You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
seriously is there that much difference and improvement from a On One to Yeti?
Maybe but spending an extra £1300 on the bits bolted to the cheap frame is likely to be a lot more noticeable.
Edit: I should have said cheaper frame not cheap, £500 for some plastic isn't cheap, I reckon the £250 I paid for my C456 is close to cheap though.
It depends how much you value painstaking design, beautiful finish, neat touches and a bit of heritage / exclusivity.
Of course a Yeti isn't three times as much fun.
Better? I can't say for sure, but every time I crash or clip my >£1k Tomac carbon frame on some rocks I have a terrible "hope its not broken as I can't afford to replace it" moment.
"Maybe but spending an extra £1300 on the bits bolted to the cheap frame is likely to be a lot more noticeable"
That's bollox IMO. Everyone who sees my £300 carbon frame thinks it's a super expensive boutique one. The attention to detail is amazing. Finish is flawless and straight as an arrow.
All the bits hanging off it are mostly from the classifieds here. Hardy used XTR cranks, Carbon Lefty etc.
"Maybe but spending an extra £1300 on the bits bolted to the cheap frame is likely to be a lot more noticeable"
I think that's pretty much what avd2 was suggestingThat's bollox IMO. Everyone who sees my £300 carbon frame thinks it's a super expensive boutique one. The attention to detail is amazing. Finish is flawless and straight as an arrow
Righto
I reckon they would be fairly different as your comparing HT's with FS bikes
I went from a £2750 Giant TCR sl isp frame to a Planet X Rt57 (bought for £350 to use a a 'not race bike' bike).
I preferred the px so I sold the Tcr.......go figure 😕
Assuming it's an On One carbon... Mine rode nicely but the finish quality is absolutely terrible, came off in chunks. And the attention to detail wasn't really there, frinstance the cable guides are really poorly located (and duplicated), and it has issues with brake caliper clearance, and no chainsuck protection. Though I reckon that's more acceptable in a cheap frame, it's still not great, doesn't cost any more to do these things a bit less obviously wrong.
You'd also get a warranty worth speaking of with a Yeti, which you don't with On One.
Importer & distributor margin? Bet its 40% 😉
Mine isn't an On One..
Maybe but spending an extra £1300 on the bits bolted to the cheap frame is likely to be a lot more noticeable"
That's bollox IMO. Everyone who sees my £300 carbon frame thinks it's a super expensive boutique one. The attention to detail is amazing. Finish is flawless and straight as an arrow
I think that's pretty much what avd2 was suggesting
Yes exactly what I was saying
You are paying a premium on the more expensive bikes no doubt, but there are more costs involved too. I also don't buy into the 'better grades of carbon' stuff. You should expect the manufacturing layup process on a more expensive one is better to minimise joints and better control the material thickness around the bottom bracket area and headset area, but that's all about wright saving (grams). All this takes an element of development. The Chinese bikes are probably fine from a structural point of view but are missing these refinements and clearly don't have the costs of distribution, marketing, funding the inevitable warranty replacements etc that the bigger brands have to factor into price. The upshot is you cannot completely justify the price difference in the quality and performance of the end product, but if we all had to do that then most if us wouldn't be riding the bikes we ride. We buy with our hearts as much as our heads.
Depends to some extent on the modulus of the carbon used, it varies in strength and cost enormously. Not all carbon is equal. Thereafter you have the fact that Yeti is a premium brand.
Importer & distributor margin? Bet its 40%
Hora in talking b*llocks shocker!
How much do hardtail carbon frames cost to make? It won't be 'cheap cheap' - although I did read somewhere once that a certain company had frames that cost c£50 to them from the factory before landing costs etc added on...
Would you put up/risk over a grand of your capital/cashflow for something that might/might not sell + customer service + overheadcosts +warranty claims for say just 20% on each frame i.e. £260?
Shop margins are tight not Distributors I bet.
I've heard plastic frames are cheaper to produce than wielded metal ones, whether that includes R&D costs I dunno. Seem to recall brant or someone saying anyone can slap together a carbon frame, unskilled work, whereas sticking a load of pipes together has a lot more skill/experience involved. Plastic frames are always more expensive tho
Anyone who actually knows this stuff rather than gleaning their "knowledge" from forums wanna comment?
All I know is that my £300 piece of none badged crap rides as good if not better than any other HT I've owned - plastic, steel or alu. It's better finished and better aligned than some of the boutique/named frames I've wasted money on in the past.
My build probably comes in just under 1K. Similar designed frame and kit from a branded company with their huge logo on the downtube I doubt I'd get much change out of 3K.
The money I save lets me travel to nice places to ride. Sierra Nevada's next 8)
mikewsmith - MemberI reckon they would be fairly different as your comparing HT's with FS bikes
[url= http://www.silverfish-uk.com/ProductDetail/0/13884/Arc-Carbon-Frame ]You are underestimating the RRP of a yeti frame. [/url]
Psychologically yes, massive.
How much do hardtail carbon frames cost to make? It won't be 'cheap cheap' - although I did read somewhere once that a certain company had frames that cost c£50 to them from the factory before landing costs etc added on...
Complete nonsense.
Though I would consider it true that the LABOUR costs of a carbon frame are far lower than a steel or alloy welded frame, the material and tooling costs are much higher.
As a rule of thumb a Chinese carbon frame costs about 8 times what a Chinese aluminium frame costs.
Publish your costs then..
Publish your costs then..
John Humphrys or what? 😆
What? 😉
Publish your costs then..
Why would he do that. No other business in the world is that stupid. Shoots yourself in more feet than an octopus in a spaggetti western!
*customers will assume it's too cheep therefore inferior, regardless of what the actual price is
*customers will refuse to pay your markup, however much or litle it is
*alternative suppliers will stop competatively negotiating and just demand that price, why would you put in a low bid to supply something if you know you only need to be £199 rather than the £200 your compettitor is selling to O-O at?
*suppliers will stop supply as you've given away their price to you which may differ from their price negotiated with someone else, who is now demanding that lower price
etc
There is skill to laying up carbon fibre, the direction of weave makes a lot of difference to the ride properties.
As for welding together pipes together, just remember that not all welders are equal. There are a lot of people who call themselves welders just because they have bought a mig from machine mart and can pull the trigger.
I'd guess a large part of the extra cash of a top frame will pay for the custom moulds in multi pal sizes as opposed to open moulds frames.
we had a mould made to make a small plastic/glass fibre hook for a retail stand (it cost us £6000 for the tooling) - the hook is 6" long and very simple.
[url=
of folk on here who would rather pay the money[/url]
There's a truck load of them if you scroll down.
There is skill to laying up carbon fibre, the direction of weave makes a lot of difference to the ride properties.
Assuming that's true, that's a design skill, not a manufacture skill.
The laying up process is essentially skilless. CNC laser cuts out the pre-preg, worker gets given a bunch of different shaped bits to stick on mold.
haha...so gay (a owners group) 😆
IanMunro - Member
There is skill to laying up carbon fibre, the direction of weave makes a lot of difference to the ride properties.
Assuming that's true, that's a design skill, not a manufacture skill.
The laying up process is essentially skilless. CNC laser cuts out the pre-preg, worker gets given a bunch of different shaped bits to stick on mold.
Sorry got to take issue with you there, laying up carbon fibre is far from skilless as the huge humber of busted cheap bike frames can attest. Carbon itself comes in various qualities, should it be wet laminated, used as pre preg, used with another fibre to ensure no inter fibre friction, laying it up around corners is difficult, should it be autoclaved? Lots and lots of decisions to take in approaching carbon fabrication and that's not even in the bike game. All I know there's a boat building place down Southampton way that earns an awful lot from repairing badly built bike frames and he rolls his eyes every time he gets another in.
sefton - Member
haha...so gay (a owners group)
haha...so hetero dim (an owners group)
TBH when brant releases the C456 V2(?) I'll be far more interested in a thick coating over the carbon OR at least a metal chainsuck protection insert.
'Finish' means bollocks when its been humped over wet Peaks hills 365 days a year.
My On One C456 has developed a small hairline crack up the headtube. Given the recent bad press on hear for customer service I wasn't even expecting a reply to my email.
Reply came first thing this morning after emailing late last night. Response looks promising so watch this space.
Can't fault the bike apart from the two noted problems - no chain suck protection and poor paint finish. But for £300 I could buy 4 to a £1,200 frame and the ride is great.
There are essentially different markets for high end and 'budget' carbon bikes. Some people want great finish, brand kudos and to believe that they have bought The Best. Then there's people like me who think: it's a hardtail mountain bike, it's going to live a hard life, give me something tough and lightish that rides well at a good price and sod the rest of it. It's possible that those high end frames give a marginally better ride but I don't care.
Sorry got to take issue with you there, laying up carbon fibre is far from skilless as the huge humber of busted cheap bike frames can attest. Carbon itself comes in various qualities, should it be wet laminated, used as pre preg, used with another fibre to ensure no inter fibre friction, laying it up around corners is difficult, should it be autoclaved? Lots and lots of decisions to take in approaching carbon fabrication and that's not even in the bike game. All I know there's a boat building place down Southampton way that earns an awful lot from repairing badly built bike frames and he rolls his eyes every time he gets another in.
Indeed. But as a I said such decisions are a design process, requiring experience and intelligence. The actual physical process of sticking the bits in the mold doesn't require skill.
its a bit like asking is the real eiffel tower better than the chinese copy
Could someone point me in the direction of these £300 yeti alike frames please
Sorry got to take issue with you there, laying up carbon fibre is far from skilless as the huge humber of busted cheap bike frames can attest. Carbon itself comes in various qualities, should it be wet laminated, used as pre preg, used with another fibre to ensure no inter fibre friction, laying it up around corners is difficult, should it be autoclaved? Lots and lots of decisions to take in approaching carbon fabrication and that's not even in the bike game. All I know there's a boat building place down Southampton way that earns an awful lot from repairing badly built bike frames and he rolls his eyes every time he gets another in.
its pretty deskilled now ,for some reason people have this view the chinese are thick and they dont have access to ply cutters and ply projection ,they do. it eliminates certain risks though they still do make design errors or miss little things that otherwise would make things less likely to fail
They are even looking at eliminating the human element ,you know those technologies that only the advanced composites centres think they have like robotic layers 3d woven and ply pattern laying you can see why they want to remove the worker. wages are going up chinese workers want ipads and stuff