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After having a bike I thought would be of interest to The Pro’s Closet rejected (because it had a repair: a layer of carbon had been worn away because the original owner had run tires larger than spec—actually, the company that sold it to him specced the bike that way, but that’s another story—and out of an abundance of caution I had it fixed even though two shops said it was structurally fine), I did a quick analysis of the 2,000+ bikes on TPC’s website. Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of all the bikes in stock at the time, including hybrid/commuter bikes, had been repaired by Broken Carbon. I sampled small and large brands chosen at random. The shocker for me was BMC: 14 of 30 bikes had been repaired at Broken Carbon. TPC told me they rejected mine because they don’t take bikes that have been repaired (I pointed out that my repair had been done where they get their repairs done and comes with the same 5-year warranty they offer). I actually sent my data to someone I know at a cycling mag. He had one of his writers do a piece, but it was yet another in a long, boring line of is-carbon-strong-or-not stories and totally missed the points I thought were interesting, including TPC selling bikes they wouldn’t buy and the possibility that a lot of riders are on damaged carbon frames and don’t know it (or a lot of riders know it and are morally bankrupt).
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