Salsa Fargo - Lemon of the year!

[waynemyer]

I will contact Topanga Creek today to thank them for helping you with this issue and to make sure their needs are met.  If you have any additional needs, please feel free to contact me direct at tkrueger at salsacycles.com. 

We stand behind our products 100%, and I feel this was just an issue of miscommunication, as we typically respond to emails or phone calls within 24 hours.  Again, I am really sorry for your experience, and if there is anything I can do for you, please let me know. 

Ride and Smile,
Tim, Salsa Cycles

I sure do like a company with their finger on the pulse.  This impresses me greatly and certainly goes far to putting the Fargo back in the running on my list of Wants.

[Tim @ Salsa Cycles]

Galloper -

Thank you for the information.  I think the issue is that this is the first we have heard of this, I don't think we received your email.  Again, I am sorry for this. 

I have spoken with Chris at Topanga and it seems that you were well taken care of by this excellent shop, and I am glad that you are now happy on your Long Haul Trucker.  Have a good tour!

For other tourists out there - Our Fargo does make a great touring bike, but as mentioned, it is a bit slack to be more of a "mountain" touring bike.  If you desire a more traditional touring ride and are carrying a more traditional touring load of panniers and handlebar bags, please consider our Vaya model.  It is similar to the Fargo, except with a geometry that is much more intended to the road and for pannier-based touring.

Finally, Galloper, thanks for bringing attention to this and letting me try to work through the issue.  If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me direct at tkrueger at salsacycles.com.

Ride and Smile,
Tim, Salsa Cycles

[Galloper]

Or just buy a Surly and eliminate the risk of another dodgy Salsa!

[Moondoggy]

All I know is everything that I have Salsa, is good stuff.

[Galloper]

I'm happy for you Moondoggy, all I can say is that when the Fargo was unladen, it was a very nice bike, loaded up it was an evil handling monstrosity.

I'm planning some more lightly loaded tours which will have a mixture of off road for later in the year and for that, it might well have worked well, as it is my elderly Claud Butler will be roving the byways of France with me. 

[ducnut]

Huge props to Tim@Salsa.

Seems that no matter what a company does, some people will never be satisfied. They'll just continue to bash whomever they can.

[Galloper]

Well, so far, all Salsa has done is market a bike as a go anywhere tourer which can't safely carry a set of panniers on the front, which Tim has as good as admitted.   Had I known that at the outset, I would have looked elsewhere

[Galloper]

Following much emailing between Tim from Salsa and myself, I thought an update in order.   As we know from one of Tim’s earlier postings, there is a shimmy problem with some Fargos.   Tim now thinks mine was defective and says that if I had still owned the bike, Salsa would have replaced it.

Which rather reminds me of the story told by a friend of mine who works for a large agricultural supplier.   A farmer contacted him asking for a price for a certain type of fertilizer, my friend told him it was £35 a tonne.   The farmer said “Ah, but James’ price is £28 a tonne.   My friend told him that he couldn’t match that price and that he’d have to recommend that he went to James.   At which point the farmer, somewhat red faced, admitted that James didn’t actually have any.   As my friend said later, “It’s easy to be cheap when you’ve nowt to sell!”

For the benefit of those who think I’m just whinging, buying a defective Salsa has left me out of pocket by over $800, made up of the difference in price between the two bikes and the cost of hiring a van return the wobbly Fargo, not to mention the two days spent enjoying the freeways of Socal J

If nothing else, I now know how all those Toyota owners feel!

What goes around comes around.

[waynemyer]

As an engineer, I am intimately aware that 100% quality control is a near impossibility.  The fact of it is: nobody wants to pay the price of 100% defect-free merchandise.

It stinks that you had to run hither and thither because of a defective frame.  That running around had nothing to do with Salsa.  Those circumstances existed outside of the defective frame.  If your Surly was defective, you would still have been running around.  You were the cause of sitting in SoCal traffic, not Salsa.

Now, you said Salsa ignored your initial requests for help.  I'll take you at face value there and scream with you "Total Weak Sauce!"  But Tim reached out to you, reached out to us, and has sworn that Salsa stands behind their goods.  I'll also take that at face value until proven otherwise.

I empathize that you are waxing vitriolic on the topic, but Salsa really seems to be going the extra mile here. 

[whittierider]

We will never know what went on inside the Salsa company.  A defect here and there is unavoidable.  Even aerospace and military suppliers get defects in spite of the extreme measures to eliminate them.  (I'm an engineer too.)  It does sound like there is a much greater chance of having this problem with this bike than others though.  I worked at a company in the 80's and 90's where the conditions the owner set up made for a lot of problems both in quality and customer service, but if someone complained publicly like this, he suddenly became Mr. Professional Caring and said "we stand behind our products" (which was hardly the truth).  Again, I have no idea if this is what went on at Salsa, but this topic will stick in a lot of people's minds and tend to keep them from buying Salsas, or at least Salsa Fargos.  I've read on other topics many times over the years where someone wrote, "I have one and have never had any trouble with it," implying that the problem is you and not the product.  My response however is that that just means the failure rate is not 100%, which is not very useful information.

[Galloper]

Wayne, I totally agree with you about quality control, I've spent many years telling people that all quality control does is pick up a problem after it's happened.   I don't know whether a frame or jig check would have picked up the problem as the bike rode fine until fully laden.

As to vitriolic, my dear chap, I'm only mildly grumpy.   If I was vitriolic, as an ex Sergeant Major in an Armoured Regiment, when I get vitriolic you will most assureadly know 

As to Salsa going the extra mile, from my perspective they've written a few emails and posted a few messages.   Not much mileage there, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I've made my point of view known and have brought the problem out into the open.   Hopefully Salsa and their customers will all benefit from this.

[Old Guy New Hobby]

'Kind of obvious to me from reading this, but nobody else has said it yet ... starting a major tour with a brand new bike is not the best idea.

[Galloper]

I agree, but flying in from the UK and on a 90 day tourist visa, I didn't really have an option.   I did consider bringing a bike from the UK but decided to treat myself to a bike which, by all accounts and from the tests I'd read, should have been perfect for the job.

Ah well, gelernt ist gelernt, as the Germans say.   At least now I know to stay well away from Salsa.   The Surly was a pleasure to ride from the outset.

[fargoman]

As you might deduce from my login name, I also own a Fargo.  I had no prior experience with racks and panniers on my Fargo until today, when I did an 82 mile loaded test ride to check out my new Surly "Nice" front & rear racks and Ortlieb panniers prior to a trip next month.  Having read about your handling problems, I was somewhat wary as to what to expect on my ride, which had many fast downhills (40 mph) that would bring out any handling issues, but I didn't experience any problems at all.  It's unfortunate that you had such a bad experience with the Fargo, because it's a very versatile bike.  If I could only keep one bike in my garage, it would be the Fargo.

[Galloper]

Glad to hear your bike's a good 'un.   As Tim from Salsa has said, they have had reports of shimmying and mine was certainly defective   It remains unclear as to the cause.

I don't actually know what happened to mine after I traded it back at Topanga, I think I'll follow that up to see if Salsa took it back and if so what was the result of their investigation.