Sept. 28, 2019, 12:27 a.m. -  Hennessy

TRAIL MODULE UPDATE Hi there, thanks again for your support with our STFU.Bike project. The DH modules are ready and being shipped out now. The Trail unit has had some issues with manufacturing though and we are working hard to get it sorted as soon as possible. Because the Trail module is a lot taller than the DH units we found it was deflecting under really large impacts and going into the spokes. Not something that was happening all the time but we want a product that we are 100% confident in. We tried increasing the hardness (durometer) of the silicone in order to make the module stiffer but this unfortunately did not solve the issue - we were limited by how hard we could make it in order for the tooling to operate correctly. In addition we didn't want to increase the hardness too much otherwise the sound damping performance would be decreased. As a result, a hard plastic insert was designed, prototyped and worked perfectly. Unfortunately the tooling we had manufactured was for compression silicone molding that was not capable of incorporating the stiffener design we had developed so our factory suggested 3 iterations of alternative stiffener (over the past few months) that all failed to be strong enough and the last iteration that was strong enough peeled away from the silicone portion after only 1 week of testing. We have decided to cut our losses and throw the existing tooling out and have now engaged an alternative manufacturer to create 2 entirely new, injection molding tools that will create the product exactly how we need it. The timeline will now be 4 to 5 weeks for tooling manufacture. 2 weeks for samples to be created, shipped and tested, 2 weeks for production and for the first units to be sent out. So a total of approximately 8-9 weeks from now. Not the best news we know, we tried hard to use the existing tooling in order to both speed the process up so we could get your STFU.Bike modules to you asap and also save many thousands of dollars but this new approach, although longer, will result in a much better product. As always, we are happy to refund anyone who can't wait - just send us an email with your order number. Because of the increase in tooling cost and production complexity/cost we may have to increase the RRP of the Trail versions but all pre-orders will remain locked in at the discounted price. Feedback from riders running the DH units has been awesome and we are stoked to get the Trail bike units finished and sent out to you all. Thanks again for your support! Cheers, Jaan Hurditch & Chris Kovarik stfubike.com