the gap is so small, and also striking shoes on the chainstay.
It looks to me like either a design oversight or manufacturing fault? I can't think that spacers or a wider BB shell could fix this.
Appreciate any thoughts.
Is the bike/frame specified for cranks with a specific q-factor? Might you need a longer axle for your crank?
I'm not sure - I ordered the bike as a complete build from Planet X and it came specced with the standard groupset (SRAM Force) and the cranks fitted, so you would assume they would have specified the correct cranks for the frame.
My concern is that I don't think the bike is fit for purpose as designed/built. I agree that cranks with a wider q Factor would seem a solution.
Oops my bad, Sorry! Was late when I read the OPs post! Pic isnt working for me.
I ordered the bike as a complete build from Planet X and it came specced with the standard groupset (SRAM Force) and the cranks fitted, so you would assume they would have specified the correct cranks for the frame.
Are you new here?
Perhaps drive trains are short supply and that's all they had so they fitted it, thought it looked OK, and sent it out.
"stack em high, sell em cheap" quality control isn't a priority at px.
I've had this in the past on a kinesis tripster with a sram Chainset. Didn't touch in the stand but would flex under pressure and rub.
Swopped it for a shimano 105 and had more room.
Its all about the q factor. The length of the spindle. Google yours and compare to other Chainsets.
Px will probably fob you off and say the frame is stiff and won't flex and "it will be ree<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">t." Keep the email for warranty claims in the future if it does rub.</span>
Probably with P-X as long as the crank doesn't actually hit the chain stay, then it's deemed acceptable. It's due to the 'kinkage' (highly-specified, technical term) of the crank arm - check how the shape / Q-factor compares to other makes. That said, does it actually rub?
Force CX1 has a Q Factor of 145mm, Shimano road 146mm and GRX 151mm which is only 3mm more per side than the Force.
Looking at my Gravel bike with 172.5mm long GRX cranks, it has 11mm of clearance on both NDS & DS chainstays, which is more like it.
FWIW, here's the crank clearance on my (v3) Goldrush. Sorry about the filth.
There's about 10mm between crank and chainstay at the pedal axle. 6/7mm at the narrowest point of the swoop.
Just to provide a bit of closure to this point, the frame went back to Planet X and they agreed the frame was faulty (with the suspected cause of the misalignment being the frame not being sat correctly in the jig during build). I did spot from a Guy Kesteven review that they'd used a new manufacturer for this frame, so perhaps some teething problems in the first batch (although the Planet X engineer said they'd not encountered this fault on any other frames).
Annoyingly I was sent a replacement despite me saying I wanted to understand the issue before deciding if I wanted a refund or a replacement (and before they'd communicated any of the above to me about the reason for the fault). I've returned this as to be honest I've lost some confidence in the quality of the bike. I had to wait nearly 2 weeks for a courier to collect this replacement bike, and I've emailed the 3 times this week for them to process the refund (which I'm still awaiting a reply to).
FYI I'm the very happy owner of a Planet X RT90, which I've had for 5 years, was a bargain at the time and still enjoy riding. I'd probably think twice before buying from them again though, as this has been a frustrating and overall disappointing experience.
The sad thing here is you spotted it straight away and the person building it didn't even see it.
What are you going to get instead?
Planet X engineer
Oxymoron if ever there was one - Qualifications: once got some Meccano as a Christmas pressie, swapped it unused for 10 B&H to Johnny McCarthy and a grope with his sister behind the bike shed. (Some of this may be subject to speculation) 🤣
What are those tyres in your pic? They look like a nice open pattern that might work in my local filth.
The sad thing here is you spotted it straight away and the person building it didn’t even see it.
Human error. There was a minor problem with my bike from PX spotted in build and they were straight on the phone to see how I wanted to deal with it. No one is infallible.
@Damascus - tempted by a Ribble CGR ti, although there is a bit of a lead time on frames at the moment (which to be fair is pretty much the same across all bikes!).
@garage-dweller - I get the point, people are human and mistakes happen. However when you get human errors back to back (frame manufacturer, bike builder, ignoring my wishes and sending a replacement, complete silence about the refund) then I think it's fair to have concerns about the quality of their overall processes and standards. To balance this, I get that the pandemic means there are stresses on models and no one is operating in a business as usual environment.