RotaryVillain

"I'd actually place money my exhaust flows better based on the mufflers they use, but I don't care enough to prove it."



So first you say you WOULD put $ on it, then you say (in the same sentence) you wouldn't? I'm confused,lol



Did it ever occur to you that Perhaps they were going for a good balance between flow, durability of the material, and sound?

How about you "put $" into doing a dyno comparison test utilizing on each exhaust (on the same car of course) and subsequently dynoing it. or ANY kind of comparison test using some other variable....to then be able to PROVE something other then "mine flows better because i said so!"



until THEN all you have are claims.



Unfortunately for YOU I place my confidence in Jim Mederer (who is an actual engineer I believe) and Racing Beat which btw has Much more experience building/racing/tuning Rx-7's then I'm sure you happen to have,unless your project car has more extensive engineering then this. http://www.racingbeat.com/FRrotary.htm



http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/displayPag...urai&bhcp=1

Rob x-7

ok so you made your own CAI in 2 hours with $35 worth of materials.



Lets break it down a bit as if you were a real business, never mind the overhead that goes with running a legitimate business.



The cost $35- I guess in your world you would give things out AT COST, and not make a penny on materials?

The time to weld and assemble the parts- I guess you dont place any value on your time at all? Lets say you want to pay yourself

$20 an hour, so now we are at $75.



You have to source a air filter, lets just leave that out for now.



Now you have to pack and box the thing up for sale, so I dont know what it costs to have someone custom print boxes or what kind of quantity, but lets say you had a sigh shop make you something to stick on a box, so figure $5-$10 for a nice box and some packing, and another $20-$30 for a printed label., now we are at $100-$115



Now you need instructions, ok so you print these out on your computer that I guess you dont have to pay for, you dont pay for paper, you dont pay for ink, and you dont pay electric to run it and wear and tear on your printer?



Ok now its time to ship these things to the store, have to get more boxes so you can ship a bunch of them at once, maybe even put them on a pallet to a distruibitor, have you seen the price lately to ship a pallet by truck or boat?



Now again never mind that you need a location to do all this, so lets say your renting a shop, electric, insurance, workers comp/insurance, and all that other good stuff.



Get the idea yet?

jwteknix

double ouch

Nateb123

Beautifully put. Let's not forget two major drains of funds for tuning shops though: motorsports and promotion. Showing up at the Tokyo Auto Salon or SEMA with something new takes a big chunk of change. You need to get the car, pay workers money to build and tune the car (and not much of that tuning results in new products), you then have to rent the space at the convention, pay to haul employees, cars and products, etc. You pay for hotel rooms and then pay to haul them all back. Maybe the car that was built is a race car, then you pay for a driver, fees to the racing organization, repairs, transport. Spreading those cost over each product made, be it an exhaust or CAI or whatever, still amounts to more money on the final sticker price. Honestly, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that these businesses don't exactly have fat profit margins.

TheRX7Project

The $35 was including the cost of a filter, tubing, paint, and a rubber grommet for the PCV hose.



Actually, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I did make a few more intakes for people on one of the Focus boards a few years back. I sold them at just above cost ($40), even donated one to the website for a raffle in exchange for an ad space on the site. The "cost" of my time was made up for in the enjoyment the other people got from using my intake. I painted them up real nice, even made a logo and everything. I marketed them as "Anti-market" parts, for those tired of paying the huge cost for aftermarket parts. Got me banned from a different Focus site, since FocusSport was their main sponsor. AFAIK, everyone who got one of my intakes is still using it, save for the guy who accidentally lowered his car down onto it while doing a tune up (and asked me to make him another).



I understand, they gotta make their money. They're just not getting it from me. The sheople believe their product is "so much better" than anything they could make, because they have all this money into making it. I'll buy anything I can't make, or anything I can't make for cheaper than what it's being sold for. When it's something I CAN make myself, I'll keep my money.

Rob x-7

nateb- those points were in my first post, my second post dealt with the manufacture and distrubution









so by your very own words you "sold" your stuff at cost and did not get a penny for your time, well if you were a business that would not last very long. My points were that for a item like a CAI that you think is such a rip off when you break it down as a legitimate business then $200 dont seem so bad after all.

The only way you can sell that CAI for cheap is to hire substandard labor in Taiwan or China.



And lets not get started on China, those **********ers are going to kill us all one day with thier tainted goods, now mother ******* baby formula that they KNEW was no good is out there poisoning babies!!!!!!!!!!!!



Keep supporting that **** then when you are standing on the corner wondering why you have no job and they took your house remember that its consumers who want cheap cheap cheap is what is killing our economy.

phinsup

Abso-*******-lutely I won't step foot in a Walmart and unless I simply cannot find a US made alternative I refuse to buy chinese made crap, even if it costs me a couple bucks more I know it will last longer and I put food on some US citizens table.

TheRX7Project

I am that way with big-ticket items. TV's, (new) cars, pretty much anything I'll be spending a lot of money for I want to buy American.



But if I just need some garbage bags or paper towels or something, I can live with Wal-Marx.

Rob x-7

walmart is killing our communities, encouraging thier employees to go on welfare because they dont want to pay them or give them health care. They get tax abatements from towns to set up walmarts then it closes up all the smaller guys.

Walmart is one place I will never, ever, shop.

1988RedT2

Truly, when it comes to the sorry state of our economy, "we have seen the enemy, and he is us!" When we allow businesses to move their manufacturing overseas to take advantage of exploitative labor policies and give us "Made in China" merchandise, we should slap them in the head and say "No way!" Instead, we as a nation have embraced the exodus of manufacturing jobs and rewarded corporate greed with eager buyers of cheap imported goods.



You still have a choice, but maybe not for much longer. It's time to take a stand! Buy American!