plot gets slightly thicker with the ebay revel el jefe fiasco. a couple more red flags and im gonna see what tarck thinks while i wait to hear back from revel.
chain was removed from the bike before shipping, but the quick link is intact. it appears that they just pried the chain open at a link to break the chain and remove it. both plates on that link are bent to shit. makes me wonder what kind of person buys a $6k bike and knows that little about removing a chain.
and then theres the bottom bracket. on their website, this is what the serial number under the bb looks like:
wtf is with all the other markings? demo bike? absolutely stolen bike? is the image from their website shopped and not accurate to what the actual bb is supposed to look like?
So, Iâm tired of hunching over on drops on my commuter bike, and I want to convert it to a flat bar. Well, more like some swept alt bar, but you get the idea. Thinking of a CUES build.
Whatâs the minimum disc brake youâd spec for a commuter in a relatively flat city? This is a winter bike that will see studded tires and below freezing.
Tempted to go TRP / Spyke, but I think I can go cheaper. Not afraid of hydro. TYiA!
Iâd buy cheap shimanos and replace the inevitably leaky calipers until I got good ones, making the whole project more expensive and aggravating than just buying non-leaky brakes in the first place.
But thatâs just me.
One of my basket commuters came with Tektro Aries MD-M300 brakes and they were perfectly fine. Other basket commuters have had nicer Hayes and Avid cable discs and those performed not all that much better. Most of those bikes had the cheap Tektro RS360A levers (with some aftermarket lever condoms), also perfectly fine.
Avoid the Shimano BR-M375L. Theyâre stamped metal garbage.
On various bikes (family of 5, got sick of replacing leaky Shimano for bikes that donât get ridden enough) I have TRP Spykes, Hayes MX Comp, Hayes CX Pro with canti levers, whatever Shimano road mechanicals to Claris flat bar levers, and AliX Zoom brand with 2 moving pads. I think all have compressionless housing. Hayes MX Comp feels the best/like it has the least flex of all those. Shimano behind. I think the TRPs are the worst value; theyâre not awful but theyâre no better than Zoom.
my bet is they were âfucking around and finding outâ while processing that frame, and changed their mind on how they wanted to mark the serial number multiple times in the process
talking to a guy who works at Revel now, sent him pics, he can see the remnants of their serial number that has clearly been ground off.
So now what? Donât have a serial number to prove its stolen, certainly dont want to involve the acabs, want my money back but sort of dont want this dude to get his probably stolen bike back.
Sorry about your bad luck but Iâm just fascinated that some thief would go to the trouble of grinding off the serial and punching in a different one. I always assumed they just yolo it. And then⌠if you do decide to forge a serial number, how do you fuck it up this bad? Was this person this fucked up on meth?
As to the bike Iâd probably make a reasonable effort to locate the owner and ride it if it turns up nothing.
Which makes total sense now. They blasted the serial number off the bottom bracket with the intent of making a new serial number, but then realized that they couldnt simply stamp a thick af ti bb, so they did the next best thing, which was to stamp the thin downtube tubing where it meets the BB. When I first saw that, I thought âok I know this thing is hydroformed and looks weird but that part doesnât look rightâ
