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Purchased a '14 Cabrinha Velocity the other day (to match the series I have and love. )
On first test flight minutes after testing on land the kite behaved strangely and suddenly flipped on it's leading edge. I took it down and it had lost most of its air...
I troubleshooted and located 2 defective struts leaking heavily.
One strut is defective in the tip where the lamination of the bladder end end is not done completely.
Another strut was leaking at the front end tip. The blade had some kind of deformation of the rubber material.
In my past 10 years of kiting and +20 kite purchases I have never heard of similar out of the box failures. Anyone else seen this?
I have contacted the shop I bought it from. Spent almost 10 days explaining the problem and almost losing my patience. I have given them 24 hours more to minimum send me some bladders or they can have the bloody thing back.....
Neil

Its happens, not just with kites with everything, cars, TV's whatever
I've seen kites explode on their very first inflation. Doesn't happen often, but does happen.

Newness is no absolute guarantee of reliability, in fact things are actually quite likely to fail when new - hence why companies offer warranties.

I think the Velocity had thinner bladders than used in the other Cabrinha models to save weight, so maybe they are more prone to leak or if there is a small defect in the material it would have more affect.

bad thing...

every pump kite shoud be checked after the complete assembly, pumpedd up and leaved for some hour to verify all is ok

Remember an old video of OZone factory doing this...

good reason to never take new never used kites in a kitetrip, at least use it once

poldo wrote:bad thing...

every pump kite shoud be checked after the complete assembly, pumpedd up and leaved for some hour to verify all is ok

Remember an old video of OZone factory doing this...

good reason to never take new never used kites in a kitetrip, at least use it once

You got that right;

check at 2:17 this is exactly what they do and they leave it there for the night.

http://vimeo.com/39837173

So what are odds that 2 out of 6 struts end up leaking after the 2nd inflation (1st being from factory)? I find that worrying. Sure a single leaking bladder or missing bridle, bad stich etc. seen this all the time, but never 2. Dealer will send new bladders as I will replace all to be sure .

poldo wrote:bad thing...

every pump kite shoud be checked after the complete assembly, pumpedd up and leaved for some hour to verify all is ok

Remember an old video of OZone factory doing this...

good reason to never take new never used kites in a kitetrip, at least use it once

Pretty sure Cabrihna does this. But when you are flying a kite you put different and higher stresses on it then it gets just inflated and sitting there. Just sounds like a simple mistake at the factory, and a simple warranty claim

Why did it take you 10 days to explain? Sounds like you rapped it up pretty easily in a few sentences here.

Took an SB 2013 14m for a test drive in september 2012 and the main bladder blew up after 2 hours of riding in winds varying from 8-10 to 15-18 knots. I did not crash the kite at all. When the local dealer saw me coming back with his kite, he was not too surprised as this happened to one of his client. So you may inflate it and leave it all night, it may never happen. Same thing happened with my Ozone Edge but after one season of use so not a manufacturing defect but when we repaired it, there was a bad twist, most likely due to very rapid deflation. Big valves are cool, but one should pay attention not to let all the air out at once. just a tip...

as i said before
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2385434

eree wrote:blow outs and stretching near the wing tips? sounds like they didn't fit the bladder in the LE sleeve properly in the factory. if there is space enough for bladder to expand it will blow out.

i always inflate my new kite for the first time half way and give a good "massage" to all bladders just to place them right in their sleeves. and i make sure the bladder film doesn't show from the strut tips and wing tips.
they claim they inflate every kite at the factory before shipping, but i have seen new kite with the bladder peeking out of the wing tip.