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About 3-4 months ago I broke the long travel Rocker Arm on my Switch Blade. Waily, waily, waily! It was horrible I was back down to 3.5" of travel and I lost the use of my nice PUSHed shock. So I sent an email to Titus asking if I could get it waranteed. The response I got was simple "Take it to the nearest Titus dealer and they will get an RA and we'll get you back rolling". So I went on the internet and found the nearest Titus Dealer, Danville Bikes in the East Bay Area. Crap that's a heck of a drive.

About a week later I made the 75 minute drive out there. "We have another return going to Titus already we'll just include this with the other to save you on shipping. We'll call you back with an RA number tomorrow." That was the end of May. No callback with an RA number the next day... or the next week. I called them up "Oh you need to talk to Jose, give me your number he'll call you back". Then later "Well I think Titus lost the part..." I would call about weekly and could never get a straight answer and more frustrating NEVER got a single call back. Finally, finally, last week (August 4th actually) I call them and I get an answer of sorts "Well Titus said they won't warantee it, you should call them directly". Well crap, a frustrating answer after that long of a wait but at least I wouldn't have to deal with the crappy service from Danville anymore.

So I call up Titus and I wound up talking to someone named Jim... and boy did I talk to Jim, probably for about an hour, he was probably sick of my voice. After quite a bit of wrangling and me taking pix of the frame and emailing them to him (which he never got), Jim figured out what part I needed and also that they didn't have any. They did have some Talas Rocker Arms but I would have to buy a Talus shock :( Not very happy but since the bike was second hand and well out of official warrantee I asked what the pricing was. Jim says he'll set up a deal with Roaring Mouse in SF and call me back Roaring Mouse because I told him I didn't want to deal with Danville any more. About 15 minutes late he calls back, turns out there was a demo bike with the same rocker arm and he said he would pull the rocker arm (which was slightly used) and ship it to the dealer.

Then somehow in the course of the conversation I found out that their HQ was in Phoenix. DING In some bizarre twist of fate I was going on a business trip to Phoenex the following Monday. I suggest "I don't suppose I could stop by and pick it up at the factory?". Jim's Reply "Sure and if you have some time I can show you around the shop while you are here". So this is the result.

Update: Titus requested that I not post any photos of their manufacturing facility so unfortunately the pictures I can post a quite limited. :(

Located in an innocuous warehouse space in hot arsed Tempe Arizona.. hardly an inpressive looking structure from the outside.

In the lobby there are some of their higher end frames mounted on the wall. A nice looking clear coated (titanium?) Racer-X with a carbon fibre rear triangle.

After a couple minutes in the lobby Jim sticks his head out, shows me the rocker arm, it has a few dings but WTF I'm back on the trail Sweet!. Pictured: One of the unique to Titus designs, an Exo-grid road frame.

An Iso-Grid Frame. You can see the way the carbon fibre actually forms up into to the titanium, giving a much stronger joint than the typical carbon to metal bond.

Mmmmmm Bike pr0n. Just waiting for a home. Mmmmmm

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