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2450
Joined
8/19/2016
Location
Our-Gov-Suks, CA
US
Fantasy
Edited Date/Time
2/13/2021 10:01am
The Shop
Free shipping: VITALMX
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
Did they somehow get a bad shipment at all of those factories?
Pit Row
KTM Group estimates the chain volume needed to cover all 3 brands and then they bulk buy from a single source of supply which would help with piece part pricing.
Precision roller chains are made in mass by a chain manufacturer. Taiwan, China, Japan, and sometimes Germany are common sources of supply for chain manufacturers. The chain manufacturer typically produces a huge spool of chain (sometimes 1000ft or more) and that spool is then sold to a chain supplier (Regina, DID, Renthal, etc). The chain supplier takes that large spool of chain and performs a cut-to-length operation at a secondary factory. Essentially, they are pressing a link out of the bulk spook to size it for the correct link count for the bike application. Once it’s cut to the correct link count, it is then packaged in a bag with a master link and sold to customers, in this case the OEM.
Each chain spool would have a lot number and the individual chains put on the bike at the factory would be traceable back to that spool(s) that are known to be defective. Typically there will be a barcode on the chain package. When the bike enters the work cell where the chain is put on, the assembler scans the Vin number of the bike then scans the barcode on the chain package before putting it on. This ties a particular chain to a Vin number. Today in the manufacturing world, almost every part is scanned and tied to the Vin so that when the bike leaves the end of the line, the manufacturer has traceability on essentially every component that was assembled to the frame. In industry, we call this the “digital twin” of the physical unit.
I would guess the chain manufacturer made a mistake on the component manufacturing such as bad heat treat of the side plates, pins, or bushings.
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