• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

TR650 Crash bars

I just ordered the sm mototech crash bars also. They were the first to respond to me I still haven't heard back from alt riders about there time window for shipping.
 
I just ordered the sm mototech crash bars also.

Put mine on this weekend. Bars and Skid plate. Very nice stuff. Only complaint is the Skid plate reflects a lot of engine noise. Will be buying some sound suppressor material soon.:thumbsup:
 
Put mine on this weekend. Bars and Skid plate. Very nice stuff. Only complaint is the Skid plate reflects a lot of engine noise. Will be buying some sound suppressor material soon.:thumbsup:

I've got some free sound suppressing material from work, a handful of ear plugs :cool:
 
Oh, and have just ordered the SW-Motech bars as well. Will post up a pic when I get them on to show how they fit with my B&B Bash Plate
 
Sorry to say but I cancelled my ALT RIDER order, SW Mototech's in the mail as well. Should have by tomorrow. All the delays wore me out.....
 
I believe I detect a pattern here. Someone, who shall remain nameless, but whose first name rhymes with fault, is missing out on a lot of crash bar sales. Lesson to be learned I suppose. My SW Motech bars are in the hands of FedEx and should get here Mon.
 
I believe I detect a pattern here. Someone, who shall remain nameless, but whose first name rhymes with fault, is missing out on a lot of crash bar sales. Lesson to be learned I suppose. My SW Motech bars are in the hands of FedEx and should get here Mon.

There seems to be an underlying assumption that every manufacturer who might ever make crash bars for this bike has made them and should have had them available on a specific date (presumably in the past) and that by failing to meet that date have some how let down the owners of this bike. Looking at the big picture, 1 manufacturer has taken 8 months to get a product to market, and you're instead giving your money to the manufacturer who only took 7 months to get their product to market. It's not like one is far outperforming the other in timeliness, really.
 
Actually, SW-Motech has had their products on the market longer than you think. It just took them longer to be available here in the US, since they are a German based company and had to deal with importing through customs.

Also, keep in mind, SW-Motech never made anyone promises as to an availability date. I think that is the major take away.

I'm completely fine that I don't have luggage racks right now. Why? Because Happy Trails didn't take my money three months ago and tell me that they'd have them shipped in a month. They just said "Yep, we're working on them and will let you know when they are available." I'm fine with that.
 
Actually, SW-Motech has had their products on the market longer than you think. It just took them longer to be available here in the US, since they are a German based company and had to deal with importing through customs.


Hey you don't have to convince me, if you go back to post #2 in this thread, SW-Motech had them listed in their catalog with a part number and available for order 3 months ago...
 
I just got an email from Altrider... The lady who emailed me says 4-6 weeks for delivery. I am hoping that she is mistaken. Not good.
 
Noooooo....my count down meter says 11days till shipping! Maybe it takes an extra couple weeks shipping to get it to you in N. Carolina?

:-P
 
I feel a little sore around the edges right now, as the months continue to pass by since I ordered and paid for my Altrider crash bars and skid plate. I understand production delays but as Riding Donkeys said, promising a date then changing that date, and changing that date, and changing that date, is BAD business.
 
isn't altrider one of the sponsors here? can we can somebody that knows what's going on to comment on why the date keeps changing?
 
They seem like an interesting company. All their products are made in the USA but I don't think they actually manufacture anything themselves. It seems like they design products and then outsource the actual building of the part (I am speculating). Does anyone know for sure? And does anyone know what the industry norms are - does HappyTrails/TCI/other rack builders build their own stuff?
 
In a lot of cases that is the norm. It's all about the ROI (return on investment), you don't want to buy a bajillion dollar welding robot to produce a product that is only going to make you a couple bucks each.
 
Seems like the racks are simple enough that they just require a pipe bender and welder. You can design and order the brackets they are cheap but everything else it would seem to be cheaper to make yourself.
 
I've tried my best to be patient. I emailed AltRider and haven't gotten a response. After seeing Next's post, I had enough. I called Twisted Throttle this morning. Bars and skid plate were in stock. I just got an email that they both shipped. SW Motech may not have the best skid plate out there, but something now is better than nothing when I'm off road next week. Kudos to Twisted Throttle for being awesome. :thumbsup:
 
I ordered the Altrider bars and plate thru my dealer when I bought the bike. I suppose I could have them cancel the order and get the sw-motech instead?
 
Back
Top