Guys:? ? You know how the "letters" page in BMWOA's "Owner's News" always? carries 'atta-boys' for good Samaritans and good dealerships with? great service? Here's an 'ah-sh.t' for someone who screwed me. I? planned for about 5 years to have a sidecar mounted on my old ?airhead? bike, an '88 R100RT. Because mounting the Ural hack on it required? the fabrication and installation of a custom sub-frame, I researched? the available sidecar businesses in my general area of the Northwest? and settled on Dauntless Motors of Eunumclaw (Seattle), WA. I met ?the? owners at several rallies, listened to their spiel at the Spokane? Rally, and finally contracted with them to do the work. They picked? up my bike---they were over in Spokane anyway with a trailer? delivering some finished sidecar rigs---here in the Idaho Panhandle? and took it over to their shop on the coast at the end of April last? year, promising to have it done by mid-summer. I didn't get it back? until the tail-end of the riding season, in mid-October. I drove it? for a week and a half and identified so many major and minor faults? with the installation that they agreed to pick it up, take it back ?to? the coast, fix the problems, and have it back to me within two ?weeks.? I got it back the 7th of February. It didn't start. I had to have? it towed 40 miles down to Mac's Cycle, my BMW dealer in Clarkston, ?WA,? and repaired. Dauntless had cut the wires too short when they redid? the electrical system to include the sidecar circuits and when the? handlebars were turned too sharply the connectors failed. I ?contacted? the Better Business Bureau in Seattle and Dauntless did agree to pay? the towing and repair bill. But if you are thinking about buying a? sidecar rig, after my 9+ month experience filled with innumerable? emails and telephone calls and shoddy workmanship, I do not ?recommend? them.?
Welcome to the club --- history usually repeats itself! Previous problems with Dauntless were posted over a 9-months period last year. The thread is now on page 9 of this Forum (since it was frozen by Ron Campbell on 9-26-06) at http://www.sidecar.com/megabbs/thread-view.asp?threadid=2765&posts=63. The thread had 63 posts and has been viewed almost 2200 times, somewhat of a record! Yet it was frozen since Daunless is a major contributor to this organization and apparently has more pull than members expressing their (dis)pleasure over having gotten the royal shaft from Jay Giesse. The details for my case and that of other owners of BMW R1200C's for which he supplied sidecar mounts that did not fit is fully detailed in the earlier posts. While Jay has acknowledged that he has had problems with mounts (first it was his parts guy, later his shop foreman), he has refused to offer any form of compensation.
An interesting recent post on the Chromeheads Forum for R1200C owners ( http://www.chromeheads.org/discus/messages/6/283078.html?1164642439) indicates that Jay charged someone $9000 for mounting a Ural sidecar on a R1200C. What is especially interesting is that last year I had a reputable sidecar shop modify his mounts, refurbish and mount a Terraplane on my R1200C for about $5500. When I tried to get him to refund some money for the mounts that needed to be modified, he claimed that I got ripped off and that he would have done the job for a fraction of my cost, about $1500, which would have included the cost of his $800 mounts.
For anyone interested, I do have copies of all of my past correspondence with Daunless
Wolf
I guess that every person in the world has had a bad experience of some kind or other with someone or other. But we usually yell about the bad, & say nothing about the good. So I will break that mold & say a good thing about Dauntless, & Jay. Last year Jay hung( HANGED? ) a Ural on my Harley Ultra. I am so pleased with the job he did for me that I would not hesitate to have him do my next combo. The rig rides like a dream. And to my eye is a beautiful rig to boot. I did as he suggested & let him lower the car about 3 inches, put the interior, and chrome accessories on the car, even though it added to the cost. It came out looking great. And at Jays suggestion I put a 5 degree triple tree on the hog. Now it Handel's better than it looks. THANKS JAY.
i also must say I purchased a subframe for my sportster
velorex mix, and it worked great, fit perfect and solved all
the problems i was having, when i called with questions on installing
it his show was very helpful.
fender
Fact is that any bad news, sadly, will travel faster than good news.Fact is that a problem with typically be 'glorified' more than a good experience just due to human nature. It is good to see some posting good news on the net as there is without a doubt a lot more of it out there than bad. But as they say: If a dog bites a man it is not news....but...if a man bites a dog it is news. And what that means as related to this thread I have no idea but it did come to mind.
Claud....
What you drinking boy? Hey, you are right about bad news travelling faster then good, but Dauntless has screwed a lot of us over time. Me included. And yes, I did get it worked out. But a lot of time and money went into the fix. I cannont with any good sense recommend Dauntless for anything.
Uber
I wish I had read all of this before purchasing parts from Jay. I'm now in a major snafu over a set of mounts that he said would be bolt on and only one of the four fit, and it's ajust a clamp around the frame tube so it couldn't be screwed up if you tried.
I've bought two complete setups from Jay and the one time I broke something, (through my own stupidity) he was right there to replace the parts and get them to me in time for the rally's. Here are the details http://www.sidecar.com/megabbs/thread-view.asp?threadid=4610
I don't know why people repeat this thing about Jay being such a big contributor. He's an advertiser here just like other businesses.
I think what happens is that every time someone comes on here complaining, those of us who have been treated right feel a responsibility to say so, whether it's Jay or Doug or Bob or any of the other companies out there.
I also found it interesting when I decided to set up the Valkyrie with a sidecar I called Champion, Texas sidecar, and Louis Hallett here in Wisconsin looking for a subframe as I thought Jay was too expensive. Each one of them informed me that they didn't have one in stock and would have to call the "warehouse" in Seattle, Washington state to get a price. The funny thing was that each of them said there could be a delay because the warehouse was in the middle of moving to a new facility. When I called Jay, he was in the middle of moving. :0)
It never ends. I was up at the BeeCee Beemers' Hot Springs Rally last summer and a couple of German/Candians looked over the rig. One old German guy who is the long-time owner of a welding shop told me that if one of his guys had done the sloppy welds that the guys in Jay's shop did on my TILT mechanism on the hack he would've fired them. And on my way back down to Idaho the Dauntless-installed sidecar brake disconnected and went inop.
It amazes me that this issue is still as "hot" as ever. As one of the many who feel that Jay ripped them off, I can never recommend his firm for any sidecar related work or product.
Just bought subframe kit about 2 weeks ago from duantless motors,
for my bike spent about $580.00. Needless to say only one of the four connecting points worked. I called Jay I was tould well there so many version of that bike frame hum....bull. As I look at the subframe yes the
welds don't look like they should there not clean with nice flown beeds, I hate to see what they look like with no powdercoating on them. Before I bought this I figure I would make my own subframe for my bike considering I weld for a living. But I thought to meself it would be easyer to buy something off the shelf...Boy was I wrong with only one of the four fitting , I guess I will have to make
my own and eat the cost 580.00
I'm in the stage's of a complete tear down of my first side hack, and have it ons it way to going back togather
In the long run the more you can do your sell the better off you are
I have found most of the the people I made contact with to try to get things done , these people don't want to make money off me thet want to get rich from me. THIS ITS ROCKET SCIENCE PEOPLE THEY MAKE SOME OF THESE THINGS LIKE ITS BLACK MAGIC
I can only speak for myself and my mishaps
My lawyer is in the process of filing against Dauntless. His bracket broke and sent me and my family off the road. Nobody got hurt thank God. Tires on the Liberator last about 1,500 miles before they don't have legal tread. They took the lean feature off and replaced it with rigid mounts. It's no longer what I paid for, and it's dangerous. I want my money back and he won't give it back.
Originally written by Wolf on 3/14/2007 3:58 PM
<>The thread is now on page 9 of this Forum (since it was frozen by Ron Campbell on 9-26-06) at http://www.sidecar.com/megabbs/thread-view.asp?threadid=2765&posts=63. <>
I won't address your issues with Dauntless but I can tell you that you are misinformed. Ron Campbell was merely the last poster before the thread was shut down. He didn't shut the thread down because he doesn't have the authority. You owe him an apology.
NO ONE gets special treatment here because of their support for the USCA or the lack of it. The club provides this forum for the benefit of the sport. Note that I didn't say the benefit of the members because despite their frequent and persistent use of the forum, only a small percentage of the users are members of the USCA. I know that you're a member Wolf so this doesn't apply to you. If anyone is getting a "deal" it's folks who use the forum as a soap box and aren't members. Don’t get me wrong, the club made this a free forum to attract sidecarists, members or not ,but don’t even think about saying that the club plays favorites; it just isn’t so.
It is also reasonable to point out that the vast majority of the postings prior to the thread being shut down were saying that the issue was old, there had been way too much made of it and folks were basically tired of hearing the same old thing. I can understand that dealing with vendors is sometimes aggravating. I hate the phone companies with a passion and I'll pay someone to kill the inventor of the "phone tree". Still issues do get old and sharing your experience is a good idea but only the first dozen or so times you get the chance. After a while the medicine is worse than the disease.
This is just MY OPINION. You're welcome to your own.
Al Olme
Minneapolis, Minnesota
What's a phone tree? I thought phones were invented by those gnomes we try to scare away with bells.
Originally written by SidecarMike on 3/13/2008 7:40 PM
What's a phone tree? I thought phones were invented by those gnomes we try to scare away with bells.
A 'phone tree' is a tree that phones grow on. The phone trees are in phone orchards or phone groves run by gnomes.
Why is gnome spelled with a 'g' and 'nome' as in nome, alaska spelled without a 'g'? Is 'gnome' pronounced g-nome or nome?
Berry educational.
