Can aluminium be heat treated twice?

Sounds pretty good. It's a pain to rebuild bikes but hey, welcome to the Forever Building Club!

Dibs 1st frame if you get to keep it when they send the 2nd one
:D

I'd buy a CAD and spunk the rest on a month cycling in Tuscany tbh!

Still, I'm a peasant so what do I know...

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm being more indecisive than the UK Parliament. Need a people's vote to break the deadlock.

What would you do? Save yourself the hassle, get a refund and find an OTP alternative (and pocket some Tuscany tokens) or suck it up and stay with the spooky and have the hassle of double build costs. FWIW I think spooky's solution shows willing and makes the best of a bad situation. We all make mistakes I guess, but it's how you deal with them...

To help, this is what it looks like:

1 Attachment

Mmmm that’s sweet. Build it twice

Herein lies the problem. It's exactly what I want. Could be yours next. Except they want it back in exchange for the replacement. Soz.

Build it twice. Worth it for something special!

Your problem now is that if they go bust tomorrow you won't see the new frame.

You are kinda a creditor to them until they sort this out. And once you are placated by the promise of the new frame you might find the new frame gets bumped on their list of priorities.

Presumably they neglected to fit the chain stay hose / cable doobries?

Might be worth the risk / hassle. Might not. Glad it's not my call :)

Thats great. Very nice proportions.

Also if you build twice stuff will be absolutely perfect the second time?
But then maybe thats just me with the constant work in progress builds.

Did you ever ask them about heat treating in the end? Or find out what grade of aluminium?

I'm still interested in the process!

It is special. Really nice actually. But the monumental balls up has tarnished the specialness a little I guess.

On the one hand I think I'd regret sending it back as ultimately it's what I want. On the other hand I've sold my Victoire, Demon, Serotta and others to facilitate this purchase. All of which were special bikes. Feels weirdly disrespectful to them to end up with a tarnished bike. #absentfriends

I didn't actually. Once the bossman said he'd replace it with a new one I guess it became less relevant to me. The tone of his email would lead me to think he feels reworking the frame I have was not a solution but that probably relates more to my unusual situation than any materials science.

What would be their timeframe for a replacement? If they are not going to make your new frame immediately I’d move on and find an otp frame. Otherwise you may find in six months time you are still chasing them while riding around on a bike with zip ties holding cables in place.

Shit, they forgot to paint the forks too?

My build kit is largely from a donor bike (my Victoire) so less concerned about having the replacement frame being built on used fork/headset etc.

But Howard's point about them going pop or de-prioritising my replacement is a serious concern I hadn't previously factored in. Thanks @Howard

Ha, no I didn't want the forks painted.

They've quoted me 3-4 months.

Fuck that

#makeforksmatchingagain

That was going to be my question. If it was a month I'd say suck it up and wait, but for 3 months + I'd go the temporary build option.

What was the original lead time and was this delivered on time?

Thanks #maga

Get a refund and order a LOW//
That'll show em

If you have something else to ride in the meantime I'd personally tell them not to bother with the zip ties and hurry on with the new one.

OK, so original quote was 3 months. It took 4. They've said it'll be 3 months again as there are no "stock" frames in the queue they can rob, so it's back to the start of the process. Therefore I'm assuming it'll be 3-4 months again.

I'm constantly see-sawing between building up this frame and taking the gamble on the replacement arriving on time/at all and just cutting my losses and ordering something else.

The opinions shared here are driving a of that see-sawing but it's all really helpful so keep the views coming. Difficult decision, but it's good to hear other's views.