Recent Posts

Dang. One set of these were a local snag, the NOS Dunlop GP91TT's. They are a bit old but they are brand spanking new. The Stage6 slicks were on crazy sale, I bought 6 of them, haha.

If I get it built right yeah this should blow the twin out of the water. I am definitely nervous. I have ridden lotsa 2t stuff with the same or more power in the dirt, but in this little frame it will probably be very interesting.

Well this is going together. I machined up a spigot to mount the Mina backing plate for this mina inner rotor MVT kit.



Then this beauty showed up.



R&D Italy R/T 95 Pipe. It's pretty damn nice.. I am having a hard time coming to grips with the fact I have to cut it to get 25ish more degrees of header angle...

So to make sure I don't mess it up and to play around with exhaust calculators I made a nice little sheet of the lengths and diameters.

And I'm not saying you can't believe or state anything, it is entirely your right. I'm simply stating my perspective the way I see it. I don't see this as an argument and if we are heading that way I will just bow out now, not my intent.

Yes, most of the time I make something to a tolerances drawing that an engineer or R&D department have spec'ed out. Sometimes I have to do reworks on things I do because they screw it up. Sometimes I work directly with engineering to make a part how I see fit as long as it works in the application. Sometimes I get to see the application, sometimes the application is half way around the world.

It all depends if i'm doing prototyping or production runs and in the end what the customer wants.

I can tell you this isn't uncommon anywhere, in any industry. I have made aerospace, military, telecom, automotive, marine, bicycle, industrial, navy and medical parts and more. Manufacturing is something I take interest in because it is directly related to what I do every day. And I have no specialty in any of those industries. I just make parts.

I'm trying to get the point across that it's not simply feasable for every company to do everything in house. Sure there are companies that do almost all of it in house, but but they are not "the norm". Snap-On makes their legacy line in house, Haas Machine tools make most of their stuff in house for example.

You are discrediting them indirectly with statements like this.



I will say again, there is a lot more to the manufacturing and distribution world than you are giving credit for. If a company spends 50,000 dollars in R&D on a product but can't actually make it does that mean it's not a worthwhile product?


Lets take a look at this for example.

Polini is an established and respected company.
www.scooterswapshop.com/products/polini-tach-dual-temp-gauge

Here is the original of that gauge made by Koso
www.amazon.com/Koso-America-Revolution-Tachometer-BA052001/dp/B072LCKQT2

Do you think if Polini made a small batch of 1000 of those after making the molds for the plastics and rubber, designing the circuit boards, programming could touch the price point of Koso? No. That is why they got Koso to make the gauge for them. Is Polini a bad brand or a "Middleman"? No. In fact IIRC the Koso branded gauge was more expensive than either the Stage6 or Polini version.

Malossi X360 intake is another great example. Polini also sells a version. As Does TPR.

And sure I 100% agree some companies do just rebrand other things, like my Polini gauge example. But what I am trying to say is the BIG guys do this, and they don't make everything they sell "in house". It's simply not feasable for them to do so without their products doubling in cost.

Again tho, we aren't agreeing and seem to be talking in circles and i'm trying to build a motor on the kitchen counter before my girlfriend gets home...

They are very much around. They are very much releasing new products. They just released a new RC-One flange mount 70cc cylinder the other day. They are owned by Streetbuzz and which owns Maxiscoot/Scooter Attack. They also own MXS and some other brands. You can order basically direct from them if you so choose.

I'm fairly confident Athena makes the S6 flange mount cylinders. But Athena doesn't make that product on their own line. I think your vision of how manufacturing is kind of skewed. Most companies simply don't have the means to make the stuff they sell, if they did, or invested into it the product would be double the cost. Just like most manufacturers lack the distribution side, R&D or brand image.

If we move out of scooter stuff into bicycles. Do you know who makes well over half of ALL the bicycle frames in the world? Giant. Not just bike frames, but full end product in a bike box ready to be shipped to customers. Why? Because the infrastructure to make all of these parts is expensive, and huge bike companies (Trek, Scott, Gary Fisher, Colnago to name a few) could not produce the same product for the same cost. Their end cost for you, the user, would double.

They have ratio calulators on phones now, probably premix apps too. You can go to a station, put in xxx fuel and put that into the app. I carry a syringe with me with a piece of hose zip tied to the end, works great for precise oil measurement.