Lifetime warranty versus "lifetime" warranty

28/10/25 21:39 Filed in: Gear

Most carbon bike wheels now proclaim a lifetime warranty. Trek's carbon wheels are in this category too. Directly from their website I can see "Warrantied for Life" under wheel features, and then it goes on to say "All Bontrager carbon wheels are backed by a lifetime warranty for the original owner".

What they don't put in headlines is the fact that only manufacturing defects are included in the lifetime guarantee - it would be fine in my experience if that was only a year as most defects show up pretty quickly once you use the wheel. Not included is outside causes for breakage, you know, like hitting something and cracking the rim. The way most rims fail. That is limited to 2 years. Not a lifetime. Not even the lifetime of a mouse.

Recently took a broken Bontrager rim into the dealer and it was denied by Trek - it is 3 years old. They will replace the wheel for about 1/2 price. Which is nice-ish, but certainly doesn't go very far to covering for a very expensive wheel that cracked on an un-noticed rock out on the trail. It certainly wasn't spectacular.

Then look at Reserve wheels. The rims from Santa Cruz bicycles, given a distinct name so as to not link too closely to the brand. They have a video of Danny MacAskill jumping down stairs without a tyre in an attempt to break one - he was eventually successful but it took some doing. And apparently those shenanigans are covered by their lifetime warranty. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Reserve is excellent about replacing broken rims, regardless of cause, even in the middle of foreign countries when people are on bike holidays and something went wrong.

ENVE limits their concern to 5 years and then has a pro-rated taper (I couldn't find how long it lasts) so that the longer you own it, the less credit you get towards the replacement rim. I hope I never break my ENVE rim because they would be non-trivial to replace with something else or expensive to replace with another ENVE rim.

Read the fine print...

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Lifetime warranty versus "lifetime" warranty