Hey guys! I apologize for my absence over the last few days! I hope you guys haven't taken my absence as a sign of things gone wrong, that's not the case at all! A few of our employees have been at a trade show since late last week so my customer service load has been quite a bit higher than usual as I've had to pick up some of the slack.
Anyway, we've continued grinding on these bars. We're really working hard to get them finished up because I know you guys are dying to get them on your bikes! I haven't been posting as many pictures because the design of the bar has been completed and we're making only minor structural changes to increase the strength of the cage.
Over the last few days we've been doing some light drop testing and making changes to the bar as needed but we've decided against conducting full, standing drop tests for a few reasons: Firstly, testing these bars requires the bike to be dropped repeatedly which causes quite a bit of strain on the bike. Although the owner of the bike has given us the green light on full drop testing, we're still responsible for any damage, cosmetic or structural, that happens to the bike which has made us a bit leery of testing this bike the way we did with the Connie we borrowed from Kawasaki Corporate. With that said, we've taken knowledge gained from those tests and incorporated certain things into the design of the Canyon Cage which will increase strength and durability.
Like I said though, we have been conducting drop tests on this bike/bar they just haven't been as gnarly as tests we've conducted in the past. I figured it was pointless to film these recent tests though because anything less than a full drop would probably be considered ineffectual by you guys even though these types of drops still give us quite a bit of insight. After initial testing, we noticed the lower horizontal bar was bending slightly inward so we decided to make a few minor changes. First, we changed the upper and lower front mounts slightly. The visible part of the bar has remained unchanged however we added a gusset inside the fairing to increase strength near the upper and lower front mounting point. We also thickened the rear bracket a bit and changed the wall thickness of the tube material we’re using from .083 to .093. Once they’re done getting the new .093 set welded up I’ll get some photos highlighting the aforementioned changes for you guys. Anyway, these changes should be plenty to minimize the bending so we’re very close to a finished product. We’ll be sending this set off to our powder coaters early next week and should be ready to begin a production run by early May. I’ll be setting up the Group Buy thread within a week or so for those of you interested in ordering so keep your eyes peeled!
