Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 12:04:28 -0400
Reply-To: Patrick Dooley <pdooley@GTE.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Patrick Dooley <pdooley@GTE.NET>
Subject: NOS for horsepower
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Just a thought, not to undermine the vendors, but a NOS fogger kit for a
vanagon application would run about 300-400 dollars. You could dial in what
kind of horsepower you wanted, to a reasonable point. This would be useful
for short bursts of acceleration, not for top speed or towing. The fogger
kits are fairly reliable, not like the old "dry" systems that tend to melt
pistons.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Anderson <vwbus@MINDSPRING.COM>
To: Vanagon@VANAGON.COM <Vanagon@VANAGON.COM>
Date: Wednesday, April 15, 1998 10:46 PM
Subject: Re: Price breakdowns On The ECO/Rocker "KIT" and Comments about
ZOOMIN!
>>I have dealt with Kyle and find him to be professional, courteous and
>>gives excellent customer service. I will suggest that all of us
>>Vanagoneers think twice about possibly flippant derogatory remarks
>
>
>I just want to say that I don't think the origional question was entirely
an
>attack on Kyle but rather an observation of the ludicrous pricing. I had
>thought the same when the opportunity presented itself, but I guessed
>exactly as Kyle expounded that in fact the cost of the parts was a major
>part of it with only a reasonable profit for him. Yes $450 for a set of
>rockers is outlandish, pure highway robbery, I could have them carved from
>billet for less, yes $50 to cut some push rod tubes is insane as well, and
>yes those are believeable prices from Berg. $250 for a $5 prom that for
any
>other application would be $100, ludicrous as well, BUT this is a rare
>application with a very narrow sales base, and to recoup the investment in
>designing the prom (assuming there was one, and we all aren't fooled and it
>isn't simply like a Digifant Jetta prom or something) $250 becomes
>reasonable. This is all sort of like the G60 aftermarket was in the first
>year or so, for the Corrado it amazingly came down, even with a relatively
>minute sales base, compared to Vanagons, but there were a lot more G60
>owners (who mostly actually wanted to be driving M3's or 944S's but
couldn't
>afford them) who were likely to want to modify their vehicles for power as
>compared to Vanagon owners, and the cars were newer. I don't figure there
>will be a rush on Vanagon performance kits, competition from Neuspeed,
>Autotech, Autothority, and Superchips all driving the cost down, so like
>every thing marketed to a market niche, if you want it, pay for it, if not,
>hey that K&N is only like what $30 :-) And on an aside Mark Stephens wants
>a purely ludicrous amount for his worked over performance waterboxer heads
>(of dubious quality if my stock rebuilds from him are indication) so the
>price of Kyle's bolt ons comes a bit more into line with reality. Still an
>ingenious type could probably have those rockers carved out on his own from
>bug parts, to me the 2.1 and the bug were interchangeable except for the
>screws, but I did no close inspection, merely decided to use a solid shaft
>from an old T3 in place of a galled one in the '87 and noted that I nearly
>mixed up the rockers a few times. There are a whole crapload of ratio arms
>out there folks, hell even the stock VW, one of those crossover T1 guys
>should probably start looking into that a bit, I mean use elephant ears and
>the screw point is moot. Of course with the kit you are paying for
>development, and you gotto get that ECU somehow.
>
>John
>vwbus@mindspring.com
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