Crash!Fresh news from a our SoCal HQ, we would like to make a warm welcome to Dave “Crash” Collins; long time friend of MC, underground race promoter, and now artist… Amongst other things, Crash runs a series of races in/around Bootleg Canyon, one of our favourite places to ride & home of the Interbike Dirt Demo (And spiritual home to our dearly departed friend Brent). We’ve been proud to help Crash make these races happen, as over the last couple of years they have gained a superb reputation for fun, clean and honest racing. We’ve attended as sponsors/exhibitors, sponsored the uplift trucks, given away prizes, and now were delighted that Crash has decided to come on board and help us out by hauling on one of our bikes. He’s recently kicked off the cobwebs and come out of retirement to race in a select few events, including the invitational race at renowned Woodward West, where he says “the bike handled Fricken Awesome!!” You can find out all about Crash Innovations over here If you take a close look at the photos, you’ll notice something pretty distinctive on the mainframe, some custom hand-painted artwork that I think looks pretty darn fine… We sometimes get asked the question “why doesn’t my bike have decals on the front frame?” Crash has answered that question; we’ve left you a blank canvas because you have to get inspired and make that bike your own! 1/2 a BatteryYou know all about the delays we’ve had in getting the Battery finished, so here is a great photo which makes us very happy to see!
All the welding has been completed, and our factory guys have been busy dispatching several hundred pieces of mainframes and swing arms to have various finishing suppliers. The powder coated mainframes came back into the factory this morning, and are now just waiting for the other components to arrive so they can get assembled. Set for InterbikeWith Interbike just a few short days away now, John our tech rep has been getting busy building up all the demo bikes.
If you are heading out to the City of Sin, make sure that you swing by our booth at outdoor demo. New ShockmountOne of these the final touches to the production battery, is an all-new shock mount forging of that not only looks supersweet, but also adds a significant amount of strength, dissipates stress rises across a larger area.
Sad Day…We are really not sure if we should be showing you this photo, as it’s not exactly one of our finest days… In the photo you can see a couple of hundred CNC bottom bracket and pivot assemblies. normally they should all be attached to shiny new Battery frames. Despite all the care and attention that we lavished on the battery project, despite the best efforts of our suppliers and partners. Despite expensive and time consuming FEA analysis that told us to the contrary.
We’ve just made the very painful (and expensive) decision to reject the entire first batch of Battery frames. Initial QC checks were looking fine, and the preproduction samples did not have any issues. But one of our policies is that we systematically send production frames for Metallurgical Analysis, and when we read their report it contained a curve ball that none of us were expecting. You’ll understand that while we to endeavour to be very honest with you, we can’t tell you precisely what the issue was. But the potential fault we discovered was not the design, nor a manufacturing fault. The root of the problem actually occurred elsewhere. The key issue was discovered at a fairly microscopic level, and could/would have possibly had an impact in the longevity of the frame. The ironic thing is, we just recently passed the toughest bicycle safety standards in the world, and with flying colours! But because words like “quality” and “reliability” really do mean something to us. Because our customers expect nothing less. Because we really do have every intention (whatever the costs) of remaining one of the most quality oriented mountain bike manufacturers. Because, just because. Because this morning one of our Taiwanese guys have the emotional task of taking a serrated blade to every last one of the frames. So we’re back to square one with regards to production (though luckily it was already programmed to be the second batch of frames, which is he now will become the first batch) and this means that we will have to wait a few more months for the Battery to finally arrive. Older Posts » |
