Could be the next big frontier? It's certainly going to be exciting to see how it progresses. 3D printing and virtual reality are what I'm currently most excited about. VR will be available to the masses by the end of the year, and we're not talking some hokey Nintendo power glove shit, we're talking fully immersive alternate realities, here.

Back to 3d prinitng - While we may very well be printing up our own stuff in our garage in a couple decades +/- a few years, I think it's more likely that it will just drive manufacturing prices down even lower. So it may be that in 5/10 years we'll be talking about the latest 3D printed chiner frame that we only paid a couple hundred bucks for but is even more precisely engineered.

I'd love to see it spark a manufacturing resurgence here in the US but most likely I think it will just make imported goods even cheaper. Cheap labor isn't the only reason companies outsource; The tax code is also written to incentivize off shore manufacturing.

Here's a 3d printing vid about a company in China that printed ten houses in 24 hours. It still all looks a bit unpolished so to speak but imagine when tech in the vid like posted above makes it's way into more and more factories.

I casually know the people that own our local town bike shop but they simply can't come anywhere close to getting me what I want for the price I want to pay for it. I still go in there frequently and buy drinks and power bars and some accessories occasionally and they seem to do pretty well with their service department. I guess I do feel a lil guilty but not enough to pay an extra few hundred dollars to them and still have a lesser bike. They sell mostly mid-tier Treks and Raleigh and really don't have a single bike in there that I'd want. By purchasing from them out of loyalty I would basically be saying "Your dollars are more important than my dollars"... And trust me, that's not the case. I needs them dollas!

The width of your bars and length of your stem have to be chosen to suit each other. A recent trend is running really wide bars, say 720mm, and running it with a shorter stem of say 50mm. Whereas before the norm was more like 100mm stem and 650mm wide bars. But like VR6 said, for XC racing the norm is probably 100mm stems and then a bar to suit your reach. Just thought I'd point out there's a lot of room for customization in this area and it can have pretty big affects on the way your bike feels and handles, so it's worth considering all of your options.

I agree with most of what Carbon_Dude said but like Oolak pointed out, if your current wheels aren't in the best of shape then I say go with the wheels first.

Good choice going with the 057 if you're downhill racing. I believe it's a little bit heavier and a little bit sturdier. I can't think of a single 057 failure. Do you know of one Carbon_Dude?

Also, I'm curious as to why you would want to build up a hardtail for downhill racing when you already have a full suspension Yeti? Wouldn't it be better suited for downhill? Not knocking your choices, just genuinely curious.

Hi John, so sorry about this. Could you send me some pictures to me ?  petercycles@foxmail.com

THis is the second SP5 seat post that is not standard size 31.6mm, or close to 31.6mm. I know you bought this one from me when I was at Iplay, that is OK. I can send you replacement and chainstay protector from my own new company Carbon Speed.

I hope you could send me some pictures and I will pass them to our factory, I have to require them to check out the diameter carefully before giving seat posts to me.

Nice. Way to step up and take care of the customer, Peter.

The sketchy part to me are the vendors. What if the fork broke a year from now? Who knows where these guys will be in a year? Who's to say that they don't shut down and start another company under a different name?

All these open mold frames don't seem to be exclusive to one single vendor. Most of them are nothing more than trading companies buying from the same source. New vendors pop up on eBay all the time selling the same parts. Who knows...it just might be the same guys with multiple accounts. The ones I bought my frame from seems to have more than one.

I'm not saying that all the vendors are shady...some do own up to what they sell...and that is a good thing if these vendors plan to stay around for more than a couple years.

All I'm saying is that you just have to know what you're getting into when you purchase an item from across the planet from an largely unknown source.

I bought my frame (which should be here any day) from a new eBay vendor with 17 feedbacks. My frame carries a "two year warranty"...I honestly don't think they'll be on eBay for that long. If my frame busts after one year...I'll just buy another one...they are cheap enough to replace often. 

Good points and I mostly agree. But that's why ordering from someone like Peter who has at least some degree of accountability - in that if he totally screwed someone over on this forum he'd likely lose some future business by doing so - is a bit better than going the random eBay route. Now, I'm not knocking the eBay route at all. It's slightly cheaper and like you said, at that price, just order another in the unlikely event of a failure and still come out ahead. I'm also not pushing for Peter. It's just that he's the only one really involved at all on the forum. If another seller came in and was active and built some trust with the community then I'd prefer them over the eBay route as well.

But you're right about not knowing where the molds/frames come from. If a seller could be open about these topics and educate potential customers about where their frames come from, who manufacturers them, etc.. It'd be a good way to build business by building trust.