Folks, don't worry. I'm still working on it, sort of. Dr. Detroit is still
very much locked in his underground lab.
As you may remember, I wanted an overbuilt brake system for series axles
that would use easily sourced parts. Where I ended up is kinda weird.
Well, I still have a very much working proto, using a 77 chevrolet caliper,
Ford F 350 rotors, and a master from an LTD with four wheel diskies. This is
a braking system fit for a vehicle with a GVWR of about 6500 lbs, and a 1
ton capacity. 8500lbs. That's a lot of 88" rovers. It might be overkill for
anything other than Valdez.
The only problem is that the massive assembly does not fit behind the stock
wheel. I have two routes I can follow - change the wheel design, which is
costly, or simply go for a smaller rotor and caliper, which is definitely
not a big deal, except the Land-Rover wheel hub is fiendishly huge, and I
haven't found a suitable part. Of course, I could spin up some custom alloy
steel wheel hubs, and use Toyota 4x4 rotors, but that would cost oodles in
machining costs, which is free for me, but damn expensive to mass produce
(read expensive for YOU). I have thought about reworking the L-R hubs to
include a rotor mount, but they are soft cast iron, and I can't work them at
all.
I had a really good design using a mix of all kinds of parts, which are
still held secret, but it needed a custom hub. The material costs were
astronomical for my very tight budget at the time, and it stopped me dead.
Hubs are relatively easy to spin up, all flat surfaces, can be out of mild
steel, relatively few close tolerances.
The crushing truth is that 720$ canadian is damn good for a complete kit.
The last prices I had were about 300$ of parts, calipers, rotors, bolts,
studs, etc. That's not including raw materials, and machining. of course, I
could build one for about 400$, but where's the profit margin in that case?
I'd have to make at least 150$ a kit to break even.
_____________________
The range rover axle thing looked like a done deal, but all kinds of little
things are going wrong in the sale of the parts, and I might simply get the
heck out of that situation, and try and improve the stocker L-R axles. I'll
know in the next month or so.
J-L
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jun 06 2001 - 23:48:29 EDT