Cylinder kits a cottage industry

[mawso]

With two cylinders due for release from Harry Barlow & Ron Moss soon and a thread I'd read about Casa 210's it got me wondering just how many of these kits are actually sold. Do they sell enough to cover the design/tooling costs...suppose they do eventually if they keep producing and selling them.

The TS1 is the best seller and has been in production since 1986, so what figures have they reached? How many TS200's were sold before they finished and concentrated on 225's.

The Challenger kit, does anyone know of one still on the road? Chiselspeed bought the rights from Harry Barlow correct?

How many RT's has 'M' got out there and how many GT's did RT produce?

If it took AF 25 years to sell a few thousand I can't see how a business decides it makes good sense to design and develop something like the Super Monza and all the labour/time/tooling that goes with it...Targa Twin included.

[Supereibar]

Stu, I called Airsal (RB20, 22 & 25) they are about 20 miles away from Barcelona, in Centelles, and they gave me the whopping number of 25.000,00€ quote just to create the mold/patron/whatever its called for a standard cylinder. The RB alone costs twice that much! From then on its 100€ per cylinder and 80€ per piston. Vertex does their pistons.
If my mathematics aren't wrong, it takes 250 sales to overcome the molds or patron costs. Once thats paid in full, you are set to go. The molds are yours. You can keep making as many cylinders as you like, obviously the pistons are made in Italy, but it is all profit from there on the kit side.

J.

[stafford]

Think if memory serves the challenger kit was originally designed by BOB MONKHOUSE and chiselspeed took the kit over and developed it further ,ive got a barrel somewhere and i think TREV HARRISON still has one on his sprint bike

[turbovan]

Yea iv got a The Challenger kit on the road running fine

[Bilko]

I often think about this and how it must be a very brave move by someone to design a kit (or anything for that matter) and put up the initial outlay, which I presume can be a fortune. Then it has to sell before they get anything back and sell more without ever making vast profits.

Dealers, large and small who make the step forward have some balls and without them, I don't know where we'd be.

[Supereibar]

Yep I know of another dealer who is morgaging his house in order to produce his next project... That is love.

J.

[Rich_T]

I don't think you're a million miles off.

There were 500 GT kits produced, break even was at 300 kits. The biggest market was the UK (430-ish), followed by Germany (50-ish) then USA (20-ish) although this is largely based on how you promote the product and what the features are etc (GT was only small block so it did have some market limitations, particularly not fitting into a suitable racing class).

I worked with a CAD engineer on the original GT kit, he cost me about 1.5K to sit with him and transfer my sketches to Solidworks. I taught myself SW so this is not a cost that will repeat again. The GT tooling was very expensive (almost double what I'd pay now!) but I made it back by DIY casting and fettling.

If the new GT kit were built it would come in at about £433 which includes the head and a truely fantastic 5 axis CNC machined iron liner. The entire thing is built out (ie, I don't have to speed weekends in the foundry). After a few discussions with people I reckon a repeat of the standard exhaust (not the one in the avatar) would be more appealing to the market.

There are some swings and roundabout in all of the costs (for example the head is working out at a whopping £47, yet the tooling is almost half what I paid previously!) so clearly there are some areas to work on.

When you create detailed Bill of Material spread sheets to tot up the true cost of things and the margins required you'll be surprised how quickly things spiral up. I'm please that this thread discusses these type of issues and it is clear that most of you appreciate the work that goes into it.

Through this type of project I'd expect in the region of £25k to get the ball rolling. Economies of scale in purchasing are another area too, but going down this route sucks out the money pretty quick to (like Renton, or was it Spud, in Train Spotting says, " It's a f**king tight-rope man")

It takes some balls to put down 25k odd with the risk that you might produce a complete lemon! Add on to this, the same 25K would save you about 60k in interest if you took it off your mortgage instead of messing around with scooters.

[drunkmunkey6969]

Add on to this, the same 25K would save you about 60k in interest if you took it off your mortgage instead of messing around with scooters.

Good point, well made.

[soulsurfer]

Rich, I guess you don't factor your time into the finances either, or do you?
Thank f@@k for the day job eh?

[stokky]

YUP, ive got a challenger kit on the road.
on its 3rd overbore mind !