Quote:
Originally Posted by dropnosky
I 2nd this. I have some experience with plastic roto-mold construction, and even though its a totally different medium, the construction of a precision mold is not cheap. 10 to 20K minimum, and that would be a much simpler mold than something for cast aluminum.
Also, question on the custom head. For a custom head, would it not be completely machined out of a block of aluminum? I figure for something like that you would start with a blank of raw material, and machine it to specs, you wouldn't be casting something new first I don't think.
To cast a complete bell housing, you need to create a complex mold, followed by lengthy machining process. By the time you are done, it would be 20-30 times the price than just adapting something else, or another chassis transmission to the application.
Im not sure its a totally realistic idea for this, you would need a very large group of people to pony up a very large collection of cash for an extremely complex, completely untested product that requires many many steps in construction.
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It really depends on the market. Many prototype heads are cast. Some of that is to check out how it would hold up for production. Also, at a certain point it is more cost effective to cast, than machine even in low volumes. Depends on size and complexity of the part. My overall point is that there is an itnital cost with casting, ie the molds. That cost has to be amortized over the lot or number of produced units. The cost of machine a flywheel housing as I remeber wasn't very cost prohibative. Still the $600 offer on the table has scared many away. It is probably fairly reasonable, given low volume etc. There was talk about importing trans from India. I don't know if any figures ever came of that.
Tom