Tom R.

i admire and respect what you are trying to do. I would love a set at cost. I dont know Tim from a hole in the wall.

The problem is he pays to sell his stuff here. That means we pay to buy his stuff from here. We pay to buy Travis' stuff here. This stuff is also how they put food on the table. For us it is a hobby, for them it is food. How much an hour is Tim's time on the machine worth? Your brother in law will make you a set, maybe make a few more sets for shyts and giggles. at what point does he say enough, I want my weekends back?

Is it at that point that Tim comes in? Or does Tim come in now and say "hey john, Im paying to sell stuff here, im offering a low price, people are saying they can and will do it for less, screw advertising here, im gonna cut my advertising, which cuts my cost and sell it for less". you get the idea. it is a slippery slope.

It may not be your post that got me, it was the post by someone questioning his costs for the powdercoating, and Tim unnecessarily having to defend the costs of his parts.

If someone can do a better job for less, let em. lets just make sure the playing field is level. remember this is an enthusiasts community. we gain nothing by putting enthusiasts that give us decent value out of business, unless of course if the enthusiasts are really getting an all around better value.

vt951

Tom R., all good points. Can't really argue with much of what you're saying, but I doubt (and hope) that my little offering wouldn't keep food off of Tim's table or cause him to pull his site sponsorship.

I do think that there is a need for some Porsche parts vendors (not necessarily SFR) to sharpen their pencils. I know it's not quite as bad for 944's as it is for 911's, but still when you compare our prices to similar parts for other makes, it's pretty staggering. There seems to be an assumption that since the parts are for a Porsche, they can command a much higher price automatically. Which means that less effort is put into making products cost-effectively.

When you think about the control arms, there probably doesn't need to be any more than $300 worth of materials and parts in them (complete with ball joints and bushings). Of course, you have to add the labor for fabrication, welding, machining, powdercoating, and assembly to that. Probably no more than a 3-5 hours of labor per pair if you do them in lots, I'd estimate (probably less with some cleverness).

Now, for actual charlie arms that are cnc machined from billet, I can see why those cost a lot more to make. There is probably significant development time in design and cnc programming. And cnc time isn't cheap, either.

SeaCay

Not telling Travis what to do with his business, but who is going to cover the liability for the arms if/when one breaks and someone gets hurt?

vt951

There's the real problem that I have with this so far. I'm not sure what the answer is. I would probably need a company with liability insurance to sell the product if I didn't want to take on the risk personally (which I don't).

harrisonrick

What if SFRs control arms fail? What if LRs control arms fail? What if I get brake fade and can't stop?

Do these situations result in any different outcomes than if VTs BIL makes a control arm?

No they do not. If I install any supplier's part myself, the warranty is really out the window unless the supplier installs it himself.

The guy offering to fab up a few control arms is not going to make it his full time business, just as a favour to his BIL and a few of his Porsche enthusiast cohorts. If we pay him what he feels is a fair price for his time, that's fair.

Is it going to hurt SFR or LR? Nope...they have well established and respected businesses in the 944 community. If a handful of missed sales to a part time fabricator is going to bankrupt them...perhaps they do need to sharpen their pencils as stated earlier.

Potomac-Greg

Fear not, Tom. To get from where things are today, to the point that anything is going to be sold on Ebay, he'll burn up months, and learn the ropes.

There is a guy on the Mercedes Benz boards who is a genius at conceiving of performance upgrades, and he has managed to bring some to market. But it's pretty clear that he's killing himself, and is not winning any long-term customers. He gets more orders than he can fill, then sources raw materials and contracts for the labor. Deliveries are always late, and he is never responsive enough. And then when a product fails, the venomous fury on the same boards that launched him is outrageous.

It's easy to conceive a great retail product. It's hard to create, sell and support a retail product.

vt951

No soup for you!!!

87944turbo

His name wouldn't happen to be Danno would it?

PorscheDoc

I think 30% above cost is not a reasonable # for a company to custom fabricate a part for sale. 20% above cost is generally accepted in the business community as "breaking even" with costs of overhead, payroll, etc. If you own a business, and sell parts for anything less than 20%, you are losing money in the end. Another 10% isn't fair for a product that takes some time to R&D, produce, etc, and having the added liability of failure. 30% is fair for just turning general parts. Anything off a CNC is typically 75%+ margin, and sometimes as high as 90% over cost, not figuring in machine time cost. I can tell you that a used CNC machine is very expensive, then you add all the tooling, jigs, etc, and you have to sell a hell of a lot of parts to even pay for the machine. Also with billet arms, consider the size of the aluminum blank that is required to machine out just 1 arm. Check the prices of aluminum if you haven't recently. I agree the tubing models would be much cheaper to build. Should a billet arm be 1500+, yes probably due to costs. Should the tubular arms be slightly less....yes. But not as much as you would think.

If the arms were that easy to produce, everyone with a welder at home would have done so by now. I have a friend who has made his own tubular arms. But this is a guy who designed and built a 5 car double stacker semi hauler starting with a bare moving trailer.

vt951

I would modify this to say that most people with welders at home wouldn't trust their own work enough to make their own control arms. I believe it takes a lot of skill to put down a strong and fatigue-resistant weld that does not weaken the parent metal. My brother in law teaches race car fabrication and welding for a living, and has worked the weld shop at the Indy 500. Not your garden variety welder...

Chads996

Gents - a solution has presented itself to me.

Give me a day or so to research the potential and get back to you all. Nothing is impossible, it simply takes a little longer.

Stay tuned.

C.

smlporsche

One of the best points in this whole thread

Ecos

That would have been me questioning the powdercoating cost. I'm not sure why me asking that would have "got you" since this whole thread is about available control arms being overpriced. I even said I think the $900 he charges is a fair price.

I just feel $75 is too much for powdercoating. The materials cost including electricity would be under $10, probably close to $5. It takes no more than 10minutes to powdercoat that small of parts. Lets minus $10 from $75 which leaves $65. Lets say you do 6 batches an hour (10mins each) so $390 an hour after materials. (The time is not taking into account cure/bake times because thats a simple matter of placing the item in an oven or under ultraviolet light and then removing them once cured) Of course you do have overhead cost like rent, worker expenses, ovens, etc but then so does every business. For example mechanic shops have to buy their own tools, pay rent, etc but yet mechanics are not charging $390 an hour.

One thing that is not taken into account is if the powdercoater is also doing sandblasting, if he is that will easily double the time and cut the profit in half. So lets half the price to $195/hr. Even with a really slow worker working at half pace its still $100/hr.

I'm not trying to say Tim's products are too expensive or any such thing. I think $900 is reasonable for the arms and from browsing sites his products appear to be very good quality and decently priced. In fact I plan on spending money there this spring. I simply think he is being overly generous to his powdercoater....but being overly generous isn't necessarily a bad trait.

If I offended or upset anyone with my posts my apologies.

Tom R.

about thirty years ago my dad and the machinist at the hospital he worked at designed and built a chair for children to be x-ray'd in. While they were doing that, the machinist was also unbeknownst to him was probably building parts for the first MRI machine.

The chair looked like a torture device, sat in our basement for years, and was replaced by a simple board with velcro.

they tried marketing it, and i was around when they spoke to people about pricing it. the rule of thumb was 7x materials cost.

it was only a few pieces of wood put together like an electric chair, a turntable with degrees engraved on it, and some legs.

TurboTim

To late.We are in the process of designing some new arms that will use a standard ball joint and be Krylon painted, Mig welded, piles of crap. Hows about $600-700 a set? Start placing your orders guys This is what everyone wants right!!!!!! Lets do it.Sure the ball joint will rust,but it is replacable.The mig welds should be strong enough and who needs powdercoating since paint is cheap.Hell yes.We got a winner here.


BTW,this was a joke so dont call in placing orders for cheap arms because we dont have any.