Monday, May 11, 2009

Taco Case Closed




"Over the past few months I have received many questions regarding the one very well publicized rim fail in November of 2008. This is what has been posted (with the help of some photoshoping) on the internet as the “taco rim”. After receiving the rim from the customer we were able to run a material test and the results showed that everything was normal. In the wake of this incident and after selling H Plus Son rims for about 10 months now, we have only ever received this one complaint and request for the rim to be replaced under warranty (which of course we did). After all these months, it is safe to say that this was indeed an isolated incident. In this situation, it might be that one rim slipped out of our otherwise very strict quality control or it was damaged during shipping, it is hard to tell. The difficulty of making a rim at this depth while keeping the weight as low as it is requires a lot of effort and gives a very low margin for error. Whatever it was that went wrong with the infamous “taco rim”, we will continue to strive for the type of quality expected from the best brands and continue to improve on the demands of quality and perfection. During this incident, we have also learned about the challenges of operating our sort of business in the age of the internet. One misstep and we could have been gone. Bye-bye, game over, you lose. Yet, we have continued and the support of our customers for our passion and vision is definitely appreciated. But we also want to point out that a rim of this weight and shape has limits when it comes to heavy abuse. This is perhaps quite obvious. What is perhaps less so is our continued striving for unique and inspired products."

So, now let's forget about this and everybody go and order / buy some H+Son or Dodici or Velocity B43 rims, which ever takes your fancy. They're all pretty cool. Or even better, get some older Zipp, HED, Corima, FIR, Campagnolo or Gipiemme aero rims, carbon or alu, who cares, just as long you love them, ok? 


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