PB Road Trip - Tour De California Part 2

 my thoughts exactly.

 Failures generally result from a failure to control the manufacture of your design, not the design being not tested enough....

 True enough!

 Don't Giro own Bell? I read somewhere that it did and Bell was the brand used for the lower end helmets. I could easily be wrong though.

 Whapppooowww! Google-fu - Bell bought Giro:
www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/sea-change-ahead-for-bell-helmets-32973

 yip they are

 If you look up easton/bell sports they own tons of comapnies

 that's right. bell bought giro in 2003.

 Bell/Giro/Easton/Blackburn are all in the same boat.

 Gwin's helmet should be in the Bell display. That thing is legendary, not to mention a thing of beauty!

 Ya, please tell me you guys managed to get some riding in while you were here in SC. It wasn't raining too hard to not ride.

 I bet they are riding, but it's just not the focus of the story. As much as everyone loves all the different web edits and shred tales it's cool to see this side of the industry too.

 True, it is cool to see this side of the industry, wonder why they didn't stop by the Santa Cruz headquarters.

 A standard spoke tensiometer is calibrated using the gauge on the left of the work bench with a dial indicator on top. The gauge has a similar length and type of spoke stretched to the correct tension, which the technician uses to check his tensiometer with throughout the day. Once the wheel is brought up to tension, the builder uses sound rather than the meter to even the spokes. If one spoke is correctly tensioned, all spokes which ring at the same musical tone will also be at the same tension. It's a much faster way to accomplish the task compared with using a tool to check each spoke. RC

 Thanks. I asked because the DT Swiss tensiometer can lose its ability to measure absolute values in a month with regular use. Even DT Swiss say it should only be used to check relative values from spoke to spoke (which I've heard most wheel-building houses already know). Which almost begs the questions of why they have a unit of force on the meter. For the price it should come with a 'standard' spoke (or set of) from which it could be calibrated. We might as well save our dough and use the Park one (which I prefer ergonomically) for relative values.

I have tuned by ear and its not bad on new builds, but sucks for rim swaps etc. But you already knew that.

 They send them off to either China or Japan (can't remember which) to get Kashima coated, then obviously sent back.

 Japan.

 Hard to belive it's cheaper to send them to japan to be coated rather then doing it in the USA

 not all fox's stanchions are kashima coated. in fact, almost every OEM fox fork and rear shock isn't kashima coated. the one's that are kashima coated are aftermarket products. so fox finds it cost efficient to just send a small lot to japan rather than build a coating facility for kashima coated stanchions. but i heard that is going to change soon.

 loads of bikes come with oem kashima forks and shocks

 Its in japanese

 The kashima coating is proprietary to a japanese company, not Fox. Thats why they need to send them out to get that buttery goodness put on

 i visited FOX factory in January and most of the stuffs i saw were with Asian labels, from plastic caps, stanchions, steerers etc etc.. but one thing is good about FOX is their build/engineering and testing quality.. and the guy at FOX said that some parts are actually cannot be produced in the states

 Maybe it is a tennis stick?

 How about just don't sell their wheels if you know they'll break spokes? I have plenty of customers on Easton wheels who are quite happy.