I dropped off my beloved Felt B2 Pro (the one pictured in my header and to the right, the one that qualified me for Kona, took me to Kona and IMFL, and helped me nail the fastest bike split in my division for my last two 70.3s) for a performance tune-up. My IM training is about to kick into high gear, and I wanted my baby to be ready to help punish my body.
At 11am I received a call from the shop. "We have some bad news" they said, "your seat frame is cracked". I pleaded with them to be joking. "Please, please let this be a prank". But they assured me they weren't. The Felt frames have an aluminum insert that is integrated to the carbon frame. My aluminum is cracked 1/3 to 1/2 of the way down the collar. Although I don't have a picture of my bike, I found a picture of someone else's who had the same problem. His is more severe than mine, as it goes all the way down into the carbon frame:
So, what does this mean? Well, my bike shop told me they've had this happen with other Felt bikes in the past, and it was apparently some sort of defect. In the past Felt replaced the frames free of charge (the owner just had to pay to ship their old frame to Felt's HQ). I'm nervous, however, because my bike is a 2008 model (bought in Nov. 2009). Will Felt replace my baby? If Felt does, it means I'm without a bike for over a week. How much is this going to screw up my training? If Felt isn't going to replace my frame, training may not matter anyways. I ate rice and beans and worked my ass off for two years to afford this. There's no way I can afford a new frame right now, so if Felt isn't going to replace my frame, you can kiss all future races goodbye. Let's hope for good news.
0 comments:
Post a Comment