Billet Connecting Rods

[NC Cams]

Regarding low cost race parts:

Over the past 10-15 years or so, the racer has seen a HUGE influx of parts suppliers. Whereas the billet crank and rod business was at one time a very exclusive market where only a few suppliers held sway, now there are a veritable plethora of suppliers.

THis is both good and bad. Good because the competition provides for competitive pricing and accelerated development of "better" parts - bad because there are some new guys out there who are merely copying someone else's work without copying the learning curve.

The days of finding GOOD parts $200-$400 per set cheaper may be gone forever. A main reason is world demand for steel as well as the cost of energy. Take chrome moly steel as an example.

Relatively garden grade 4150 crome moly (crank and billet cam and even billet rod material) has essentially doubled in price over the past 12-15 months. It is up nearly triple of what it was about 2 years ago.

To properly heat treat it will involve multiple heat cycles, preferrably in a special atmosphere. The result is that it costs more to heat treat a set of rods than to simply "recondition" them.

At one time and still, 8620 steel is a material of choice when it comes to making roller race cams. Our experience of late is that the material is barely adeqate anymore. We've had them spall (chunk) within as little as 250 miles of racing service. Hence, you're forced to use CERTIFIED 8620 AQBQ (aircraft quality, bearing quality) steel and that stuff is DOUBLE or more the price of garden variety 8620.

If you REALLY want a good straight durable cam, you talk tool steel. However, with tool steel, you can be talking nearly $300 for just the raw steel billet, no machining nor heat treatment, just a piece of steel. When you finish machining and heat treating and grinding (no small tasks in themselves - ask anyone who machines tool steel), you're talking high buck stuff.

Hardly affordable for the sportsman racer but pretty much MANDATORY for the pro's. At their level, even the best is hardly adequate.

I realize that racing is expensive. I also realize that this high buck stuff is rapidly putting it out of the reach of the common guy. Sadly, racers will spend themselves silly. Having first tried to make a living racing, I learned that the cash flow was essentially in the wrong direction if I raced for a living. That's why I got involved on the supply side - at least the cash flow is in the right direction.

The economics of the business is also why I don't do "sporttsman" type products. Most can ill afford to race and want/need/hope to find suppliers who will "sponsor" their aflicition. It is our policy to help but we "help" by providing the same service and quality of work and level of technology to a sportsman that we'd offer to a NASCAR/NHRA touring pro.

However, speed costs money and this is a business. With nearly a quarter of a million invested in equipment, I can hardly afford to "give away" my services or cut prices so someone who's satisfying their ego racing can race on the cheap at my expense.

The guys who provide budget/imported parts are doing everyone a service. If those prices are still too expensive for your budget/taste, you probably need to find a different hobby.

R/C cars at one time were inexepensive alteratives to real race car parts. Sadly, the megalomaniacs who used to race big cars found the little ones and spent everyone into the poor house there as well. Adreniline, testosterone and ego's do seem to cause racers to do/expect irrational things when it comes to creating and sticking to "budgets" when they get really into hard core racing.

[Verfur]

I would say that one thing most drivers/racers overlook in there quest for speed is " To win the race you have to finish it first" for anthor words still be running at the end of the race. I used to race with a fellow (I machined and built the engines as well as tuned the car" He Drove it" ) that was always talking about what so and so was runnig and how he wished we had the money to run the same junk. My response was so and so was fast but always broke before they finished.

So what I am saying is quality matters.

quality = money = time................ its all in the numbers.

verfur

[zcases]

I would think with something like a con-rod, why try to retrofit something or buy a cheap hobby machine and get set up from the ground up to do this? I wouold think doing the design work and jobbing out the manufacturing to someone with the right machine would be more effective both in quality and time to market, if your really trying to hit the market with something new......

[NC Cams]

When you consider what it costs to set up to machine the first billet rod, drill the first hole, heat treat the first part, and/or buy the first set of rod bolts and/or pin bushing, you categorically can NOT afford to compete with an outfit that is already in the business of making a rod.

Lots of people see how much the rod costs and THINK they can figure out how much is being made on each set and then get the mistaken idea that the vendors are getting rich making the parts. That is hardly the case.

Yes, they can make a lot of rods with their CNC machining centers. When you consider, however, how much the CNC costs to buy, tool and run, they are definitely NOT getting rich off of them. Especially when you consider the development costs and/or the cost of one lost batch of rods that the heat treat guy quenched or tempered improperly.

God bless the heat treaters as, without them, we'd not have steel the is heat treated for hardness or toughness or whatever. HOwever, when they screw something up and offer to do a "free heat treatment" of nearly $12K worth of machined and ground steel that they screwed up due to bad carb and harden (going thru just that escapade now), somebody has to pay and that comes out of the so-called "big profit" that we make on the parts we made.

Racers are always looking for deals, free parts and "help". Sadly, from a business standpoint, they will NOT brag about the good work you do for them (racer secret after all). But they will surely biitch about something that they think is/was wrong even if and especially whent they screwed it up.

Dealing with high strung people is simply part of the process in doing race parts business. However, "sponsoring" a race car is something that is often not well appreciated. And, more often than not, is not going to gain you a lot of new race business - this is especially true if your client has problems that are NOT your fault. You, unfortunately, get painted with their brush with disaster....

By the way and interestingly, racer problems are NEVER the fault of the racer. For the life of me, I can't understand why/how it works out that way????

[zcases]

Well said NC.......the devil of development (or anything else for that matter) is in the details often invisible to the consumer.