New Product Updates

It looks like the rear racks will cost $108 for all those who previously reserved them. The long term price will be around $120. We are working at finding ways to speed up the manufacturing process and will drop the price if we can. But there is over an hour's worth of high quality stainless steel welding in each rack, so I wasn't able to meet my price goal. Before we launch into full scale production, we'll make one rack out of thinner wall tubing to see if we can save a little weight, that will push delivery time back by a few days.

Initial reports from elk hide handlebar cover testers have been very positive. We just got more gold/honey elk hide as well as some white. We hope to start shipping the covers next week. If anyone else has them installed, please e-mail. a few quotes from testers:

• "This elk hide is fantastic stuff. ... Top notch in every way.
  

• The MS150 was this weekend , and I put the elk hide through the paces. Saturdays ride gave us a 5 hour ride in a medium rain.... The bar covers worked great. and this was without a treatment of any sort. I will, I just didn't have time before the ride. Sundays ride let us dry out a bit and the covers are still in fine shape.

• "Dimensions of the cover are perfect. Length was long enough for my 46 cm Nitto Noodles, and width was just right, with and without the brake cable underneath."

• "Put them on last night. About an hour and a half or so... The leather pulls together nicely and the sticky tape holds well. On the second side my seam started to drift to the inside a bit, but was able to massage it back in place"

• ...... it looks and feels great..... I see this stuff lasting at least a decade. Very nice, I will definitely put it on other bikes.

I am working on making a new style of flashlight holder based on this Rene Herse model . Our version will have knurled thumb-nuts so the light can easily be removed. Anybody interested? And does anyone know where we can get chrome flashlights for transformation into LED lights? The good old Fulton lights went out of production about 7 month ago.

With luck, we'll see a prototype of the front rack around the end of next week

Also, I'm sending drawings of the racks and decaleurs to Nitto to see if they can make them more economically. If that doesn't work, I may be shopping for plane tickets to Taiwan.

And finally, we now have black top tube protectors.