I break stuff on my bike, just seems to be the nature of dual-sport riding. I have blown a fork seal, ruined a radiator and body work in an off road spill, bent my crash bars on a water crossing (different spill), had a set of soft luggage shake apart on a long off road trip, and that's all in the last year! When I bought my luggage system I struggled with choosing the "right" company. I landed on TCI, out of Orange California, who designs and builds racks for a number of bikes--including the TR650. After about 6 months of ownership I had no complaints. In June a buddy and I took a long trip up to WV to ride the TET we packed pretty light, but still had the TR650 pretty well loaded. My TCI rack functioned flawlessly, but when I got home and pulled my bags I found that two welds had broken. There were no falls/spills, the weld at the mounting tab had just broken and left a hole in the tubing. I was very bummed. I wrote TCI and explained the failure. The owner told me that he had only had about 10 failures in over 10,000 units shipped, but that it happened. He immediately went about offering to fix the rack, he asked a bunch of questions and finally decided it had likely failed because of carrying a gallon of fuel on the top of the bike (along iwtha bunch of other stuff). Tom suspected that the sloshing fuel in the extended off road conditions acted like a deadblow hammer and broke the weld. He asked if I would ship the rack back so they could do a re-design. He assured me they would "make it right". Remember, this after 6 months of ownership. I shipped the rack back and about a week later was sent an email telling me the redesigned rack was in the mail. It was about a two week turnaround from my door, to Cali, and back. I mounted the new rack up and found that one of the reinforcing brackets was a little long--it mounted, but not perfectly. I sent Tom an email with an image and an explanation of the issue. I worried he wold think I was being picky. Again, he was incredibly generous and genial about my issue. He told me he was very sorry, and would send out an altered bracket immediately. The bottom line is that this guy is the real deal. I can't think of a vendor/seller of any kind who has gone further to make sure I was satisfied with a product. As you consider buying a rack or luggage system I suggest you consider TCI. I really like the rack design, but I LOVE the customer support/service.
Next, it is great to hear that! I have nothing but good things to say about TCI too. I contacted them last year and talked to Tom about designing something for the TR, and he was very receptive to the idea. I have seen lots of their racks used and abused on KLRs and DRs with no failure, so I was stoked that he wanted to do something for the TR. Tom is a class act, and his products are awesome. I've been using his system since he first started shipping them and haven't had any failures yet, and I routinely strap a 55lb rucksack to the tail rack for my 30 mile commute to work.
