Maybe but spending an extra £1300 on the bits bolted to the cheap frame is likely to be a lot more noticeable.

Edit: I should have said cheaper frame not cheap, £500 for some plastic isn’t cheap, I reckon the £250 I paid for my C456 is close to cheap though.

Better? I can’t say for sure, but every time I crash or clip my >£1k Tomac carbon frame on some rocks I have a terrible “hope its not broken as I can’t afford to replace it” moment.

[quote]That’s bollox IMO. Everyone who sees my £300 carbon frame thinks it’s a super expensive boutique one. The attention to detail is amazing. Finish is flawless and straight as an arrow[/quote]I think that’s pretty much what avd2 was suggesting

I reckon they would be fairly different as your comparing HT’s with FS bikes

Assuming it’s an On One carbon… Mine rode nicely but the finish quality is absolutely terrible, came off in chunks. And the attention to detail wasn’t really there, frinstance the cable guides are really poorly located (and duplicated), and it has issues with brake caliper clearance, and no chainsuck protection. Though I reckon that’s more acceptable in a cheap frame, it’s still not great, doesn’t cost any more to do these things a bit less obviously wrong.

You’d also get a warranty worth speaking of with a Yeti, which you don’t with On One.

Mine isn’t an On One..

You are paying a premium on the more expensive bikes no doubt, but there are more costs involved too. I also don’t buy into the ‘better grades of carbon’ stuff. You should expect the manufacturing layup process on a more expensive one is better to minimise joints and better control the material thickness around the bottom bracket area and headset area, but that’s all about wright saving (grams). All this takes an element of development. The Chinese bikes are probably fine from a structural point of view but are missing these refinements and clearly don’t have the costs of distribution, marketing, funding the inevitable warranty replacements etc that the bigger brands have to factor into price. The upshot is you cannot completely justify the price difference in the quality and performance of the end product, but if we all had to do that then most if us wouldn’t be riding the bikes we ride. We buy with our hearts as much as our heads.

Hora in talking b*llocks shocker!

I’ve heard plastic frames are cheaper to produce than wielded metal ones, whether that includes R&D costs I dunno. Seem to recall brant or someone saying anyone can slap together a carbon frame, unskilled work, whereas sticking a load of pipes together has a lot more skill/experience involved. Plastic frames are always more expensive tho

Anyone who actually knows this stuff rather than gleaning their “knowledge” from forums wanna comment?

I reckon they would be fairly different as your comparing HT’s with FS bikes

You are underestimating the RRP of a yeti frame.

Complete nonsense.

Though I would consider it true that the LABOUR costs of a carbon frame are far lower than a steel or alloy welded frame, the material and tooling costs are much higher.

As a rule of thumb a Chinese carbon frame costs about 8 times what a Chinese aluminium frame costs.

John Humphrys or what? 😆

Why would he do that. No other business in the world is that stupid. Shoots yourself in more feet than an octopus in a spaggetti western!

*customers will assume it’s too cheep therefore inferior, regardless of what the actual price is
*customers will refuse to pay your markup, however much or litle it is
*alternative suppliers will stop competatively negotiating and just demand that price, why would you put in a low bid to supply something if you know you only need to be £199 rather than the £200 your compettitor is selling to O-O at?
*suppliers will stop supply as you’ve given away their price to you which may differ from their price negotiated with someone else, who is now demanding that lower price

etc

I’d guess a large part of the extra cash of a top frame will pay for the custom moulds in multi pal sizes as opposed to open moulds frames.

we had a mould made to make a small plastic/glass fibre hook for a retail stand (it cost us £6000 for the tooling) – the hook is 6″ long and very simple.

Assuming that’s true, that’s a design skill, not a manufacture skill.
The laying up process is essentially skilless. CNC laser cuts out the pre-preg, worker gets given a bunch of different shaped bits to stick on mold.

Sorry got to take issue with you there, laying up carbon fibre is far from skilless as the huge humber of busted cheap bike frames can attest. Carbon itself comes in various qualities, should it be wet laminated, used as pre preg, used with another fibre to ensure no inter fibre friction, laying it up around corners is difficult, should it be autoclaved? Lots and lots of decisions to take in approaching carbon fabrication and that’s not even in the bike game. All I know there’s a boat building place down Southampton way that earns an awful lot from repairing badly built bike frames and he rolls his eyes every time he gets another in.

TBH when brant releases the C456 V2(?) I’ll be far more interested in a thick coating over the carbon OR at least a metal chainsuck protection insert.

‘Finish’ means bollocks when its been humped over wet Peaks hills 365 days a year.

There are essentially different markets for high end and ‘budget’ carbon bikes. Some people want great finish, brand kudos and to believe that they have bought The Best. Then there’s people like me who think: it’s a hardtail mountain bike, it’s going to live a hard life, give me something tough and lightish that rides well at a good price and sod the rest of it. It’s possible that those high end frames give a marginally better ride but I don’t care.

its a bit like asking is the real eiffel tower better than the chinese copy

http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/replica-of-paris-in-china-becomes-ghost-town-slideshow/replica-of-paris-in-china-becomes-ghost-town-photo-1375720499389.html

its pretty deskilled now ,for some reason people have this view the chinese are thick and they dont have access to ply cutters and ply projection ,they do. it eliminates certain risks though they still do make design errors or miss little things that otherwise would make things less likely to fail

They are even looking at eliminating the human element ,you know those technologies that only the advanced composites centres think they have like robotic layers 3d woven and ply pattern laying you can see why they want to remove the worker. wages are going up chinese workers want ipads and stuff