Ok, as I mentioned before, I am not getting emails from T4r in regards to my subscriptions. And NO they aren't going to my junk mail. I am subscribed to this thread, but for some reason am not getting emails other than PM emails. I have no idea why.
Only reason I even knew there was an issue with this thread is because of a PM I got from from NYC Runner(because I get those notification) and because I got a FB message from GVL tonight about it. So, here is my shop's email.
[email protected] and my shop #: 970-420-4198.
Please understand that I am not trying to screw anyone over, and I will guarantee that everyone will get there bumper as soon as possible. That being said, this will be a long post so bear with me.
I will answer as many questions as I can TONIGHT in this post so people will understand what is going on and I will post some pics of where we are currently at in the shop with the production on these TOMORROW when I get in there.
We just got a bunch of bumpers back from press bend on Thursday of last week. Glade has welded all of the wings up on these and started to assemble some of them today. These go in stages. We get wings welded up, then ground down, and then we start to assemble them into bumpers, then they all get sanded again to get the weld spatter off of them. Then the stingers are and smaller diameter front tubes are added. Then LEDs are cut into the bumpers and light tabs added if you requested them. Then one more sanding. This takes several days to work through these when you are working with 8-10 bumpers at a time.
I tried to explain in a previous post that when the group buy was originally presented, than I estimated turn times of 3-4 weeks for 3rd gens and 4-6 weeks for 4th gens. Keep in mind that this was literally about two weeks after we finished the first prototype of the 4th gen bumper and released it. Everyone wanted them, so I decided to go ahead and do it. Well, I bit off way more than I could chew with this group buy. I figured that 6-7 bumpers TOPS would be ordered. Well, 21 were ordered. Obviously that killed the turn times estimated by a lot. This isn't an excuse, its fact.
I hope to have four more 3rd gens shipped and the lone 2nd gen bumper shipped by the end of this week. And I have more coming in next week.
As far as Hour's concerns with his bumper's crossmember. I really wish he would have called me on these issues. I had no idea there was any issue with the crossmember until I just read his post. So, I will address it now. What you guys see in his pictures is what is called "kerf" from the plasma torch. When a plasma tip gets dull it will arc at a not so perfect 90* line. So, when you cut holes that bolts are supposed to slide through, this sometimes happens. So, we typically dremmel out the holes where you have that tall ridge. This must have been missed on his crossmember. I assure you this is not the norm, but there will always be a little kerf on any cut piece on a plate. His was not caught. That QC issue will always come back on me. And, I do apologize, since I should always catch something like that before it leaves my shop.
Look, I completely understand everyone's frustration with this group buy and the delays. I have no excuse. Its on me, and I will do everything I can to get caught up.
Its another reason why the pricing went up on the website as we cannot keep up with demand, so I am slowing things down so we can deliver a quality product ON TIME in the future. In the past 9mo we have literally tripled the bumper production in the shop. Its crippled the turn times. Its a hard lesson to learn. We had to raise pricing so we can afford to hire another guy to stay on top of things.
That being said, someone who will remain nameless mentioned something about me working on the buggy I am building taking away from building bumpers. I want to be clear about something here. The buggy has taken two years to even get this far because I have NOT worked on it when things got busy. I have ALWAYS put it on the back burner to make sure a customer came first and still do. So, even if I am posting progress on that right now, its being done after hours and on weekends in my spare time or after hours ONLY. So, please do not think for a second that it has somehow taken priority over your bumper order. Myself and Teddy (neither of who build bumpers) work on this for an hour or two after the day is over. I spend Saturday by myself working on it after a 50hr work week has already gone down, and still can barely get anything done on it as is.
So, if for some reason you want cancel your order for fear of never receiving it, I have no issue with that. But, I have never not fulfilled an order in 7+ yrs of building these. I can assure you that you will get a badass bumper in the end. Just bear with me.
