In article <
c654el-dape3.ln1@rubberchicken.nocrap>,
Michel <
abuse@rubberchicken.nl> wrote:
Lots of vendor lock in too. Or at least they used to, lots of special
bits and consumables that you can only get from them and that any
normal bike shop doesn't have.
But I suspect if you're looking at cf frames, you're a Serious Cyclist
and used to that sort of unobtanium stuff.
I have a carbon-fiber bike (BMC Granfondo[1]) and I've never had any
difficulty getting maintenance from either the big chain Recreational
Equipment supplier or the Local Bike Shop. (It's not a bike I would
ever have bought if I had to pay retail, but my mother was North
American director of finance for BMC before she retired, so I was able
to get it at the wholesale price.) The only difficulty so far (ten
years in) is that Conti doesn't make the original tires any more, so
when the current set wear out I'm going to have to figure out what to
replace them with. And I guess maybe at some point the Di2 battery
will need to get replaced.
-GAWollman
[1] I don't think they make this model any more. I could have gotten
anything they sold, but the shop where I was test-riding had a
Granfondo, the previous model year's, and I tried it and loved it.
I'd have looked pretty silly on a TeamMachine or TimeMachine.
--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)
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