All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

The most common safety risks that we come across in our daily work around bicycle safety, technology and operating instructions are also published by us in articles in the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR (Europe's road bike magazine no. 1), BIKE (Europe's mountain bike magazine no. 1), MYBIKE and EMTB in order to make this information, which is important for the industry, available to a wider public.

For many years now, the Eurobike Show Daily, trade fair magazine of the annual Eurobike Show, has also given us the opportunity to publish our view of major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent expert presentations about all areas of bicycle technology and the bicycle market. In addition, we are quoted by further special-interest magazines of the industry and the trade as well as increasingly by radio and television in their media reports, which shows us that we are spot on with our advice. The section "News" informs you about the latest news from our specialist areas. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to areas of interest.

TOUR 09/2014
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Carbon frames

Reader’s question

A few weeks ago I’ve ordered a carbon bike on the Internet. Now, I’ve found out that the frame is not accurately centred. The wheel is about 1.5 millimetres offset from the centre. I’ve already tried to turn the wheel, but the result is the same. This means that the wheel is symmetrical. Then I’ve measured the frame with a stretched line: I’ve guided the line through both drop-outs and tightened it around the head tube. The measurement on the seat tube shows an offset of about 2.5 to 3 millimetres. Various measurements had the same results. Do you think it’s still within tolerance or a reason for complaint? My ten year old alu frame has an offset of 4 millimetres.

Reply by Dirk Zedler, TOUR Technology expert and bicycle expert

One typical feature of carbon frames is that they are optimally centred. They do not even distort after they come out of the manufacturing moulds. It may be possible that the measured distortion is due to asymmetries in the area of the seat tube or the like. Apart from that there are no hard borders from which the frame is still accurate or not. We assume that in the case of road racing bikes a lateral distortion of more than 2.5 millimetres from the centre is not accurate. Without having seen the frame I would therefore assume that the measured offset is still within the range of tolerance.

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