Dunno man, not saying I want them to fail, but I think tavelo failing could also be a good thing. It could show that you can't just go and make a brand, make poor decisions and there be no consequences. These fresh chinese brands need to respect and value their customers, and have tha shiznit together before they start pumping out crap and sending it.

Every company makes mistakes, but in the case of tavelo, these are the basics that every company should have sorted without even blinking an eye. And there is even less excuse for them since they were previously part of winspace.

I hope Tavelo finds its place in the market and succeeds, but this stuff is more challenging than it sounds. Look at the LTwoo and Wheeltop groups. There were tons of people on forums saying it was going to be checkmate as soon as the Chinese electronic groups came out. Turns out its a lot harder than it sounds.

The same thing applies to framesets that are this proprietary. It's possible that a chamfer or fillet wasn't specified because the production method wasn't fully decided, and then no one went back to update the design once it was. Tavelo and the factory behind them seem new. Winspace came from Gotobike or one of the older open mold factories. They had a lot of experience and mature processes to build on. If a designer or part of the engineering team (or worse, the marketing team) left to found Tavelo, they likely took very little of that with them. As a new business owner trying to make things work, having been one of many leaders in my prior places of employment, I can relate to the effect of needing more knowledge and complete processes.

Winspace products also aren't as mature as this forum (and Joe from PP) makes them out to be. Their hubs for example are a mess and have many documented cases of short bearing life compared to the likes of DT Swiss. The Agile frameset geometries are another example.

I mean, how valid is that hypothesis. DTC Chinese frames have been out for a while now- by show of hands who here has had a BB destroy itself from an out of round BB mount? The worst I've heard is of BBs incessantly creaking. If this was a legit issue, we would have seen it in the real world, which gets at another thing with engineers- a lot of us get so attached to theoretical minutae that we lose sight of what issues are actually relevant in practice rather than theory.

Not to mention, with Hambini in particular, there is a material interest in pushing the narrative of BB failure- for the low low price of $300+, Hambini can sell you bottom bracket salvation. What a nice guy.

I think it’s important to note that conflict of interest. However, most people dont have a bore gauge, to be able to check out of round BBs, so it comes down to people thinking the BB has issues.

That said, I have Guerciotti (it’s a flybike catalogue bike) that was killing BBs on a yearly basis due to the left and right hand side being out of alignment. You couldnt get the spindles in and out without a mallet. Replacing the bearings with solid oil bearings stopped the wear issues and while it doesnt spin freely it wasn’t bad enough to go to a one piece solution. After 30k+ miles those bearings are still good, but the bike is really flexy in the BB area. Not sure if there is another cause, but its being retired and will not be re-sold.

After watching the video, Tavelo looks like a train wreck looking at it from the outside. They simply either cut corners or missed a lot of details on the design that they should have caught. This is on the product team as these issues sure don't sound like production variance or bad QA. They literally were doing the wrong thing with bad design in multiple areas. I can’t believe I agree with PT, but bike reviewers shouldn’t be doing design reviews for frames.

hi all,
i'm pretty sure that this frame is an open mold,but i can't find the manufaturer.
https://www.arc8bicycles.com/shop/frames/escapee-db

can someone help me?

https://www.bicycle.engineering/ are the designers of the frame.

These are not open mold frames in the sense that they are sold to other brands. As far as I know Arc8 is the only place to buy these, they just bought the design from someone else.

The rise of the engineering influencer is a net negative for the profession. By nature, engineering is the study of trades not a study of principles and theories (that's physics!), and I wish PT in particular would have more discussion on this though that might require the engineers on the product side to exchange an email or two with him.

The multiple videos on SRAM Transmission were a great example of how PT didn't understand how that system worked or the tradeoffs that the SRAM engineers' teams made to get there. Without commenting on PT's individual talent since I do not know him or his CV, it would be very rare to find a single engineer who is smarter and has thought through a design more comprehensively than a room full of similarly qualified engineers, which SRAM definitely had working on Transmission. However, I doubt the hubs he has critiqued had a similar level of effort put into their design. He also had those in person and was able to show identify significant issues. I believe he is qualified as a PE.

I would listen carefully to PT if he has a product in hand and is commenting on its actual merits, particularly if his concerns extend to the function of the item he is testing. I would take the theoretical critiques with a couple shovels of salt.

Raul Luescher is pretty approachable as are are other carbon experts like the guys from Ruckus composites, but its hard for them to offer substantive critiques based on photos from a boroscope; so most of them don't.

The Carbonda 696 and 707 are rated for 27.5 x 2.1 as is the Voicevelo Major G.

As far as I know there are no open mold bikes designed to take 27.5x 60mm / 2.35" like the OPEN Wi.De. I think the primary reason for that is that its only recently that top racers have started using XC tires on gravel and there was a false belief that 650b is slow wheel size largely because the 45-48mm 650b tire size tended to attract "tough" and not "fast" tire designs. If you do ultra distance gravel events or races, you will be surprised at how popular 27.5 Thunderburts or RaceKings are, but that is a very niche market.

If you want something with that much clearance, designing a bike with Waltly or XACD is a potential way to go. Another would be to get a frame like the Surly Midnight special and lighten it up with a carbon fork like the Speeder Adventure fork.

I actually have found myself with a small business making and designing headset covers to be adapters for these integrated routing. Below is a summary of what I know. It’s certainly not definitive and applies more to mainstream brands than chinese brands, but I hope it’s helpful. I also hope, I dont make too many errors here as I try and type out what i know.

The first thing to know is that there isnt a single bearing size. The bearings are sized by ID (inner diameter), OD (outer diameter), two chamfers which are denoted InnerXOuter, and by H (height).

The bearing size is going to be frame specific, so you should always check to make sure you are getting the right one. For example there OD ranges from 49.5-52mm, ID from 39.5-42mm, ACB is usually [36 or 45] X 45.

Different brands also have different designs for their headset compression rings and systems. Here is a rundown of the most common ones in no specific order. There is no compatibility across these systems unless you are using a system designed to provide it.

FSA ACR (also used by Bianchi, Merida, Orbea, and Winspace)—uses a 40mm ID, 52mm OD, 7mm H, 36x45 bearing. How far in the frameset the top of the bearing sits depends on the brand as does the resulting design of the compression ring, but generally should sit 4mm deep in the frame. However, 2.5mm depths are also common as are 1mm depths. Compression ring is alloy and ~7mm thick. This is the most commonly used system by a wide margin and there are compatible parts made by other manufacturers.

Deda DCR (used by Time, Van Rysel, Botechia, prior gen Colnago Bikes and MANY smaller brands like Standert)—uses a 52mm OD, 40mm H, 8mm H, 45x45 bearing. Compression ring is a 15-20mm deep high pressure injection molded Nylon item. Depths again can vary for specific models of bike, but most are ~4mm deep. However, Deda does make a variety of C Rings of varying heights and to fit both 45x45 and 36x45 bearings in an attempt to make their system more universal. Deda does make shims for these, but they can be hard to find. IMO, this is the system easiest to retrofit to a frame.

Token/Enve (also used by no 22 and Ventum)— uses a 52mm OD, 40mm H, 8mm H, 45x45 bearing. Compression ring is composite ~7-8mm thick. These come with a set of shims and can be a good fit if you can find them.

Acros (used by Canyon, Focus and Scott)—these solutions vary a lot but the most common uses a 42mm ID, 52mm 6.5mm H, 45x45 bearing. Compression ring design varies from nylon with metal inserts to just nylon and are <10mm thick. I would use this only with an Acros bearing because of the dimensions.

Trek— 40mm ID, 51mm OD, 6.5m H, 36x45. Compression rings and headset spacers are nearly model specific at this point, however the Domane Gen 4 alloy compression ring and spacers are considered a service part for most of the models, so their use is Trek OK with. Unless you have a burning desire to fit a trek cockpit to your bike. Its probably best to avoid for other bikes.

Specialized— 40.5mm ID, 49.5 ID, 6.5mm H 45x45 bearing, SL7/Allez sprint use an alloy compression ring, post recall this is a two part item. SL8 uses a composite ring. Both versions then use the same spacer. Their fitment varies by model again. This is again an avoid using part unless you have a perfect match in terms of bearings. The compression ring is not the right fit for non Specialized bikes and the current SL7 version is a recall fix for their specific bikes.

Cervelo— 34.1 ID, 46.9 OD, 7mm H, 45x45 bearing— These use a proprietary everything including steerer shape.

Of these only the FSA, Deda, and Enve are designed for aftermarket use with the first being the most common, and a lot of space between the use of the Deda system and the Token. There is no guarantee that these will fit on your bike without measuring width a depth gauge.

For safety you absolutely should match both the chamfer and height. Because of the way the Deda and Token systems work you can use shims inside the headset. With Deda, you can just cut delrin DUB crank spacers into a C shape and use those as well.

I personally, would be wary of using a 3d printed or generic plastic compression ring, especially if they struggle to hold preload as the injection molded engineered nylons typically used for these parts are quite a bit stronger than can be produced with 3d printing. This is a pretty important part of the bike to get right and a loose headset is one fastest ways to kill a carbon frame.

Hope this is helpful to someone and thanks for reading this novel of a post.

EDIT: I should have added that a good number of the chinese integrated bars can either fit directly to an FSA split spacer or come with a transition spacer for the FSA system, so thats a good system to use from a compatibility with bars standpoint. The Deda system is more frame compatible.

have had two bikes with waltly... no issues.

ive just received a bike by XCAD, the bottle cage screw holes are too low so cannot hang a FD unless i get a custom hanger. also i wanted it  to fit 35MM tyres which it does but sit very close to rubbbing, if my wheels dont run true ill be in trouble.

Is your frame out of spec? Or were things just not caught in the drawings?

Problem solvers makes a FD hanger that is slotted to give you more range. On my bike, the hanger is between the ST bottle bosses by design; but its something that I needed to check as FD mounting height isnt universal between brands and between road and gravel groups

So the real question which needs to be asked is: What are we really looking to gain (or lose) by such comparisons? This is a serious question. I'm happy to help.

Not being a youtuber and being able to throw in a perspective from the peanut gallery, one of the biggest problems is that the percieved value of $1 is also different to different people. I think a more interesting question is what does the extra $$$$ get you on the Specialized that you don't get with the VBR. Followed that by a look at what the the price gap actually represent in bike terms (e.g., upgrade groupset, upgraded wheels etc.) and then whether or not you would rather ride the the cheaper frame with the more expensive components or the more expensive frame with cheaper ones. You could look at this in tiers (i.e., apex mechanical to force 1x and then force to red).

I had all intentions of building up a cheap gravelish bike for commuting and a little cross racing, but my plans have changed too and I probably wont be buying an unbranded frame anytime soon, probably for reasons similar to why you got the specialized.