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Grafton Story
I remember when I had to recall 200 sets do to my sub-contractor using cheap materials to make some extra cash. That time really sucked. Did you ever read the whole story on the cranks? If not here it is. Here is the real story. (a little longer version) First off the Treneerys (Topline) did not actually design that crank. Precision Tooling was the sub-contractor for Gary Cook (Theoriginal Cook Brothers) They had a falling out, not sure why. Phil Trenerry knew me from before as I also owned the company that manufactured the cutting tools that their machine shop used. Phil new that I was into mountain bikes and that the popularity of my Speed Controllers was growing quite fast. He approached me about marketing a crank under the Grafton name. Gary Cook was a good friend of mine so I asked him what he thought about this. (If Gary would have said he didn’t like it, there never would have been a Grafton Speed Stix crank) Gary said he didn’t care, he was tired of this business and to go for it. The Trenerrys and I got together and made some minor changes to Gary’s original design, spider attachment, flutes on top and bottom to reduce weight and the cutout on the inside for chainring clearance and to reduce the dreaded Q-factor. All went great for about a year. Then I found out the were selling out the back door and me completely. There was never a money issue, they always got paid for what they shipped to me. Guess that was not enough. I was pissed so I severed ties with them at once. I spent the next few months designing and testing a new crank that I thought would kick ass. I did stress tests, fatigue testing by loading and unloading, you name it. Had pro riders like Jimmy Deaton, Missy G. Earthquake Jake Watson (bless his heart) and many more. When I was ready to go into production I contacted Benson Sims. (I also manufactured all his tooling) I gave him an order for 200 Joy Stix cranks. All went fine for about six months. Then I started getting calls about cranks not only cracking at the bottom bracket but some catastrophic failures also, were they would just break in half. After all the testing I had done I thought, this can’t be happening. I took a new set to a metallurgist and found out that Sims had manufactured all the cranks out of a cheap 5000 series aluminum not the 7000 series I paid for up front for. When I confronted Benson about this he said he didn’t know what happened. I did, he made a lot of quick cash buying crap meterial. Some of you might remember that I voluntarily recalled all those cranks and replaced them with new sets. This recall cost me over $230,000.00 in my third year of business. It not only nearly bankrupted me it did a lot of damage to my reputation. This industry has had many companies that just want to ride the wave that others have created. I often see copies of my brakes, levers, shifter perches, cable hangers, etc. Action-Tecs head tube suspension system, (Ripped off by Cannonade) I know they say it is the best form of flattery, but it really isn’t. It’s just the work of lazy people. Anyway, you asked for it. Any more questions, you know where to find me. And by the way, I can’t thank all of you retro freaks out there enough for making my golden years so fucking awesome. If I can I will. JG