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I was going to try and email all ya'll that bought in on the wheel deal, but I'm too lazy and I thought some other folks might want to hear what's going on too.

Just talked to the Sheryar Durrani. As suspected, they’re on a crazy ride.

The process they’re using presents a number of problems that they anticipated and thought were handled--but turned out not to be--sort of. For example, the wheels have to be worked at one point in the process at a VERY specific temperature. As little as 20 degrees in either direction can spell total disaster. Like: +20 = “We have ignition.” -20 = a bazillion tiny fractures that eventually result in powdered wheels. Magnesium is crazy stuff!

The company who assured them they could provide a machine to do the work apparently thought that the tolerances they specked were way too tight and just figured it’d be okay to ignore that. So after assuring Durrani for 4 months that the specs would be no problem they say something like “What do you mean .5mm +/- isn’t good enough? That’s the best we or anyone else can do.” So Sheryar says “Well, we’ll invent and patent our own process”, and does. That takes time of course.

But the good news is they won’t compromise on tolerances and they are still hoping for a June delivery date. It’ll probably be late June if they make it though.

I’m no happier about waiting than anyone else, but its clearly the right thing to do. These guys are really awesome to work with. They’ve actually stopped taking orders until they catch up. That takes some integrity. They’ve sunk insane amounts of money into this thing and you’d think they’d want to bank every penny they could get. But Sheryar told me that its turning out to be so complicated to get it just right that anyone else who tries it is likely to go belly up. So rather than rush to beat others to the market they're taking time to make sure its right the first time.

They are sending me back my stock wheels so at least I can put my bike back together once the header prototype is done.

:squid:
 

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This is copied directly from the Durrani web site. They have an Wheel Status section to keep us informed.

Wheel Status

This section is designed to keep customers informed weekly about the progress (and challenges) as we continue the process steps to create these new wheels. As most will understand, there are difficulties large and small when implementing new technology and putting it into series production. We will not ship wheels to customers until they can be produced on production machines and tested to approval using industry-accepted methodologies.
6.15.2007

The manufacturing floor is up and running with the newly installed custom rim ring rolling machine. The tremendous strength of the magnesium rim alloy section has proved to overwhelm the ring rolling machine, requiring a 600% increase in predicted power requirements. This added capacity has been implemented and is being calibrated.

The Haas CNC lathe and milling machines are in full operation with custom fixtures for manufacturing being made. Two more personnel have been hired and are being trained bringing the total new hires to five in the last three weeks with more interviews underway. Laser welding the rim to the wheelcore has had substantial challenges and TIG welding is being evaluated as a more operator skill-based alternative over the automated but sensitive laser welding process.
 

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i'm just reading into this situation, but overall it appears that this company started a group buy and collected monies for producted that they didn't know how to manufacture and the delay as they sit on everyone's money is that they need time to "figure out" how to make the wheels? Is this pretty much it? I'm glad people are being good natured about it, because it seems like something like that would not fly in any other consumer group.
 
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