First look: Marino custom polo frames

Here's Jasmine's frame. Nice color, eh?

The triple triangle, which i really like.

BB shell and crimped chainstays.

The track ends are pretty small. My joust has twice the room that these do...

Fork surprisingly not too heavy...

...and neither is the frame.
Sure we're still talking about an 8lb bike, but that's pretty good compared to a lot of the conversions and freestyles frames we have around here.

A few of the necessary tools for assessing build quality...

Here's Evan's frame.

Close-ups of the welds...

..not terrible, but also not great...


...again, this is a $400 frame. The welds on my Joust are way better, but you get what you pay for, right?

This is one thing that baffles me- if you can build a whole frame yourself, you should also be able to center your cuts... It's functional and will work fine, but it's details like this that highlight the differences between a true custom and a discount one.

Not too bad...

..and not too bad. The whole rig is still a ton lighter than the old Volume Cutter he's been using.

Now let's see how it rides!

Overall these are great frames for the money, but there's plenty of inconsistencies. Nothing that will make the frame fail, but it's the small stuff. Note that on Evan's frame there's three different stickers using three different fonts (gag!); the "made in peru" sticker was put on kinda janky and instead of a nice decal that just says "Marino" (like on jasmine's) we get this "MarinoBike.com" slapped on there... god damn that thing is cheesy as shit (and was promptly taken off). Again, i'm just nit-pickin' but these are the kinda things you wouldn't expect from a "custom frame", but then again it's only $400 so there's not much room to complain.

-W.