Comments on: Safety Warning: Do not ride your tikit

By: Raz

Raz — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:07:56 +0000

Peter:
I hope you see by all the updates that we have solved the issues. We have created a new design for the tikit stem that has surpassed all our expectations on safety tests, it was verified by an independent source and has approval of from the agency we needed most. More on that soon. But we are building tikits with the new stem and delivering them around the world. And we begun building the replacements for those in urgent need of getting back on their tikits.

By: Pete Lee

Pete Lee — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:57:11 +0000

@Alan: I was incredibly saddened to hear about this: I was visiting the website to re-ponder the purchase of a Tikit (which I’ve been coveting for years).

Thank you for doing the right thing and putting the safety of your customers first. Fingers crossed that you find a good solution that reflects the superb standards of Bike Friday!

By: Ken Firestone

Ken Firestone — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:40:51 +0000

How difficult is the replacement? What is involved in changing the stems? I am debating if I should do it myself or bother the local BF dealer.

By: Raz

Raz — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:26:46 +0000

The entire stem will be replaced including the lower and upper hinges.

By: Ken Firestone

Ken Firestone — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:10:15 +0000

So what will actually be replaced? Just the new part as pictured? That part and the lower hinge? More?

By: Dave Holladay

Dave Holladay — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:31:52 +0000

The high stress on this area makes it especially a problem with compact folding bikes. All makes have had issues to resolve (or not) on bikes in service.

The Tactic used an off-the peg hinge and latch with a stub & binder bolt to go inside the lower section (steereer tube & forks) I had 2 fail where the stub tube fractured at the weld to the lower hinge plate, and oly the bolt & binder wedge held the steering together. The same happens with the Micro under severe loading. And for all bikes with high handlebars relative to the top race. Even the Brompton has issues arsing from thie leverage.

Specialist bikes require prudent observation and some knowledge of what signs to trigger an alert. Thee picture is not sufficiently detailed to see where this fracture started and how much had failed before the catastrophic failure of the remaining reduced section.

By: Jim Endicott

Jim Endicott — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:05:33 +0000

Tikit purchased april 2007 from Urbane Cyclist shop, Toronto, ON, Canada. I have ridden it more than 9000 kilometres.

By: keith

keith — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:51:10 +0000

Off topic, but had Giant seat post snap off & I attempted to report it as a safety defect & no one cared. Er, well except me. Older Cypress model.

By: Raz

Raz — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:41:08 +0000

At this point we would still recommend that you do not ride your tikit, no matter what inspection might show. The fact is we just don't know enough at this point. Our initial email went to ALL tikit owners in our database, and we've been working closely with our Bike Friday dealers past and present to notify all tikit owners in their databases. We are lucky to have such an active community that word spread much faster than we could do on our own. Contacting thousands of individuals all around the world is no easy task, but our emphasis was getting directly to those we can identify. Many owners have since been asked to have their emails removed from our database, so we are in the process of contacting them by other means. We appreciate everyone's patience, and understanding that we are a small company with limited resources.

By: David Bergen

David Bergen — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:16:47 +0000

I have inspected Dori’s replacement Tikit and found no evidence of any metal fatigue or incipient cracking inside or outside of the stem between the clamp and hinge. I will inspect my Tikit when I return to where it is at the moment.

Thank you for your positive actions in this situation. However I don’t understand why you didn’t e-mail the notice to all the owners in your database and also to the Yak! ? I heard of it from a posting on the Yak! by Alex Wetmore.