This is why I didn't want to mention any specific brand names. I am sure there are many people who have had nothing but the best experiences with Giant warranty.

To be fair, they are not the only one's to specifically mention racing. While most others use a more generic term of "normal use". Who's definition of normal use though???

The other lovely t&c exclusion you see a lot is something along the lines of  ... "This warranty is void if the bicycle was not properly assembled by an authorised xxxx dealer."
Now, I can see why they have this, why should the brand be responsible for some ham fisted home mechanic breaking the frame during build, then try and claim it was defective.

But... there have been lots of people with cracked carbon seat/top tubes. Were all these results of frame defects? or results of bike build, etc? If you know you didn't cause the issue, but the brand thinks you did, it can cause problems with a warranty experience.

As you said in another post, at least with a brand bike, you can walk into an authorised shop and talk with someone. They are most likely to help you out, especially if you purchased from them in the first place. While a chiner frame manufacturer may ignore your emails as is what is happening now. Hard to beat a LBS on those points.

Those Yeti frame looks super cool btw. Wishing I could afford one.

Haven't seen brands saying that warranty don't cover racing, if any brand did that I would not buy from them. Specially for XC or CX bikes that are race machines.

Yes, its always good to ask to see the warranty before buying.
Think it's just wrong to build and sell a bike that is clearly for racing on, but then exclude the bike from warranty for racing it.

I wouldn't want to list any manufacturers here, but if you did a google search on "warranty excludes bicycles used for competition", you can see lots of examples of this going on in the small print, etc...

I've never known anyone to have a warranty claim refused because of this, but then I don't know many people who race, and have had to make a claim.

wow, I know it sucks to have a frame break like that, but to be able to walk away from a break is always good. Will a brand frame survive your racing any better -- who knows??

I am doing the same thing for my fast growing 10 year old son. He already has a 14" 26er with a fork a2c of 450mm.
He will outgrow it in the next year I reckon. Would like to reuse everything on a new 16" frame.


No expert here, but this is what I think.....

Ideally you would match the frame to your existing fork length.
20mm fork difference works out around a 1 degree change in head angle.


So the frame with a 490mm a2c I would avoid. It already has a steepish 71 head angle, and the shorter fork would make it even steeper. Might make the handling too quick.
plus the shorter fork will drop the bottom bracket clearance as well.

The frame with the 450 a2c has a 70.5 head angle, so this would end up somewhere around 69 degrees with your fork.
Bottom bracket would be raised a bit. This would make for a slower handling bike that what is was designed for, but a lot of newer bikes have slack head angles, and many people prefer that.

The 475mm a2c bike matched your existing fork. I have seen others build this bike up, and it looks great.


First post for me, so apologies if I got this wrong.