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:
