LAURA’S SCOTT CONTESSA RANSOM 910
MONTH 12: Laura has to eat her words as her Ransom fails in the final hour
IIf you’ve a fan of sport you’ll be all too aware of the commentator’s curse. Well it appears I’ve given my trusty Contessa Ransom the same kiss of death. After months of lavishing it with praise for its versatility, hardiness and reliability, I’ve just discovered that the carbon frame has a crack in it.
I’m fairly fastidious (you can read that as OCD) about cleaning and looking after my bikes and on a recent strip down I found what initially looked like a paint chip on the frame just behind the upper linkage. On closer inspection it looks more like a crack in the carbon front triangle that runs back into the pivot on the seat tube. I’ll need to pop into my local Scott dealer to confirm this though.
Now, I’m not the most aggressive rider, and definitely don’t push this bike anything like as hard as most of the guys (it’s the exact same frame), so I was really surprised to find a potential crack after just 11 months of, well, not a lot of abuse.
And while it’s hard to pinpoint for sure what causes damage to our bikes, I think this is most likely a manufacturing issue, which is covered under warranty. For a customer that would mean a replacement front triangle, or even a full frame if a colour match wasn’t available, where the dealer would strip and rebuild the bike for you. For me? Well, I’ve not got much longer with the Contessa Ransom, so I’ve marked the crack to see if it increases in size and
I’ll do a couple more rides rather than warranty the frame at this late stage in my longtermer’s relatively short lifecycle. Hopefully the frame can be recycled.
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Size tested Head angle Seat angle BB height Chainstay Front centre Wheelbase Down tube Top tube Reach
Matt Wragg is an increasingly reclusive photographer, writer and abuser of bicycles. As a young man he tried chasing success in a series of offices in Central London, but has spent the last decade trying to get as far away from that life as he can. He likes long walks on the beach, golden hour photoshoots and hiding from the modern world in the mountains of southern France.