Straitline Front Cover of American Machinist!

This is us just being us and having fun down in America for Interbike Vegas!

This is us trying to be a bit more professional for a magazine spread in American Machinist!

 

Yes we love to have fun, yes we own a state of the art facility, and yes we need to drive it home how high tech we have been getting over the past 5 years… but there is a fine line of being a geek and boring the hell out of people so we just have fun and show tid bits of it all in the blog.

 

Few months back we took a call from Mori Seiki mentioning how American Machinist caught wind of our facility and wanted to learn more about our choice to evolve into a modern automated machine shop. I also think it is really important to drive home the costs and the overheads that a “TRUE” manufacturer carries with him and the staggering amount of processes needed to make a single product come to life.  This is a age of the “BRAND” where you outsource your goods to a manufacturing firm and carry little to no overhead what so ever.  Most of our clients are modern day Brands, nothing really wrong with that by any means but few really get to visit a facility to see how your shiny new product was made.

 

The flip side of the brand movement is that the product still needs to be made and someone somewhere just got hired to make it for you, stuff does not just fall out of trees and into Wall marts department stores. There is a lot of behind the scene work that goes on and I hope this article shows a bit about who we are and why we chose to automate our facility and prove that manufacturing in North America is not dying off rather it is coming back and thriving with the use of these modern machines! 

I think we are running at 19 hours a day of un manned CNC machining so I must warn you this article is basically like porn for machinists, it can get a bit techy but at least check out the pretty pictures on page 12!

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AMERICAN MACHINIST/ STRAITLINE ARTICLE 

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Oh, and you may notice a theme on the front cover!  That is Lama Cycles/ Morewood team rider all dressed up in the finest components.

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His frame is actually made in house by our good friends in South Africa Patrick Morewood and his co pilot Richard Carter.

 

The wheels and hubs are by none other then Industry 9!

Canadian newbie's Elka Suspension –hard to see in the shots but trust me they are on the rig. I have a stage 5 installed on my Banshee Wildcard and these guys have a strong background in suspension, stoked for them!

And lastly all dressed up in Straitline Components gear!

 

Lama Cycles has also been appointed as a distributor for Straitline so expect to see them on the Race Courses next season with their pimped out Morewood rigs.

From Norway with Love!

Check out this little video sent to us from GRAVITYRIDE our Norwegian crew… it has some Sick camera angles, I love the fork shots!

 

"Pro telemark skier Torkel Karoliussen” is the rider… and he’s giving a FOES decked out in Straitline a spin!

 

If you are bilingual I hope Norwegian is your other language because you can read up on it all HERE!!

Torkel’s day job!

Lama Cycles drops by!

Justin of Lama Cycles calls me up saying that he is in town and wants to check out the facility on the end of their Cross Canada Adventure ! So i said no, because he admitted he never heard of the movie RAD and that kind of made me a little uneasy… who doesn’t know of the Movie RAD? 

 

They definitely rolled up in style with three tricked out MoreWoods  with matching Boxxers on the back, decked to the hilt in the finest components, Industry9 Wheel sets, Elka Shocks, Straitline Boxxer Stems and Pedals and MRP guides, you know the $8,000 dollar build we all have at home.

 

We have sponsored their team for a few years now and they are always on the Canadian podiums so I forgave them for not Knowing RAD because they live and breath biking more than I ever will! 

 

Just cool guys making a go at a company  but instead of being all corporate and stuffy they just ride their bikes and focus on relationships. The fact that they took the time to drive all the way from Quebec to attend the races and hit up some shops shames most.  You roll up in style with these builds and people notice, plus they have lent a helping hand to a few of our clients and friends on the trail who have had a issue or question about a item on the bike.

And as I write this I notice that their sexy Ultra Boxxers are all installed wrong!!  I am holding back from erasing everything and saying bad things about Lama when I realize I would put the stem on wrong too!

Most Stems when installed simply just require the face plate to be bolted down, hold the bars and off you go. Well good for most stems but this system makes no sense to us, why tighten bolts leaving gaps ? So we simplified it and added function and saved some style by leaving a underside gap, smooth top!

 

Here is how a stem should look when installed properly… Yes the shot is sideways but stay with me. See the massive gap on the underside –right- part of the stem?  This is by design, we shorten the stem body on the underside to create this intentionally, you may even notice the three dots on the underside of all our Pinchclamp stems.

These locator dots is so that during production we can tell what is up and down as the stems are zero rise. But the reason we are different is simple. Gaps look like crap and are unnecessary. Gaps underside and topside also hide the fact that the face plate and body do not match up so it is a common thing to do but we match up flawlessly like butter on every stem. The functional reason behind this is really smart actually, the client only has to focus on two bolts, top two first until seamlessly snug against the stem body. Then you go to the lower two bolts and tighten them until tight. This guarantees the client applied proper torque- use common sense- and the risk of stripping and over torque-ing is gone as you are not doing 10 turns here then 4 on the left and so on.

 

It is really a motocross method to prevent improper clamping and over stressing of the bars increasing the materials life span but that is boring tech talk!

 

So after embarrassing Justin and the Lama crew in a public forum -behind their backs as they ride the ferry as we speak back to the mainland, away from my coward ass-  I realized it is a common mistake since we are the only ones doing it and how hard is it to install a stem anyways?  And how arrogant for us to assume everyone would just ask or read up on the movie RAD and how it shaped most of our views on biking as a kid?

 

Anyways, stoked to see builds like this all custom and 3/4 of the build true in-house firms making top of the line gear in the sea of off shore brands.

 

Remember no gap on top, top two bolts first then lower two bolt,  resulting in a gap!

 

Now go watch RAD or I will tell this kid that there is a free Playstation 3 with 90 games at your address and phone number!