danmdevries wrote:
Brother in law is service manager at local trek store so I stopped to bother him on the sales floor. They have two bikes under $1k that would work for me. Gotta sell my beater first, then I'll go pick up a new bike.
Trek bikes... that brings back memories. Back when I was in engineering school in Madison, WI in the early 90's we (the metallurgy/material science) students and professors took a field trip to the Trek assembly plant in Waterloo, WI. It's about 30-45 minute bus ride from Madison.
They would welcome the students in a couple times a year for a tour of the place. They were just still kind of a small bike business at that time (relatively speaking). They've grown quite a bit over the years and have expanded into many other biking areas since then.
At the time I visited, the steel frames were welded by a third party. The aluminum frames (depending on the model) were welded in house or epoxied together in house. The carbon fiber bikes were all epoxied together - carbon fiber tubes for the main triangle and cast aluminum parts and stuff for the front triangle. I think the rear triangle was still welded steel and epoxied to the seat tube and the bottom bracket. The forks were still steel on all of the frames
When we left after the tour, they sent us home with 3 or 4 rejected frames of each assembly method (steel welding, aluminum welded, aluminum glued, carbon fiber glued), something like 12-15 bike frames in total. Our job as students was to section the frame, analyze the joining methods and recommend improvements. Then write up a lab report on our findings. It was a fun analysis. They give us free frames and we do some analysis on them for free. We both win.
Transparency: Not all of the bikes were sectioned and cut into pieces. We had to do real world ride tests with each of the frames so a few (cough) students got a free Trek bike after we completed the analysis and reports.
