Projects Moment of Truth - New Mfg Buick Style Brake Drums - What would you pay?

NINJA EDIT #2:

Here's the link to RocketHub:

Keep HotRods Rolling

They will be doing the logistics behind crowd funding this project.

I need forty (40) guys to go there and commit to buying a pair of these drums.

Once that happens, I'll cut the foundry loose, and we'll be rolling.

Nothing can happen until I've got those forty guys though.

NINJA EDIT #1:

OK, after hearing all the feedback from everyone, adjusting my design accordingly, and finding a foundry man who looked malnourished, I've found a way to build these for $250 a piece.

Here's a screen cap of the new design:



They are essentially identical in exterior appearance to the stock 45 fin Buick drums.

They will be made such that you can buy a set of Bendix backing plates from Speedway (or anyone else) and bolt them up to a '37-'48 Ford car spindle using '37-'48 car hubs on the inside of the drum. No machine work required on the drums at all. No spacers or shims, etc on the spindles or machine work on the hubs.

Retail price will be $250 each.

Now, to the br*** tacks.

I need forty (40) guys to commit to buy a pair of these drums in order to get the castings made.

If I set up the deal on RocketHub or some similar crowd funding site, nobody will be charged until the funding drive is done and we've got enough people lined up (that way some guys aren't on the hook for weeks while we wait on the last few to show up).

So, what say you guys? There are 38 of you up in the poll who said you be interested in them if they were no more than $250. If every one of you guys jumps in, we only need to find two more and it's a GO.

Are you guys in, or what?

ORIGINAL POST ---------------------------------------------

I've designed a new aluminum/iron hybrid 12" brake drum styled like the 57-64 Buick drums, but with a few changes to the Buick design that will make them much more usable for hotrodders.

For instance, the center holes will be cast very small so that we can machine them to whatever ID you need to fit your hubs.

Similarly, since we will be machining virgin castings, we can drill them for any bolt circle you want.

Since fitting the older wire wheel hubs inside the original Buick drums is an iffy proposition at best, I have redesigned the inner mounting surface of these drums to accept hubs up to about 9" in diameter, and increased the size of the outer wheel mounting pad to ~9" as well, to properly support any wheel you might want to run.

The rear labyrinth seal area will also be widened so the end user won't need to machine this area for clearance to fit the more popular backing plates.

Picture of the solid model (still subject to change, but you get the idea):



So, there's my pitch, now comes the question.

Who a****st you would find these new drums to be worth $350-$400 a piece?

That's finish machined to fit your hubs with whatever bolt pattern you need already in place. Open the box and install them on your backing plates.

So what do you all say at this price?

 

I can't see anybody paying anywhere close to that for the 90 fin drums when good originals can be bought for about $100 a pair.

If you are going to make weird mods to the original design (offset, mounting surface diameter, etc.) you should probably put a set together with some commonly-available hubs to show how your design works.

All that said, even if they were perfect new 45 fin drums with Ford-style hubs installed I doubt you'll sell many at $350 each. There's too many old parts still available.

 

Orginals is the first chosie, but if i was to buy the $250 is price...

 

OK, so help me out here, are you saying the 45 fin are the more sought after design? 'Cause the fin count on the drums I do is entirely arbitrary. The above design actually has 60 fins, not 90.

The mods aren't weird, they're the same ones everyone undertakes to use Buick drums in the first place.

Everyone has to sleeve their hubs to mount the stock drums as it is now, 'cause the stock center hole is way too big. With my drums you'd just measure the hub and include that info with the order. We'd cut the drums to match when we drill the bolt pattern.

The inside offset is exactly the same as the stock Buick so you can use the same backing plates and everything. The only thing I changed was to take some of the cone shape out of the inside surface so you can run a bigger dia hub.

They would be exactly like the stock Buick where everyone likes them, but different in the areas you have to modify anyway to help make those mods easier to carry out. In fact, whatever "mods" you'd need would be done at the time of mfg, so you wouldn't have to do anything to them at all.

Open the box, put them on your car.

That's the idea anyway.

Now the trick will be getting the price down to where people can handle it.

 

I'm not interested at any price because I don't own/plan to own anything they would be put on. That being said, I wouldn't touch the manufacture of a "modified" brake part as long as there is a God! The first ***hole that kills someone with one (2) of these on his car opens you up to every sleezebag lawyer in the world. Yup, Hupy & Abraham will be knockin' on your door!
Great idea in 1960, love the looks, but (IMHO) the time to do something like this is long gone. Sorry

 

Isn't Wilsons welding already pretty much all over this?

 

Can you make sure the inside lip is low enough that it doesn't contact the lip on the '40 backing plate? That is one more thing you usually have to machine on the factory units.

Ballsy endeavor for sure. The product liability scares me a bit, but it definately looks doable. Who dares wins. The guys who don't dare don't get ****.

Good luck, -Abone

 

Pretty sure Wilsons makes just the backing plate @ $450 / pair. I`m thinking the OP is wanting to manufacture the drums.

 

I wouldn't go 800 a pair for brake drums.
Not saying it wouldn't cost that much to make them but that's nuts.
I wouldn't go 400 a pair on them even if they jumped off the ups truck right onto my car all by them selfs and tickled my *** while doing it.

Now I might go 500 a pair fully loaded with hubs backing plates and fitted shoes.

 

Not worried about that.

People who freak out about product liability shouldn't manufacture things. I'm over it.

Do good work, take precautions, make contingency plans, make parts.

Besides, if they took me for every cent I have, they'd come away stone cold hundredaires.

That all said, it appears that people begging for Buick drums to be reproduced are mostly talking out of their ***es.

Not sure how anyone expects to have brand new made-for-you parts done for less (or even the same) money as 50 year old used parts from the junkyard though.

Also, Wilson's Welding has been saying that their Buick drums are "coming soon" for about ten years now. They're not coming. They're not even breathing hard yet.

I'd say he's found the same thing I just did. That nobody wants them bad enough to pay what it will cost to make them today.

Oh well. I'll just have to either find a way to make them cheaper, or move on to another project.

We shall see.

 

All those whining about the cost of the new ones will be able to come back and whine some more in a few months.... 'Cos now that you've put your solid model up on the interweb thingy the little yellow blokes in China will be popping these out by the boat load in about 6 months from now!


All joking aside , I can see a market for them but I also wonder if you should do the costing exercise on selling them "As Cast" and leave the machining to the care of the buyer/installer ?

Guys doing the conversion with original Buick drums have to machine those to suit so these would not be much different . It would mean less tooling/machining costs for you and may loosen some more short arms from deep pockets ?


just my 2 bits ...



.

 

45-fin, only.

 

Heh. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened to me, though if they can do it from a single JPG image, I'll tip my hat to the commie bastids.

On the machine your own thing, the deal is that having the castings done is actually the most expensive part. Machined here or DIY isn't going to move the price point down far enough to fix the customer/mfg disconnect we've got right now.

Noted, and easy to fix.

 

just out of curiosity, how many people on this site modify, or buy modified brake parts . disc brakes on early ford axles.... disc brakes on rear axles that were previously drums.... hydraulics replacing mechanical? something chopped up and welded I could see, but there a number of aftermarket parts used by lots of people that work. I think common sense dictates the use of a product.

 

I think even if they were 45 fin they would appeal to a small crowd at those prices. I have a set of orig 45 fin drums that are polished and only gave 300 for the pair. Never had a hard time finding good used ones when I needed them at 200 a pair. I love them but not enough to pay those kind of prices. Just another opinion.

 

No need to hedge or apologize, it is honest opinions that I want to hear.

I knew going into this that ~$250/per was going to be the upper limit, but I needed to be sure.

The deal is, doing things as I'd planned, I can't reach that price point, hell $350/per was going to be pushing it.

So, what this tells me is that my original plan smelled funny and must be abandoned.

Now I just need to come up with a better one.

Find some way to still build a part I'm not ashamed to sell, while getting the price down into the $200-$250/per neighborhood.

Like my old man says, "If it was easy they'd have girl scouts out here doin' it!"

 

I'm sure you've put a lot of planning into this part but what I've found when I come up with an idea is the final one is far from the original concept. You concentrate everything on design/***embly but, at least with me, I don't do the cost ****ysis (big work for me meaning just thinking about it) until after I take a little time away and come back and see there's a better and/or more cost effective way of doing it.

Just my thoughts.

 

I would make some geometry changes. I would start the cone from the wheel mounting surface abit bigger in diameter. The 5x 5 1/2 wheels are to big to be supported by the stock surface. Iwould also reduce the drum surface width. 2 1/2 shoes are to wide to be practical. Narrower shoes would be better. The outside lip does not fit in 15" wheels easily. If the drum OD was narrower,wheels would fit easier.

 

Cool stuff for sure. Maybe if you could get a hold of a plant that already casts normal drums and get a special run made. Then machine. My buddy works for a foundry that just does automotive brakes in lower central Alabama. Maybe he'd be a good resource.

 

You might want to think about a whole package with hubs backing plates and the shoes wheel cylinders and all related components that way you can sell a compleat bolt on kit like the fake disc brake in a drum kits those sell for over 1000. I have over that in my setup with Wilson backing plates and hubs

 

yup ,90s are too new and they are fugley...

 

Street Rodders maybe, but Traditional Rodders want the real Buick drums IMO. Bob

 

What are you Traditional Rodders gonna do in fifteen more years when all those now 65 year old wear parts are long gone from the junkyards?

If the only parts permissible on a hotrod were those actually physically manufactured before 1964, your hobby is going to dwindle into nothingness very shortly.

Every year that pool of parts diminishes, and unless guys like me step up and find a way to build similar parts again and make them available new, traditional hotrodding will first become a "gold chainers only" hobby, and then no hobby at all because the "acceptable" parts will all be gone.

Buick only made so many drums between 1957 and 1964, and the only ones left are those that some moldering old car is wearing right now, and you gotta basically kill the car (or convert it to some other hub/brake combo) to harvest those drums. The supply is small already, and getting smaller by the moment.

So I guess you gotta decide whether you want Traditional Hotrodding to be winnowed down to the hardest of the hard core traditionalists all gathered in a single room (because there's so few of you left that can afford it), or a slightly less ******** gathering of millions of regular Joes who can still afford to build cool hotrods because people like me found a way to build new parts and make them available to everyone at a reasonable price.

If that makes me a "streetrodder", so be it, I guess, though I don't think I'm gonna take it as gospel that you're the cat what gets to decide that.

 

Here's some random thoughts I had but I was having trouble organizing them into a congruent post- so I left them random.

Without some of these parts being reproduced our hobby would be very very small and exactly because of the reasons you've stated.

It wouldn't be a case of how to make your parts "cheaper" it's about finding the way to make your parts better for less allowing you to have the parts you're proud of at a price point that makes sense. I'm more than reasonably certain that you can do that by finding the right foundry.


Trying to the cost of things into perspective:
We can get a brand new crate engine for 1500.00
We can get a brand new frame for less than 2000.00
We can get new forged spindles & and axle for less than 1000.00
We can get reproduction ford 9" rear end housing and axles for less than 1000.00
Complete reproduction steel bodies are available too at varying costs that are considerably higher, but in reality there is a high value in that price.

A hot rod needs to stop and hot rodders will always find a way to adapt what's available to do the job. That's how they started adapting juice brakes, Buick drums, and all the other cool tricks.

 

You know that GM had aluminum drums for the rears in the 80s.
I don't know who made them for GM or if GM made them in house , but here's a picture of them.

Then there are guys who rebuild these drums.
Take a look at what they do, the amount of work performed and what they charge.
http://www.gbodyparts.com/product_info.php?products_id=1423
It's got to be cheaper and easier to Start with a new aluminum casting no? Then apply the same process.

 

Here's another place I'd definitely talk to.
I couldn't find any pricing on the product yet, but its been a project of determination and perseverance. If they will share any learning info or manufacturing facility I'm sure it will be valuable. I can't think of a more complicated aluminum drum.
http://www.arrowheadcomponentsinc.com/

 

Good hunting, lots of info in those two links. Maybe cool hand can help the second one?

 

Wow, those Arrowhead guys took on one hell of a complex project there.

Glad to see that they were able to pull it off, though it seems they've gone out of business in the process. I'd very much like to avoid that bit.

Those GBody drums are 9.5" ID, not 12".

Not many newer cars used 12" drums, which is why these Buick drums are so hard to deal with. Most all the parts to make them work are old.

I'll find a way to get this done. The only thing that's happened is that the "easy" way has shown itself to be just too costly.

Gonna have to find an alternate route.

But as you guys have said, it's not gonna be about making them "cheaper", it about finding a combination of process and suppliers that will allow me to make a part that satisfies my own quality concerns while still being salable at a profit at a price that the market will bear.

Many ideas to be run down now, several avenues still open to me, project will continue apace.

I will report back when I've found something worth talking about.

Thank you to all the guys who posted, even the guy who prompted that mini-rant about dwindling parts supply. Any feedback is good feedback when you're wandering in the woods.

 

The hobby is dying. Not only is the supply of parts dwindling but the number of us crazy old coots who participate is also dwindling. Most hotrodders are CHEAP or broke and buy accordingly. The whole premise of hotrodding was to take old cast off cheap cars and improve them with modern technology that could be obtained cheaply from wrecked vehicles. Up until the late 60s, wrecked cars had little value as the technology was changing so fast. Many cars were just left in a field or woods.

Now it's changed to nostalgia rodding where we try to relive the glory days by making vehicles that look like the old cars. Maybe a cast iron drum made to look like the aluminum drum with a jet hot coating would be a possibility.

 

Can you outline your process? Do you intend to cast the ali round an iron casting? This was the original technique. Just pressing an iron liner in won't work.