There should be two people out there (one in Minnesota and the other in Quebec) that had some happenings with this next Diablo.
My friend (I will refer to him as JP) from Canada was looking for a nice Diablo and another friend decided to let his go for reasons I won't explain. Wanting to help them both, I got in the middle
I picked up the Diablo and brought it to the Diablo Shop for a little attention. It needed drive sprockets, a gearbox rebuild and some other odds and ends. A beautiful Diablo, well taken care of but just needed a few things........
Remember back in 2008/2009 when we were out of sprockets for the Diablo. We needed a savior to help us. To recreate the molds was very expensive. People were trying plastics and other materials to make a drive sprocket, but none of that worked. I was not clever enough to come up with an answer myself outside of re-creating the molds. Barrie tried to save the Diablo future and trialed rubber drive and idler sprockets. He bought heavy sheets of rubber and cut them with his mill. We were having he steel hubs made down here in Wisconsin and Barrie was sending me sprockets and I was sending him steel hubs. Lots of people are very happy. Although expensive, sprockets were going out the door right and left for about a year. I put a pair of these nice new sprockets on this Diablo from Minnesota.
Then we heard in the wind that sprockets were failing. When we started asking around to those we sold them too, sure enough everyone was having sprocket issues. The problem is, nobody was telling us. I can only presume they did not want to hurt our feelings for trying. At that point, we had no option but to recreate the sprocket molds and start making sprockets with clam molds and high pressure injected rubber. Same design as original but with 50 year newer technology for the rubber.
I remember when I got the first batch, they looked fantastic but you can imagine I was a little worried about their durability. So that week, I pulled my 503 in to the shop and put a new pair of drive sprockets on. That next Saturday was a weekend in April and I took the Diablo up to the cabin where almost all the snow was gone. This was going to be a real test. I purposely went up and down our rocky roads spinning those tracks more than once. If a sprocket cog was going to get ripped off, it would have happened. But they passed the test unscathed.
So with that, Barrie and I warrantied sprockets - each of us had sold dozens and dozens of sprockets all over North America. It cost us both quite an investment to replace them all with new sprockets, but we slept well knowing we did the best we could to solve a bad situation. However, back to this Diablo, it also had those sprockets on. Shipping JP sprockets was not the issue. The issue was he just got this nice Diablo and he would have to take it apart to install the sprockets. I could have lost a friend with all of that, but he is the gentle giant and graciously did what he needed to do.
As if that was not bad enough, that devil was still hiding in that Diablo. JP takes it out and starts getting some miles on it and all of a sudden, the gearbox locks up.
HOW COULD THAT HAPPEN? The short story is the chain broke and I can say I've never seen a chain break before this one and have not seen one since. But again, the issue was not getting JP the parts he needed, but the poor guy had to take that Diablo apart again and fix it up. You would think by now JP is no longer talking with me. He had that right. But not JP. We built a strong friendship since and his demeanor is like so many I've met from above the border and become close friends with.
Today the Diablo is running strong - Thank You JP and hope to catch up with you soon.