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To all of my customers who have an order they are still waiting for, I would like to apologize for the extremely long waiting periods. I know many of you are getting frustrated with me. Several times I have given shipment updates, and those dates have come and gone with nothing to show for it. I'm pretty sure many of you are sick of excuses, and I really hate contacting people to let them know their wait will be much longer. As a one man business, I may have bitten off more than I can chew when I took on the Liberty product line. I am coming to the end of my third year in business, and I'm going through that wonderful growing pain of being too busy to handle it by myself efficiently, but not getting enough to hire "Quality" help. I am a perfectionist, and for help to qualify as quality, they better do it just as good or better than me, or they aren't worth a dime. So, quality help costs more than I can afford right now. So, I get to do all the hard work myself. My wife tries to help when she can, but she has a full time job, and with two kids, she comes home from work and gets to babysit so I can continue to work, by myself. Ted (USAFCOP) tries to help when he can, but with his military schedule, wife and kids, and college, he doesn't get much time to help. I am up usually between 7 and 8 am to take care of the kids, I do as much as I can during the day until the wife gets home to take over with the kids, and I keep on working. While waiting for the bandsaw to cut or the welder to cool off, I'm packaging orders and trying to respond to emails. By the time I can't see straight enough to work safely, I go to bed around 2-3am, and start all over again the next morning.
I know, cry me a river, right. Everyone has worked this schedule without any problems, so quit my cryin' and get back to work.
Ted was here this past weekend until 2 in the morning helping me get caught up on some work, and jig up and test fit these rear KJ bumpers. A big holdup on getting the rear bumpers built was getting the jig absolutely perfect. Ted can tell you how big 1.5* makes in the fitment of a rear bumper. It doesn't work at all. The jig for the entire rear bumper, except for the side wings that run from the tail light to the wheel well, is finally dead on, but there was a problem with the jig for the side wings, and so I got to cut every single side plate off and get to do it over. The parts were only tacked in place and were not damaged at all, but that cost a lot of time, all because of being 1-1.5* off. While building the jigs, correctly and calibrating them, I also had to make sure the bumpers were setup correctly to be able to accept carriers at any time in the future. This meant more jigs and calibration, test fitting, cutting new additional parts that were not already manufactured, etc. Again, Ted will confirm that we ran the ever living crap out of that bandsaw the other day, just cutting out little parts/gussetts for the bumper carrier mounts, which led to burning up my 6th bandsaw in less than a year. I make the skink sliders entirely in house, and every part is cut out with that bandsaw, so a bandsaw that doesn't work puts cutting out sliders for orders on hold. I finally got my warranty replacement put together, but those of you that had slider orders that were running behind, well, I hate to say I'm still running behind.
I have XJ orders to fill that are running behind as well, so there are a lot of people frustrated right now. All I can say is I am very sorry for the delays, and I am working as hard as I can to get caught up.
So, enough with my pathetic sob story, here is the update. Rear bumpers are top priority right now and I am working on absolutely nothing else, since those preorders came in long before any other orders on the board right now, so if you are waiting on something other than a rear bumper, I will get to your order as soon as I can. Ted is coming over tomorrow to help me correct the side plates on the rear bumpers. I'm not going to give another try to ship by date on the rear bumpers, because every time I do, life kicks me in the nuts, so I will contact you when it ships. All I can say is things are going a lot better this week and delivery is looking very promising within the next two weeks. For you rear bumper guys, I'm sorry my learning experience from this first batch has come at your expense, but feel good in knowing you got a hell of a deal on these, because I am going to have no regrets in raising the retail price by atleast $150-200, because these are a lot of work and have had a lot of additional expenses and labor come up during assembly that I did not expect when I posted the original prices. With the rear bumper experience, I am raising the front bumper prices as well. Sliders are priced adequately, but the bumpers are not worth my time at their current prices. If you have already prepaid for anything, don't worry about additional costs.
Front bumper update, well, still waiting for my first prototypes, but like I already mentioned, prices are going up.
Diff covers update. These are not Rock Lizard Products, they are made by another company. I placed the order when I said I would, then got to wait for the company to assemble the covers per my order and ship them to me. I did finally get them. When Ted helped me this weekend, he packaged up the hardware while I did an inspection of each diff cover to make sure all the weld slag was cleaned off and the threaded parts didn't have any damage. One of the covers I get to send back because the threaded bung for the fill plug had a weld booger in it I couldn't clean out. Even though the diff covers are not even my product, if I am selling them, they will be good enough for my customers even if it means I have to inspect and clean them up myself. Everyone who ordered a diff cover will see it by next Wednesday. I shipped out most of them today. The rest will go out tomorrow except for the couple that requested a paint job. They were shipped out flat rate USPS box, and will require a signature, so if you aren't home when delivered, you will have to go to the post office the next day to sign for and pick up, atleast that's how the PO does it here.
Skink Sliders update. I have all the materials, and the bandsaw is operational again, but I have to finish the rear bumpers first. The bandsaw will be running cutting out the parts for the sliders while I am welding and grinding rear bumpers, so that will help cut down the wait time. Another part of the holdup will be a slider return that I need to inspect before I make anymore. In the three years I have been in business, this is the very first return for the part not mounting up correctly. One return is already too many, so I am going to inspect the sliders, figure out if there was a screw up on my part in a measurement, or figure out what may have happened during assembly that it would not mount up correctly, and correct it before I ship out anymore that may be incorrect. I use a jig to build the sliders, so I'm baffled why every set before this one was correct, but who knows, perhaps something happened to the jig to throw it off, but anyways, it will be corrected.
Um, I guess that's it. I do appreciate everyones patience, because I know I am really pushing it. If anyone wants to call, email or PM me and rip me a new one, go ahead, I'm already expecting it and even cleared up some room in my PM box. I sincerely apologize for any and all inconveniences my slow deliveries may have caused. I just can't take someones money and send them a piece of crap that was thrown together as quickly as possible just to get it out the door, no matter how it looked. Every single bumper is being test fit on an actual KJ, just to make sure it is right, even though I am using a jig that is now right on with specs.
If this business is going to continue to grow at its current rate, unfortunately I am going to have to raise my prices so I can upgrade equipment and hire some help, because to be completely honest, my love for this business is burning up real quick at this rate of frustration. I really do enjoy working with the KJ crowd and building products that no one else will, so I have to do whatever it takes to keep that going, otherwise its time to kick back, flyfish and four wheel with the family, and move on with life.
Blah, blah, blah...ok, I'll shut up now and let the flogging begin. Thank you for your time.
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Just telling it the way it is, if it so happens that we have to move first, then so be it. Just didn't want it to get here and I'm gone 
