So my frame arrived today. Well packed and undamaged. Took about 5 weeks from order placement and 14 days from shipment notification to delivery. Not super fast but not super slow either.
Weights of my setup as measured by myself:
- XL frame (painted but without metal parts or axle): 1164g
- Fork (painted, w/o axle): 410g
- Handlebar: 396g
- Seatpost: 236g
- Front/rear axle: 29.4g/40.4g
- Various metal parts, headset, spacers, seat clamp, ...: 392g
So my full riding setup comes down to 2588g. A bit more than I expected but I guess the paint job did add a bit.
I'm pretty happy with the paint job in general. Close up inspection does bring out a few issues. There are a few minor scratches, chips, and imperfections. Luckily, the latter kinda look like reflections so wouldn't really be noticeable under riding conditions. The chips are mostly at hidden spots. The lines don't always match perfectly but they hid those quite well, too. The brake mounts seemed to have been masked but got some overspray. The BB wasn't covered at all and is fully painted. Weirdly enough, some parts (like axle mounts) have only been painted with the base layer but not the effects. It won't be visible at some points but definitely at the axle mounts. The "drain hole" at the bottom isn't centered which is no technical issue but slightly bothers the perfectionist in me anyways.
I wasn't expecting a flawless paint job especially given the added complexity of mine. If you "require" a better pain job, get the frame unpainted and look locally (for a much higher price) as others have said before. However, under normal riding conditions I don't think any of these issues (apart from the "non effect" axle holes) will show at all. I think for 100 USD it is absolutely fine and will catch a few looks once I'm riding it.
The only thing that might actually bother me, is the text decals are quite a bit narrower than in my mock-up. In the mock-up I did space out the letters and stretch the whole text a little bit to get it fill the frame more. To be fair, I did not mention that in my email, so I am not blaming them for it. Just something for me to remember for future designs.
Looking forward to building it up in the next days. Unfortunately, still waiting for the chainrings to arrive, so full build will have to wait until ~end of next week.
