PowerCycle

Karin called the Koga folks and had a nice chat with them yesterday as a follow up to the email we’d sent which included pictures of the corrosion. Sander was the guy we were talking to. He asked us to call back again this morning so he could check on the shipping arrangements. Normally they only ship warranty frames to authorized dealers but since there are no Koga dealers in South America they’d have to sent it to where I’m staying in Ecuador.

On the call this morning Sander said no problem, they’d ship out a new frame for me at no charge and it should get here in maybe a week and a half. The new Koga frames are black so I’ll have a new color but everything else should be the same. They also come with a fork and headset so I won’t have that to worry about. He did mention that they’ve seen this issue with aluminum frames and that the silver frames were more susceptible to corrosion. That kind of still leaves me a bit uncomfortable since I’m planning on having the bike for a lot longer than 2 years and I don’t want to keep having this problem. This is very unfortunate because I love riding this bike–it is incredibly strong and I doubt I could carry the weight I am for such a long distance on very many other bikes (by very many I mean maybe three or four other brands in the world).

The bike is still very much rideable so I’m going to leave for a 5 day ride around the Volcano Cotopaxi. I’ll come back here after that, get the frames switched out and then continue south.