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New bike day! Built around CarbonSpeed's CS-306 frame (copy/pasted from my post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/3zox7h/nbd_chinese_carbon_detailed_review_in_comments/)

REVIEW

ALBUM HERE: http://imgur.com/a/LALtH

The frame is a CS-306, purchased from Carbon Speed, www.xmcarbonspeed.com[1]
Product page: http://www.xmcarbonspeed.com/Productinfo.asp?f=1271[2]
VeloBuild.com sells this (or a near-identical version) as VB-R-016

The Frame

(keep in mind that I’ve only done about 100km on it so these are early impressions)

My ‘starter’ bike was a Scott CR1 Pro 2008. I bought it secondhand and have done thousands of km on it, it is a great bike. Reviews typically describe it as fast, sportive and an excellent climber. It is considered on the stiff side, even bordering on harsh. So that’s my baseline for comparison.

Riding the CS-306 is a very similar experience to the Scott CR1, but upgraded. The geometry is nearly identical- but that’s no surprise since it was the reason I chose that frame to begin with. :) The CS-306 ride is also quite stiff, although the back end isn’t quite as chattery as the Scott. It handles confidently, turns well, and accelerates very well. After less than an hour I already felt quite at home on it. I even caught myself going through turns at over 50kph, which is faster than my usual comfort zone. I haven’t done any significant ascents on it yet but based on the overall feel I’m pretty confident that it will be a good climber too.
The build quality of the frame was excellent. There were no issues with alignment, sizing or cables. Also no visible defects in the carbon work or paint. The frame was spec’ced at 850 grams but was in reality closer to 950. The paint job may have contributed to that (?). Together with an Ultegra 6800 groupset, Dura Ace wheels, cheap(ish) Shimano road pedals and an Adamo saddle the total weight is 7kg. Which is a 1kg improvement over the Scott so I’m not complaining :)

Frame TL;DR In my mind the frame is definitely comparable to the big brand-names which cost x5 or more.


The Chinese buying experience

I was looking for a frame with similar geometry to my Scott, and found the VB-R-016 on VeloBuild which was almost an exact match. It had pretty good feedback on forums and weighed only 850g. What’s not to like?
I had a lengthy email thread with Chris from VeloBuild regarding the frame’s technical specs, bottom bracket types etc. Based on his feedback I ordered (from CRC & Wiggle) a matching Ultegra groupset /w bb30 bracket and DuraAce wheels. But when ordering the actual frame, Chris replied that they didn’t have the frame with that bracket in my size. Whoops. So I asked which brackets do they have in my size, and then answer was- they don’t have the bike in my size at all. And never will, since they are changing their lineup. Chris suggested trying their R-077 frame instead. I’ll give VeloBuild the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake, even though they knew my size throughout the email thread from the beginning. But it left me a bit stuck since I had spent lots of time researching that specific frame, not to mention all the components which I had already ordered.

After doing a bit of detective work, I found www.xmcarbonspeed.com[3] . They offer a seemingly-identical frame. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are the suppliers for VeloBuild. Or at the very least use the same open mold. Peter (petercycles@foxmail.com[4] ) is their contact. He was responsive and definitely knew his stuff. I went through the same discussions with him, and he took care to double check with me that I was aware of the sizing and a few other aspects. The order itself was done over PayPal, and Peter confirmed and then a week later sent me pictures of the painted frame before shipping. The frame arrived a month later (was stuck for 2 weeks in customs on my side) in perfect condition – the packaging was excellent and included both bubble wrap and cardboard sidings inside the box.

Chinese Buying TL;DR Not for the faint hearted, although Carbon Speed were excellent and I would definitely buy from them again.
January 06, 2016, 03:02:15 AM 		1
Re: Let's share our Chinese carbon wheels. I put some new decals on the new wheels.

First is with the flash off and second it is on.




February 21, 2018, 03:39:55 PM 		1
Re: Looking For A Chiner Road Bike Frame - SWORKS Tarmac This has become my full time frame. I built a Tideace frame , FM-R185  bought on eBay,  they were very easy to deal with ,  i got XL frame , 59 cm, fits perfect, came with bb 386  and headset both fit well. I had it partially painted with decals to match and all shipped to USA for $500.00 which was $425.00 for the bike and $75.00 for painting and decals,  all in matte.  And no tariff in USA.  Took about 30 days from order date to receive.
I have TRP hy/rd flat mount brakes on it, 160 mm in front and 140 mm in back, these are  cable actuated hydraulic brake, love the brakes.  Set up  1X11 ,  50 11/28 right now.
It also has toseek carbon stem, toseek carbon bar 440mm and Light Bicycle 56 mm wheels with schwalbe pro one tires 700X28 running tubeless with Pillar bladed spokes 28 hole and novatec 791/792 hubs, both are bolt thru and cable with the thru axles, 12X100 and 12X142.   I haven't weighed it but its light.  All the rest of drive train is shimano 105.  I use shimano spd pedals and have a Fabric Cell saddle. 
The only issue to date has been the aero seat post.  I found by putting a layer of thin tape once around the frame that gives removes any play and slippage coupled with good fiber grip paste, i like both Park tool and finish line.  Most bikes both big manufacturer and open mold with aero posts deal with slippage problems. 
May 09, 2020, 08:06:13 AM 		1
Re: Looking For A Chiner Road Bike Frame - SWORKS Tarmac Well I got my VeloBuild VB-R-068 Frame set a few weeks ago......today I went racing on it, it was bloody awesome!
I got the matt black 54cm frame (I'm 1.8m / 5'11") and the fit was great. I stripped the matt black back to raw carbon on the forks and left the frame. Wet saned the whole frame and did my own custom paint job (Courtesy of Martin Grey's Etoe Youtube channel) and the result was awesome. From AliExpress I got the saddle, wheelset (50mm x 25mm carbon rims) Ultegra Crankset and brakes, Carbon bars with integral stem, Bar tape, shifter cable set, BB109 Ceramic Bottom bracket and from NZ online off Facebook (Bikeshelf) second hand near new Ultegra shifters and derailleurs. After about 40 hours work doing the custom paint job I put this all together and came in at a very nice 7.7kg ready to race.

I did see a review that said it was not very exciting/responsive but I have to disagree....it was agile and a real rocket ship on the downhills...very stable at 61+ Kph. I did however have to make a 3mm washer for the headset to work properly and pack the outer ring of the top headset bearing with ptfe thread tape to give it a nice snug fit.

Chris@velobuild was awesome to deal with and replied same day to all emails I sent him, I cant recommend this frame and Velobuild website more highly. Very impressed overall.
August 16, 2020, 05:19:30 AM 		1
Re: ICAN triaero A9 Finished the internal routing today. It was a bit of a pain but not as bad as I expected considering this is the first bike I have ever built. I think the toughest part was the handlebars but there is are great YouTube tutorials from both ICAN and "OzCycles". Number one tip I can give when routing the handlebars is to tape both the gear and brake cables together and pull them through the narrow hole at the same time. Pictures of the finished routing have been attached. Please don't judge the messy room as it has been a long night
October 05, 2020, 07:18:28 PM 		1
Re: Advice on new road bike frame! Fully internal cable routing + disc So I just got my frame in from velobuild and it looks great. I'm very excited to build this up and start riding.

I can confirm it fits a 28c tire maybe even a 32c but I only had a 28 and 35 to check. The 35 was just slightly too big and there was a bit of room still left with the 28c. This was on a 25mm rim.

Oh also, the frame can support a 160mm rotor on the back but I needed to use an adapter. So maybe the new 168 fits a 160mm right out of the box. I attached a pic of the one I used.
December 10, 2020, 08:13:15 PM 		1
Re: OG -EVKIN Hi all
Here is the list of material.
Some itme may changes depending on what i found as discounted
SpoidsPrice €
frame   OG EVKIN  CF-0251700427,72
Seat post included --
stemZTT0 7°1607.73
handlebarOGEVKIN HB00324034.16
Saddle Tossek10016
WheelsDT Swiss  P18001600250
Brake CaliperZTT0 AS2.6D407   16.29
CrankZRACE Hard rock  50/3472860.67
Bottom BracketZTTO BB86 ceramic11228.20
front derailleurSensah Empire 00
rearderailleurSensah Empire 00
ShiftersSensah Empire groupset 80188.26
Cassette105 11-2828437.99
ChainZrace26615.79
TireHutchinsonx252051.98
TubeDecathlonx22045.8
strapDecathlonx21008.9
Total 76921007.53

Nicoloc
December 11, 2020, 12:05:22 PM 		1
1st Build: TanTan/Seraph GR029 with Sensah SRX Pro 1x11 Thank you for the admission to this board.
After positive experiences with Chinese carbon wheels, we decided to research the possible build of a Road/Gravel bike for my girlfriend. Chinertown gave some hints on what to look out for and which suppliers to choose for our project.
The goal was to build a bicycle mainly for the use on tarmac with some lighter gravel, therefore had to have clearance for wider tires.
Finally we decided on following components for our build:

Frame and Fork:
TanTan / Seraph: GR029 with 15mm Fork and BSA BB in size 52
We ordered the matching headset and thru axles directly with the frame to prevent any mismatch.

Groupset:
Sensah SRX Pro 1x11
Crank Zrace RX 172.5mm long with 44 chainring
Casette Zrace 11-46

Brakes:
Ordered seperately Zrace cable actuated hydraulic disc brakes for 160mm rotors.
The sets normally offered on Aliexpress only include adapters for 140mm discs which do not work for our terrain.  ;-)

Seatpost and saddle:
Ordered a separate carbon seat post 27.2mm and a saddle in "Specialized Mimic" style.

Wheels:
We still had a set of Alexrims with Schwalbe X-One 33mm tires laying around to be used.
The disc rotors are some standard Schimano.

Some additional parts such as brake and shift cabling were sourced locally.
The Fizik Cyrano bars in 420mm width and 110mm stem completed the build.


Additional remarks:
The frame was ordered mid of October and we requested a specific custom paint.
Communication with Seraph was excellent over Aliexpress. They sent us a CAD drawing with the custom paint for our confirmation after 24 hours, which is great service.
They let us know that the paint job would delay the shipment for about 20 days, which was about correct.
Due to the reduced air shipment choices caused by Covid-19, the shipment was rerouted and finally left china around the 9th of December 2020 and arrived in Europe end of December.
The quality of the frame and custom paint is very good. The only complaint is that the whole in the fork for the axles were not perfectly protected during painting so some colour entered, which I had to remove before assembly.

The assembly went pretty smooth without bigger issues. Inner cable routing always presents a challenge so you should have the right tools at hand.
Cable routing was done using a Zitto routing tool that is similar to the much more expensive Parktool counter part. For around 10US$, I can highly recommend it.  :-)

The Sensah groubset works well especially the shifting is very nice.
The break power needs to be checked once we had the chance of some extensive rides.
But make no mistake it is certainly not on the level of Shimano hydraulic disc brakes but we expect it to be OK for relaxed riding.

The total bike including Shimano SPD pedals is at 9.065kg which is not too bad considering the 33mm wide tires and quite heavy wheelset.
Going with some nice carbon wheels and tubules would certainly be a big improvement.  ;-)
The cost for the whole build was around 1000US$ including shipping, import taxes and additional parts.
Not super cheap but a real fun project with good result.  :-)

Some things still need to be fixed:
- For correct crankset mounting you need to use spacers adjusting the side to side play and preload of the BB. Unfortunately the shims in the set do not fit perfectly leaving about 0.5-0.8mm play. We will have to source a matching shim to correct this.
- There were only 4 instead of 5 screws speed to fix the chainring to the crank. It seems some mountain bike chainrings only use 4. We did order some additional parts to fix it.
- The cable routing for the rear break is not perfect on the first try so we have some slack and soft feeling when actuating the rear break. This should be easy to correct.

No riding experience yet due to the points to be fixed and cold and wet weather.
We will report our experiences at a later point in time.
January 10, 2021, 07:20:42 AM 		1
Re: TanTan TT-X21 frame Hi All,

My X21 build is almost done. It's mostly new components but I'm waiting on things like correct sized bolts for brakes. I have used shifters with an overtightened bleed port cover that I had to pretty much destroy to remove. Its holding the brake fluid, but ordered a replacement. I also have a loose headset that I can't seem to tighten down with the supplied compressor assembly.  Might have to go to the LBS for that.
January 11, 2021, 03:13:01 PM 		1
Re: Yishun R014/ Light Carbon LCR015 Vs. Velobuild VB-R-079 Decided to go with the Lightcarbon. Price was more or less same at all manufacturer but communication and available stock made me to choose Lightcarbon.
The frame just arrived this week, its time to build :)
January 18, 2021, 10:03:06 PM 		1