The bike in question was purchased in 2011 and had not quite made it to its 10th birthday.
I'm going to start by sharing two links which flesh out the story to follow:
A Crack in the Dream
An open letter to Jim Walker at Enigma Bikes
Next the pictures, which I reckon are worth at least 1000 words each. Note that they go backwards in time.
The first three show the devastation to the bottom bracket area. This happened on May 11th, nearly throwing me onto the road.
This next one is the dropout which gave way in November 2020.
Finally we have the bottom bracket again, circa 2016.
I'm a roadie, but nothing close to a racer. I don't ride my bikes hard. Don't have a computer or keep track of mileage, but my best guess is this one clocked up 40k miles. It could be more, it could even be a fair amount less: I just don't know. It was my 'Sunday best', though I took it out every chance I could, my average spin being around 20 miles, with
longer rides thrown in. I've got two other road bikes that get out in poor weather. Here they are all lined up, including the pipsqueak folder I use for London.
I absolutely loved that bike, and talked up Enigma all the time. I was pleased to be able to recommend a local company.
When the BB cracked in '16, it was repaired rather than replaced. This concerned me at the time, as detailed in the link up top, but I was assured it would be fine, and in any case had no say in the matter.
When the dropout gave way last year it was again repaired.
Finally, true disaster struck: not just the frame catastrophically failing, but irreparable damage to my relationship with the company. They refused to do any more repairs under the lifetime warranty this was sold to me with. (Note their terms have since changed to 10 years and a Lifetime Loyalty scheme.) I was informed that it'd had a good run, and a decade is a reasonable lifespan. By their frequent recitation of ways to abuse a frame, I was left with the strong impression that they were pointing the finger at me for the cracks.
To add insult to injury, as far as I was concerned, I was told £600 could buy me a replacement frame. This was presented as a fantastic bargain, considering a retail price of several multiples of that. Although some have told me they think this is fair (most say they'd just sell it on), I remain flabbergasted and wholly unwilling to give them more money. Haven't I suffered enough?
I'm no metallurgist, but it's my opinion that the frame should've been replaced after the first failure, which led to its eventual demise.
I tried to deal with this privately but got nowhere, which is why I've posted here
and elsewhere. I'm not expecting justice, nice at that would be, but if my account nudges even one framebuilder to up their game, that would be a little victory.