[longassballs]

New Felt VR6 has cables entering the downtube without any grommets. The paint around the holes has scratched off. I haven’t even ride the bike yet.

Is this an inherent design flaw, or incorrect installation? I’ve seen this design on other bikes, but it seems obvious to me that the bare paintwork won’t be able to stand cable rub. Looking at photos of the bike online it doesn’t look as if there are any grommets missing. Surely every bike like this has the same problem. If it looks like this out of the box what will it look like after 6 months? The cable ports on the headtube and fork have grommets so I just don’t get it.

The bike already arrived with this weird scratch:

… which I can’t work out how it could have happened. Looks like the paint wasn’t finished off to the headtube from manufacture.

I bought the bike from wiggle for £900 50% off as a winter bike and emailed them an hour after I received it telling them about the scratch. I only noticed the cable ports later. I know I can just return it to get my money back but was curious as to what Wiggle’s reply would be given that I said I wanted a replacement but knew they were sold out. What policy do companies generally have on damaged goods? I haven’t heard back from Wiggle yet since Friday when they acknowledged my complaint.

Now I’m also curious as to this design of cable ports where it is just literally a hole in the frame and wonder if anyone else has a bike like this?

Topic

[AfterPeak]

Yeah you should have also
Yeah you should have also received two type of grommets depending on cable or Di2 if your bike supported Di2. Headtube looks like it has been ridden without fully compressing bearings and then the cover had moved and scrapped the paint off. Defo send back

[longassballs]

Bike boxed up read for return
Bike boxed up read for return.

A repaint? Hadn’t thought about it but what you say makes sense, considering I have no knowledge about this sort of stuff whatsoever. The model above with the same frame, the VR5, I think is red but is it likely? Who knows in this opaque industry. Think it would be a waste of time asking Wiggle or Felt. The VR5 doesn’t seem to be sold anywhere 😕

Super frustrating. There aren’t many carbon frames with mudguard mounts out there

[ceewill51]

 IME that frame has suffered

 IME that frame has suffered a repaint, and no experienced paint shop would use a yellow or red undercoat on a grey or black finished top coat, ask a few questions!!  there’s nearly always a reason that something is  too cheap or substantially better value than its counterparts..

[StraelGuy]

Agreed, I’d definitely reject

Agreed, I’d definitely reject that as unfit for purpose. Good luck choosing something else.

[longassballs]

Apologies. Just looked at the
Apologies. Just looked at the Felt manual and the downtube frame guides [b]should[/b] have grommets, as seen in this screengrab:

Wiggle failed to install them.

Bike definitely going back. Annoying as I won’t be able to get a replacement and I thought this bike was a real bargain – though it was listed as having a carbon seat post but arrived with an alloy one. Back to the drawing board…

[Author]

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