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Post by solo2racr on Aug 7, 2008 22:32:33 GMT -5
uh they aren't even his swing arms. did anyone else miss that? whats he paying for shipping?  Not following the pronouns. |
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Post by Phillip on Aug 7, 2008 23:32:36 GMT -5
Hi all,
I too have been corresponding with TEE. I would have bought one of trouthunters swingarms, but he has sold all of his disc brake versions.
Tee quoted me $260USD (because mine would be a special order as a disc brake model) plus the 130USD freight. He didn't mention a $80 customs charge
The $80 customs charge mentioned earlier, is that an ex thailand charge, or a customs charge into America only?
MARLON, when you got your swingarm from trouthunter, was there any customs or GST charges coming into Australia?
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lurch
Full Member
Posts: 217
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Post by lurch on Aug 8, 2008 1:31:17 GMT -5
Dont know what people are whinging about the price of Trouthunters for ?
Us guys in UK/europe have to buy through KEDO in Germany ,mine cost a whopping £465 shipped thats 898 US$ or 1002 AU$ figures from XE.COM
And I'm saving up for another one ;D ;D ;D ;D
LURCH
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Post by marlon on Aug 8, 2008 1:32:17 GMT -5
Hey Phillip,
Nope. no extra customs charges.
My understanding is they don't touch anything under $1000.00. Furthermore, get the sender to mark it as a 'gift' to avoid some additional charges.
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Post by marlon on Aug 8, 2008 1:50:45 GMT -5
Spot on Lurch, mine was a steal!
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Post by aero on Aug 8, 2008 3:59:18 GMT -5
No dis-respect to the Thai people making these, but you only get what you pay for.
While the external appearence of these is strikingly similiar to the American built item, do the actual engineering specs match?
Or put it another way, I'm sure your markets have been flooded with cheap Chinese motorcycle too, just as they have been in the UK.
Would you buy one? Nice and cheap!
No? Funny old thing. Been put off by the cheap build quality? Plastic that self biodegrades in sunlight? Frames that crack after a few months, non existant spares supply?
In other countries you can get hold of some real mickey mouse metal and build stuff from it. Grades of metal that you wouldn't be able to sell in America or the EU as its too close to the unrecycled scrap metal. The first ingots produced from recycled metal is utter garbage as the chemical make up of the metal is unknown- and therefore it is sold very cheaply for use as door stops, Chinese motorcycles and pistons for Russian cars, or sent for further reprocessing to create something that is a known quantity and can be used for engineering purposes. Members of the VJMC have been bringing over Moped parts from Thailand and too be honest most of the locally made stuff went straight in the bin. Castings were made from something that was only just metal and fitted only where it touched and steel parts seemed to have been hand forged from old beer bottle tops.
The swing arm is a 'safety critical part' to use aircraft jargon. Its holding the rear wheel to the bike. It has to cope with the weight and forces generated from acceleration and braking. Not only that but the wheels are bloody great gyroscopes, take one of the wheels, put the spindle in it and get someone to spin the wheel with an electric drill while you hold it. Actually don't, the force generated will be so great you won't be able to hang on to the wheel spindle. Its after all what keeps the bike upright.
So pays your money and makes your choice!
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Post by soonerfan on Aug 8, 2008 6:04:20 GMT -5
Excellent advice and spot-on! We have a lot of those little Chinese scooters coming in to the States.......ever looked closely at one of these things? Garbage. Let the buyer beware.
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Post by Just Plain Bill on Aug 8, 2008 10:47:14 GMT -5
No dis-respect to the Thai people making these, but you only get what you pay for. <snip> In other countries you can get hold of some real mickey mouse metal and build stuff from it. Grades of metal that you wouldn't be able to sell in America or the EU as its too close to the unrecycled scrap metal. The first ingots produced from recycled metal is utter garbage as the chemical make up of the metal is unknown- and therefore it is sold very cheaply for use as door stops, Chinese motorcycles and pistons for Russian cars, or sent for further reprocessing to create something that is a known quantity and can be used for engineering purposes. Members of the VJMC have been bringing over Moped parts from Thailand and too be honest most of the locally made stuff went straight in the bin. Castings were made from something that was only just metal and fitted only where it touched and steel parts seemed to have been hand forged from old beer bottle tops. <snip> So pays your money and makes your choice! Fair enough as far as it goes, but you are overlooking the previously reported fact that the GigaBike swingarms are being used in vintage racing in Thailand and that a rider using one became national champion in that country. Sounds a little better constructed than the average door stop. When I began corresponding with GigaBike owner(?) Aong, he assured me that the swingarms were made of top quality materials, "in our own factory" (whatever that meant) before I asked. Thus assured, I took a chance and ordered one. However, those are good points and I will inquire further into the materials and type of factory the swingarms are being produced in. When my swingarm arrives, I won't take it to a laboratory for a metalugical analysis or X-rays, but I will inspect the welds, compare it's weight and measurements to those of the RM250 alloy swingarm, fit it to my bare frame and check clearances and make any other qualitative comparisons that I can. Then I'm going to use it. There are enough twisty roads in the Sierra Nevada mountains near my home that it's strength will be well tested in short order. As for the inference that because some junk in produced in developing nations like China and Thailand, nothing but junk is made there, that doesn't fly. ISO standards are followed all over the world. Not by be every manufacturer in those countries or even a majority of them (same in the developed countries). Still, there are enough ISO 9000 (and up) factories that most of the major automotive and motorcycle manufacturers are sourcing some OEM parts from China and other parts of Asia, if not having machines assembled there. (I was told that Yamaha Big Bear ATV's are assembled in China, tho my souce didn't mention the proportions of China made materials in the ATV's.) Sometimes you get more than your money's worth. |
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Post by aero on Aug 8, 2008 12:23:55 GMT -5
You are right, some good stuff is made there, usually with the backing of a large foreign company putting up the cash to provide the required plant and materials. If you look inside your computer you'd be hard pressed to find much made in the west.
My gripe with all this stuff is that the Japanese worked out how manufacturering should be done in the 50's. The west had a crisis in the 70's as warranity claims for manufactureed goods threatened to put most companies out of business. Don't know what your average American family car was like in the 70's but British ones were junk. I remember my dad being told that a 1600cc engine burning a pint of oil every 1,000 miles on a one year old car was within what was acceptable! Anyhow we (as in companies in the west that gave a shit) got the Japanese in and sorted out why the stuff we were making was going wrong.
Fast forward to the twenty first century and all this information that had to be paid for in the 70's is freely available, any one who's studied 'quality systems' at college will have a really good background in this. So I can only believe that companies making all these cheap bikes and parts for KNOW they are making crap, but are just taking the foreign Pound/Dollar/Eurorand/Sheckle while there is no agreement between their own country and those they supply. Wait untill you can sue them under US law and see how fast the cheap bikes disappear from the show rooms.
Anyhow I'm not saying this applies to said swing arm builder in Thailand. Just don't get sucked into the if its good enough to race its good enough for road use. I've seen car chassis built for racing break at the suspension mounts after very short time. 2 steering stems for bikes snap (well known UK manufacturer) causing serious accidents. But these were race parts never intended for road use. Race parts are built light for good reason, one of which is they get checked and thrown away if suspect. Racing is a whole world away from stuff that has to be used day in day out over a wide range of conditions. Aluminium is a tricky metal unless you have all your facts lined up. Even Boeing got it wrong in the early days!
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Post by blacksmithjk on Aug 8, 2008 13:06:05 GMT -5
Just a thought but when you get the Thai unit in you could go to a welding supply store and get a dye penetrate set for about 20 USD. This would tell you a lot about the unit if there were unseen cracks and open welds. Very easy to use the dye set and a nice item to have around for checking out other items.
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Post by aero on Aug 8, 2008 14:55:13 GMT -5
I'd save your $20. Dye pen on welds is pretty crap. The natural form of the weld holds the dye making it impossible to get good results. The only time we use it is on flat rolled sheet that may have faults. You need a perfectly smooth surface for it to work.
The other thing is if dye pen can show it up, you'll see the fault with a magnifing glass without DP
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Post by solo2racr on Aug 8, 2008 15:20:03 GMT -5
Here in North Carolina there are numerous Nascar race shops that will MagnaFlux a piece for you for a nominal fee. Sometimes free if you know the right people. Maybe worth looking into.
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Post by Just Plain Bill on Aug 8, 2008 15:53:09 GMT -5
<snip> Anyhow I'm not saying this applies to said swing arm builder in Thailand. Just don't get sucked into the if its good enough to race its good enough for road use. I've seen car chassis built for racing break at the suspension mounts after very short time. 2 steering stems for bikes snap (well known UK manufacturer) causing serious accidents. But these were race parts never intended for road use. Race parts are built light for good reason, one of which is they get checked and thrown away if suspect. Racing is a whole world away from stuff that has to be used day in day out over a wide range of conditions. Aluminium is a tricky metal unless you have all your facts lined up. Even Boeing got it wrong in the early days! Agreed, aluminum (U.S. spelling of aluminium) is a tricky metal and you need to know what you're doing when you manufacture or weld using it. I sent Tee Og a request information on the design, alloy used and whether the factory is ISO 9000 certified. But even if they lack all the technical niceties, I still give a lot of credence to real world R&D such as you find in a race setting. When parts break on the race track, racers either re-design and fix them or stop using them. Somehow, I suspect that vintage racing in Thailand is not the high dollar,"throw parts away before they break" kind of racing you're familiar with Aero. From the looks of it, vintage racing in Thailand is still at the grassroots, amateur level, where an aftermarket part costing 6,500 bhat (about 3 weeks wages for the average Thai) is a significant expense and not something they would willingly replace during the race season. While your arguments are thought provoking, they aren't going to be as useful to this endeavor as Blacksmithjk's suggestion that I test the swingarm with a non-destructive dye penetrant. Now that could make a real difference. Particularly if there are voids or other problems with the welds.  Bill |
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Post by aero on Aug 8, 2008 16:02:04 GMT -5
Fair play I don't see anything wrong in trying this stuff out at your own expense. I'm messing about with the ignition boxes for these bikes at the moment. I don't have a big company paying me to find out how these work.
One thing I will say though, I'm fully trained and qualified to carry out NDT testing on metal used in aircraft, and you are totally wasting your time with dye pen checks. If you are serious about having your welds checked find a friendly vet, really a vet and ask if they will x-ray the part you want testing. While not as good as a proper analysis it will show poor welds like a sore thumb and cost a fraction of what an NDT company will charge. You will need several shots at 90 degrees to be sure you see everything
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Post by Just Plain Bill on Aug 8, 2008 16:20:31 GMT -5
Since I don't know any MagnaFluxers but we always have at least two dogs and a cat and might as well have a vet on retainer, I'll give the X-ray thing a shot. Thanks to you both.
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Not following the pronouns.
