Ready to go!

This part is ready to have the tooling made, if there is enough interest!

FootrestRubberPhoto2

FootrestRubberCADImage

As a first move forward in the Ukraine setup might be this prewar kick-start/gear-change rubber B60/2, which for at least twenty years has been sold under this part-number with a closed end… which is completely wrong! And yes, I realise that the ‘script’ is slightly different to the original, but that is intended, for my own ‘protection’ of intellectual property. The original rubber was for both applications and was OPEN-ended and as such, I will be selling them in pairs, for around £11,00.  I shall be getting the tooling together to make those soon, hopefully I will be able to sell a few, too, as the tooling is not cheap for injection-mouldings…And so the parts will also not be ‘cheap’, as a result of low-volume, high tooling cost and high quality of the material used. Unfortunately, most people only see the ‘price’, which has to be a reflection of the effort required, firstly to make an authentic product and the tooling-cost to achieve an end, without the prospect of selling ten thousand a year…

Nevertheless, I shall continue in this ‘vein’, the next products being probably top and bottom yokes and links for all the Webb forks, rear stands as original-looking as possible, some Miller electrics that might be interesting, mudguard-sets complete with stays that will actually FIT and be right for the year and model of bike etc. etc..

This has become a sort of  ‘Crusade’ in my semi-retirement, to right the ‘wrongs’ of the belief that we simply have to ‘make do’ with the crap that is on offer and people like Mike at Groves serve us up with (or what he is served up with). If HE doesn’t have the clout to get things made properly, then who else has? The problem is that he is a business man with LITTLE or NO INTEREST AT ALL in the bikes or their users and their problems, if it does not serve his purpose of making a profit to stay in business. Such a shame!

The same appears to be the case for the Velocette Owners Club Spares Scheme, but for a different reason (I suspect). Every other marque seems to have a working and profitable spares scheme, what is wrong with the Velocette Club scheme?? Why does it not make a profit? They seem to insist on remaining so far removed from the modern needs (like being ABLE to order per email and ACCEPT PAYMENTS quickly and conveniently) and requirements of the Velocette owners as to be worse than pre-historic in their methods. Sorry guys, this is the 21st Century already! All the dealers and producers of the parts are only interested in the money that they expect to be able to earn from the rich bastards that have old bikes (who have for years to put up with poor service and parts), but that our own spares-scheme also has to rub salt in the wound? In fact I am sure that many owners buy from ‘other suppliers’, purely because they can’t be bothered to take three weeks of backwards and forwards to achieve anything with the Club.

THAT is why I am disappearing to to the arse end of the universe to change things, maybe only one-at a-time, back to what they ought to be – as they ‘were’. Will you be ‘there’ to support me? I doubt it. SO many still live in the seventies and expect to pay only pennies for hard-earned graft for their bikes that are now worth twenty times what they got for them only ten years ago. So I have no intention. wish or hopes of ever getting rich from the tight-asses that I see, begrudging the postage on headlamp-clips (only a few quid), which protect their now over £200-worth of headlamp shell.

You know what? I don’t care, I will STILL make the stuff that I do, because it has to be done, and I don’t give a damn that 90% of the owners of Velocettes are too to tight to want to pay a realistic price for stuff that is of BETTER quality, than the worn-out SHIT that they still use (and continue to buy cheap and useless replacements for) and endanger their won (and possibly their loved ones’) lives with.  (Oh, she unfortunately died in the accident, but the brakes were ORIGINAL!)

Oh yes, there are a few brake-shoes and other parts that I am interested in making, too, but will they ever be bought by  bunch of people that I still see coming to my workshop asking for used chains and absolutely original exhausts from the fifties, but only willing to part with pennies?

I’ll be honest with you now… If I think that the parts that I make, will be used on a bike that will never see the road, I am inclined to refuse to sell them. I am not really interested in the  parts merely being moved form ‘my box’ into ‘your box’ of bits, unless it is going to be USED. Does that make sense?? You might just as well buy the CRAP that comes from other sources, if all it is going to do is it in your bloody living-room for the rest of its days.

I make BIKE-PARTS and not some decorative embellishment to Heaps of  Scrap-Metal on private display, without function or appreciation beyond their intrinsic ‘value’

Sorry, it had to be said.

© peter gouws 2014

Made on a mac