Longbikes News for 2008

October 30, 2008

You may have noticed that prices for just about everything are up! Well gas is down at the moment, but don’t worry it will return to and pass $4.00 again. Aluminum is also up, between January and August of this year aluminum is up 18%, 38+% in the last three years. Steel is right in there with it. There is a lot of aluminum in a bike. Just about every bolt on bike part is aluminum and we machine a lot of aluminum parts for our bikes. Then there are the fuel surcharges to get material in and bikes out. The fuel surcharge on our outbound domestic freight is now running 35%.

We have worked to maintain our pricing and have kept pricing pretty steady for several years, but we are going to have to have a price increase. Other recumbent manufacturers have already had price increases over the past couple of months.

I don’t know what the price increase will be in January, probably around 10%. Since there is not much good news in the news these days and the global economy is in trouble. One bit of good news is that you will still be able to buy a new Longbikes at the same 2007/2008 prices until then.

September 20, 2008

It has been a long time coming, but finally a new site. Bill has put in a lot of work to get it done. Other than the normal day to day work, there were a couple of little events that slowed things down. I had a little accident at work one day which required a quick trip to the ER with a plastic bag in hand. I walked into the ER holding up the bag announcing that this came off. The nice nurse ask while getting the paperwork started, how did you amputate your finger? My advise, never ever disengage your brain from your hand when it is near a spinning brake disc!

About a month later, Bill was doing some work at his mothers house and had an accident with one of those really nice little battery powered circular saws. He didn’t cut any fingers off, but sure came close. Five surgeries and a year later, he is about as good as he is going to get, not 100 percent, but he can still count to 10!

Thanks Bill, you have done a great job! This is a big job for one person, now that it is up and running, all we have to do is finish it. There are a number of things that we want to do yet. Most of it pretty simple, several new pages here and there. I want to add a few pages in the FAQ area to answer some questions about how and why I do things the way I do. You can help finish the site also. I am sure that there are some minor mistakes, a typo here, an oops there. As you find things, drop me a quick little email: Greg@Longbikes.com we will fix it.

Additionally we would like to get some video on the site or on YouTube. Any Longbikes owner who has video that you would like to have considered, send it to us.

Here is the latest of the old news, just in case you missed it previously:

One big announcement is that after several years of dealing with Taiwan on frames, we have decided to bring our frame production back in house. We actually did this back around the first of the year. There are still some Taiwan Gulfstream frames, but everything else is done 100% in house and welded by Greg or my apprentice Sterling!

April 9, 2008

Product upgrade announcement: Slipstream owners, if you have had problems with your ESGE 2 leg kickstand not staying tight to the frame, I made some reinforcing adapters which beef up the kickstand bridge and eliminate the problem of the kickstand rotating. If you need or want to upgrade to these, drop me a note and we can get them to you. I will determine the price sometime later this week.

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