Thanks all. I think it came out nice. Still a lot of money but only a fraction of what a authentic venge would have cost. I’m not a pro so I can’t justify spending 8k on a venge. Time will tell how well this bike was built. I have a 2016 fsr. I don’t see myself building a Chinese frame mtb any time soon but I can see how one would probably cost a lot more than a good used one due the cost of quality components.

I have my sights on a gravel bike for my next build, something with a very large tire clearance. I am looking at a few from carbonda and a few others from the other companies on aliexpress.

Let me start off by saying that I love the specialized Venge disc model and was looking into buying one on the second hand market. I looked for several months and and saw some good deals. The venge still has one of the highest resale values i have seen on bikes to date, even with the older models fetching over 1k for just the frames.

This is my journey from start to finish.

I went on Aliexpress and started looking at carbon frames. I was looking at a company with a brand named Trifox. I really like the frames they had. Very inspired by the Look 795 Aerolite bike. I kept my eye on them as they seemed to be a new company without any reviews or feedback from sellers. After a month or so, they updated their store page with a complete build of their frame and it honestly looked pretty bad. I don't know if the picture was photo-shopped but it looked disproportional. I decided to against purchasing due to that and also because I wanted to get something with hydro disc brakes. I kept looking at frames and came upon a store that offered replica frames. I got in contact with the seller and asked for pictures of the full frames. I was honestly impressed with the pictures as they looked almost identical - honestly, they could have been showing me authentic pictures - to the specialized venge. I was really impressed with the non disc version as that authentic frames have built-in rim brakes, and so did these frames.

After back and forth talking with the seller - which he was great a communicating - we reached a deal for two frames and two wheel sets for a set price. To give you a time frame of all this, I started to look at these frames in December of 2018 and didn't order until January 2019. Due to the Chinese holiday, Our bikes were not produced until after February 15 and shipped and delivered until March 22. All this time i was able to maintain excellent contact with the seller. When I received the frame and during assemble I had several questions and they were able to answer them and were very helpful in doing so.

It is now April 17 2019 and I have finally been able to put around 30 miles on my new bike. I know that isn't much but the weather hasn't been great here with a lot of rain. The forecast predicts rain this weekend so I probably wont be able to put down some serious mileage until a few weeks.

Anyways, I just thought I would share with you all.