Best quality MTB frames? Any quantifiable evidence?

I was lucky enough to buy a Nicolai 12 years ago. It was and is very industrial in appearance but the build quality is superb. In all that time the only work the frame has required has been a full service of bushes, pivots and bearings three years ago. Everything always aligns, the fishscale welds are a joy to behold, the anodised finish is even now so good.

This sort of illustrates the previous points.

What you describe as “quality” isn’t what an engineer would recognise as “quality”, it’s mostly aesthetics.
I don’t doubt your frame was well put together and met the manufacturer’s spec’ (12 years of service and only one bearing change is probably a good indicator TBF) but you have no real frame of reference (pardon the pun) for what that original spec’ was and where in the tolerance band each critical dim sat on inspection. It’s pretty and it’s not broken is about all most customers really care about…

Which is fine, being pretty is important too, nobody is going to buy a bike they don’t like the appearance of. But I think what this thread sort of highlights is that there is a significant gap between consumer’s perception of “quality” the truth of what “quality” means to manufacturers, and how and why it is achieved/traded off against consumer’s pricing expectations.

What Raul’s video above and several of Hambini’s abusive rants make clear is that in trying to make an apparently simple BB bearing interface lighter, easier and cheaper to produce many manufacturer’s have bumped up against similar issues from slightly different angles and actually managed to make the situation worse for themselves over the last decade and a half.
We end up coming full circle to ‘T47’ a 10mm bigger, metric oversized threaded BB… I bet nobody remembers “ISIS Overdrive” now do they…

The first is that laying up in a mould is hard to do wrong.

I’m not so sure : )

“If only Pivot made frames with threaded BBs. Immediate turn-off for me.”

I recall Pivot arguing that pressfit works great if you manufacture to appropriate tolerances – and the reason people don’t like pressfit is that many other brands don’t spend the money required to hit those tolerances.

I recall Pivot arguing that pressfit works great if you manufacture to appropriate tolerances – and the reason people don’t like pressfit is that many other brands don’t spend the money required to hit those tolerances.

Basically this. None of the half dozen or so that I’ve encountered have had PF related BB issues. I know that’s not a lot, but given the issues all the other brands have, I’d say that’s pretty good.

Wasn’t Pivot somehow involved in developing the press-fit standard with Shimano?

“everything always aligns” surely that’s a good sign of engineering quality and not about aesthetics.
Surprising how many manufacturers cant quite manage it. Is it too much to ask for the rear axle, bb shell and pivots match up horizontally and for the headtube to match the seattube vertically whilst lining up with the rear hub’s centre.
I had a lapierre once that didnt line up the toptube correctly to the headtube, clearly 2mm to the left, couldn’t wait to get rid of it.

I am fortunate to be the owner of a HB 130. The lay up of the carbon is amazing, no paint just clear coat. I also looked at a Deviate highlander (brill bike btw) and was again impressed by quality. They were hand inspecting every frame and had sent a couple back.

Low volume, more time to inspect, aware that 1 bad frame could ruin everything I think tells all about both.

I also had a canyon strive and it was clear where corners were cut.

I had a lapierre once that didnt line up

We had a carbon one which was about as straight as a banana…

would someone like Shand – a small scale manufacturer making all but one entry level model in Scotland and at a high price be of high quality? They certainly look like they are made to higher standards than many

Whilst I’m sure his bikes are very good, I’d say no. One man doing it all, if he misses something, or has a wrong assumption/calculation/design error, who picks it up?.

We had a carbon one which was about as straight as a banana…

Worst I ever saw as a Pipedream steel HT, just couldn’t get gears to work at all, they sent him a new one, it was so out of line that they didn’t even want it back.

Amazing how many time Pivot has come up in this thread