TallBoysWRF,
I see your announcement as the warning you meant it to be, not a dig on the product.
Hopefully AD B will address it properly and fore warn "all" it's product users should be simple to accomplish.
Thanks, I see someone understands what I was getting at.
Did I miss something? (Don't answer this.) Somehow my post about a (what I think is serious) design flaw that I found in my kit turned into the game show "Who's More Guilty of Bashing the Competition?"
I'll try to address a couple of points from my point of view. I don't think the explorer's front end needs to attach to to both forks, it just needs needs to be stiffened. The dowels that attached the center vertical plate to the brake caliper mounts were not rigid enough. They were too easily over stressed and they yielded. The bottom caliper mount on my bike is very short and stiff, the top is long and slender. When the aluminum dowels yield, they try to bend the bolts in the caliper mounts. My bottom one bent until it broke (no major damage to the rigid mount). While the bottom bolt was bending, the top mount was twisting as it was weaker than the bolt (it's designed to not bed, and normally would see zero twisting with the brake caliper). When the bottom bolt finally broke, the top mount was the only thing holding the ski in position, and it was easily over loaded then, which torqued off the mount. You'll notice in the picture that the end of the mount is still attached to the dowel. If those dowels were stiffer, to be able to brake the front end, the caliper bolts would both have to shear off, a much harder thing to do.
My original suggestion to AD B was to enlarge the base of the dowels. It looks like they might have actually listened per my conversation with Mike on the phone a few minutes ago. I'll refrain from further commenting on them until I have more info. My thought behind my original suggestion was that in enlarging the bases (say to a 2 inch diameter instead of 1 inch) of the dowels, the leverage that the caliper mount applied to the ski bracket is a little less than half. In other words it takes twice the force to damage the system. I don't think I could generate the forces required to do that.
My solution as my picture showed, was to machine a sold .75 inch plate. This way, it CAN'T bend.
If I hadn't twisted the top caliper mount on my bike, the fork would have been fine as that's the kind of stress it's designed for. Also, with the dowels, the end attached to the caliper mount can move separately from each other. They are not mechanically DIRECTLY tied together. Any force applied to one dowel has to go through that dowel, the bolt to the center plate, the center plate, the bolt in the other dowel, and through the other dowel before the other caliper mount sees any force. There are a number of parts there that can flex and bend. With the plate i had machined, any force that is applied at one part of the caliper mount is immediately applied to the other. The force seen is also limited to shear, nothing can bend unless the center plate bends in relation to the caliper mounts. The way the system is built, now I would have to hit something so hard that it folds my forks or breaks the steering head before repeating the type of breaks I had.
To who ever mentioned it, no I didn't clear the house. lol. Look closely at the landing picture and you can see where the track was in contact with the snow bank about half way down the bank. It's asphalt on the top side so it's not like I hit it with any speed. I was in first or second gear when I hit it, and blipped the throttle to carry the front end over.
I haven't skied the bike off any jumps or anything. The first time when it broke the caliper mount on impact (when I took the pictures) I simply when down an embankment, no air at all.
For trying to get some sort of assistance from AD B for my broken forks, yes I am aware of the idea that if they do it for one person they have to do it for all. However, I broke two sets of forks. They could have fixed the problem properly the first time instead of telling me the bolts where just loose (I had about 20 miles on the kit at time of impact, so if they came loose in that short of time, WOW!) and sending me the same parts that already failed. Go figure, they failed again. I paid for the first set of forks, I was hoping for some help with the second break. Still no luck so I think I'm going to just have to eat it.
Just something to throw out there about the side-hilling (don't start debating this again, please), I did manage to get trapped on the side of a hill with the explorer kit. I couldn't get enough traction to keep me going up the hill and across so I was slowly sliding down the hill as I went across. I was trapped by the dense tree line at the other end of the hill and further down the hill. Anyway, that might not sound bad, but I would have had a really hard time trying to climb the hill on foot in the summer! So I would say yes, the explorer does side hill, and rather well in my opinion.
I could change fork springs, add fork oil etc. to get my front end stiffer. I have it where I do so it's as good as I can get it in the summer (still horrible on high-speed hack). Changing the fork set up so I can prevent breaking the explorer kit or my bike defeats the whole purpose of selling the bike as a "plug and play" conversion kit. Clickers are one thing, having to tear the forks apart is a whole other ball game.
If someone doesn't understand something I tried to explain, let me know and I'll see if I can do better. I'm an engineering student so some of the mechanical concepts make a whole lot more sense to me than many of you, I'm sure.
