 So we are at Carbon Steed, the bike painting and carbon fiber repair expert in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and I have two Els Falloth Evo frame sets with me about to get examined. But first of all, for those of you who follow the channel and perhaps have been getting a little bit irritated with how long this whole project has taken, the bike review of the Els Falloth Evo frame set, can I please give you a little bit of context first? So here she is, the production model I will be reviewing on this channel very shortly with a custom paint job based on an old Porsche 904 color scheme and I've pimped her up for the time being with some 69 millimeter rims and some 30 millimeter tires and in this box here we have the original frame that I got sent for review back in February this year, but this was the pre-production model that had some issues with it. So I thought we'd take this pre-production frame in to see Garret Carbon Steed and on our way down there we're going to pick up another frame. So after the pre-production shambles I obviously decided to continue on with this project with Els sending me that custom painted Porsche frame set you saw earlier, but to be expected I received some criticism and rightfully so in fact I'll pull up this comment chain and this was under one of my Els posts, it sort of summarizes the general sentiment well some people think that I shouldn't bother with the project anymore, some people think that I should continue on with it and one person despite the condescending tone throwing a fair and reasonable idea out there finish this project off the same way that you started it. So that's where we're going now, I ordered a frame anonymously on the 6th of March 2023 so I'm just out the front of my weathers now. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. We've got one stop before we get to Gary's and that's to see Aaron. Hello. Hey Ken. Now before we get into the meet here can I please say if you decide to jump off this video before the final summary where I have statements from Els and also a senior engineer at a mainstream bike company you will simply be uninformed so this is the first time in my five-year history on YouTube that I really encourage you to stay to the end. Visual inspection. I mean it looks the same as the other one but again there's just an external visual look at it. This looks a bit different than your one. It looks like there's like a high fill. So remember the first one you had and the seat post wouldn't go in and then the second one you had this was fixed from the prototype but honestly it's got bog you know like a car filler on the top of there and then this area here on the top is a bit rougher the peeling and the bottom bracket shell so a lot of that is to do with the bladder that goes inside and they've just ripped the bladder out and it's probably pulled the resin or the top surface resin with it but again get carbon specialist to look at it and then your cups or the actual manufacturing of the bottom bracket area they're not the same thickness all the way around so the here you all think this varies a lot. Yeah so if you look up inside the frame there's a huge piece like a strip of like a it looks like glue obviously you don't need that excessive weight it's not already a heavy bike right it's one of those things with this one no you win some and lose some between the two frames I don't like this again not that it necessarily matters but look at the the lower section here is that bearing seat so it's all crumbling away yeah that's pretty poor that's not as good as your one there's lots of pitting there if you're going to go to Gary I'd get him to check all that because it looks though it hasn't been compressed properly we're at my new premises in Maroochador sunrise drive just off the motorway so it's super easy for you to access as you know now you're heading down to brizzy so you're going to pop in pop out so next up we've got Gary carbon steve but while I head down there I did ask Wes about his thoughts made it all started off well he got back to us fairly quickly after your order and then the free bars which is great yes and responding to everything really quickly up front but then obviously the frame started taking a while to come and we're expecting it within about a month and after about six or seven weeks we chased him up and from that point onwards just the advice we were getting didn't really match up so I'm going to quickly jump in here with some additional context putting on my elves hat apparently they moved their manufacturing facilities during our ordering process creating issues in their supply chain and the poor old Australian distributors being caught in the middle of what became a bit of a shit show I've now put on my consumer hat I've paid you my money you said it was going to be 15 days so where is my frame he was telling me that it would be on its way at the end of the week and then we wouldn't hear anything for two weeks I think we're what over three months from when it was three months when we measure the thickness of the steerer tube it comes up as two millimeters which is exactly what I'd expect with the micrometer pre-production but it's not fantastic it has evidence of delamination and stuff inside it but you know you get that from time to time but this little fella here with what it looks to be half carbon and half fiberglass how do you know that well you can see the outsides black if you put these two together you can see that one's carbon all the way through this one here appears correct yeah so bike companies will often put a layer of fiberglass on the inside of their cheap low-end bikes or the other thing they'll do is maybe if they want to isolate aluminium from carbon to stop galvanic corrosion they may have a layer of fiberglass okay but you know when we measure that it measures yeah it's all over the place yeah 0.8 0.7 which kind of suggests you've got a whole heap of delamination and stuff in there and um yeah this is not I wouldn't consider that a good steerer tube so that's your pre-production one pre-production one but just you know looking it doesn't look terrible you know this is where I question where it would be all over the place and it is you don't for a minute think that that's 0.6 thick yeah it shows signs of delamination and there's there's not many frames you can go completely around if I know delamination well that looks like they learned from what you were saying about the seat post because you can see in there somebody's that's not out of a mold you know that's been sanded and finished and somebody's checked the measurement and everything when we spray a bit of solvent see the the white resin in there right in the edge there I can't give you a rock solder but it looks like there's fiberglass in there yeah they got when they're gone through you you often see that when you drill through carbon you can often break the back layer out that's what that is so I don't believe it's anything to do with a mold can you see it at all in there it's even like you drill through a piece of wood and you'll see the back of it splinter out same thing yeah is this the same brand because I don't keep up with all the frames you bring me is the one I said that was really good oh this that's what I'm saying to you it says it's almost too nice you know for a mass produced type thing yeah because it doesn't look the same hey yeah and then just yeah like you just look around the surface of that and that would be a bond in piece but it's just rough you know if I'm buying a carbon bike I want a carbon bike because obviously you're going to cut the steer down we can chop it open and have a little look ski and here's what I just chopped off this morning this was off a canyon fork and you can see the differences between them and we'll head upstairs okay we're going to slice these open and have a look inside okay so not scientific I know but I don't know if you noticed how much harder the canyon wants to cut through I put the mask back on and we'll grind back down you know you can clearly see the inside of that and compare to that and in all honesty if someone's going to save weight and money it's the canyon one and I don't know if you picked up on the camera when we broke through the fiberglass into the carbon it's just flicking off you know so they don't stick particularly well together so that's where you would get a d-lam reading can I see fiberglass strains no I strands no I can't do I believe it's fiberglass yes I do yeah is that carbon yes it is yes so immediately after seeing Gary we're surprisingly the focus shifted from the pre-production frame to the anonymous frame I purchased I contacted elves asking for clarification because this goes well and truly beyond my pay grade here's what they said all fork steers have fiberglass our Evo did have white fiberglass but we now have changed it to black all brands have fiberglass in their fork steerer now I took the cap off this special one they sent me and that has fiberglass in it too so things are adding up now the question is why the inner wall of the fork steerer needs to be reamed so all brands fork add the fiberglass on the inside of the steerer because the carbon fiber is too hard it cannot be reamed fiberglass is soft and can be reamed now the speculated fiberglass that Gary thought he identified in the seat tube area elves are saying they don't put fiberglass in their frames it just goes in the steerer so after this sentiment from elves I started to do some googling and I found this forum where someone is sharing his top of the line Ridley fork which has a very similar look to it so I'm really starting to question is this common fiberglass in the fork steerer so I started to ring around because Gary was still adamant particularly after he went and reinvestigated his pile of forks he's got upstairs that he only sees fiberglass in the cheaper stuff so after ringing around for a few days I felt like the information that I was getting was I feel the right word for this is ambiguous I just couldn't really figure out was it common was it not what's the deal with it and then I got an email back from a senior engineer at a big bike company and this seemed to clarify things for me and articulate them in a way that I feel like I can share it with you so here's what he said if stiffness to weight is your primary design target then the use of glass fiber he calls it same as fiberglass does not make sense if you are looking to make an economic carbon fork then glass fiber can replace carbon fiber at a lower cost with equal strength now beside the direct structural behavior there are the following reasons and there's three of them why the use of glass fiber can make sense number one on traditional forks the inside of the stirrer is typically machined to fit the expander plug often glass fiber is used in the area of machining as it's easier to machine and cheaper when machined off reason number two this is going pretty deep now woven cloth carbon or glass is used on the surface to even out local stress concentrations as glass fiber is available in finer cloth and especially cheaper in this processing method glass fiber is used instead of one K carbon woven cloth and number three and this is the one that Gary was alluding to earlier and I feel like this is story time with Kamnikul's galvanic corrosion whenever we have permanent alloy inserts in the frame there needs to be glass fiber in direct contact with the metal part otherwise there is a risk of galvanic corrosion over time and inserts getting loose we're almost done therefore we apply fiberglass with all metal inserts that are permanently bonded into the frame and are not held by a pure mechanical fixation there you go so this rabbit hole I've just brought you along on just goes to show that not all frames and forks are created equally and the use of glass fiber or fiberglass is perhaps more common than you think for me as a consumer and I'd love to hear your thoughts below I just wish brands would tell us on their website am I buying a full carbon frame or does it have fiberglass in it I think that would help this situation a lot but irrespective of all this from a riding experience perspective this bike actually has some great qualities which I look forward to sharing with you in the review video coming soon