For starters, it is extremely difficult to give an update on something as complex as a turbo kit. We are dealing with 9 different suppliers to bring this whole thing together. Everything is moving forward, but it is not easy, nor is it simple.
We have 7 all new cast pieces being made for this turbo kit: 3 new turbo manifolds and 4 all new turbine outlets. Most people have no clue how much it costs for mold fees alone for just one cast piece. The mold fees take 100's of units to pay for themselves. Multiply that by 7, and we have a huge capital investment. With this much capital tied up in this venture, there is no reason for us to just run away with people's money.
In fact, we have not required payment to even be on the Group Buy. People have put money down by choice and those that paid in full are entitled to a full refund if they don't want to wait or change their minds. For layaway plans, however, it takes a lot more time and effort to manage and track payments made over a long period of time, and it doesn't necessarily speak to how serious someone is when they only put 20% down on something. People default on loans all the time for various reasons, and something like a layaway plan makes it too easy to pull out of if there is no cancellation clause. Since it requires a signed contract, the person entering the agreement recognizes that there is a penalty for pulling out. In hindsight, I almost feel like we made it far too easy to withdraw from the group buy and we should have taken our competitor's hard line of a non-refundable deposit.
The philosophy behind what we are doing here is not to rip people off, but provide the best possible kit with the best value so that you don't have to spend $10k to get an awesome twin turbo kit for your 370z/G37. We also have 5 different down pipe variations in the works to meet different needs (right hand drive, V-band, standard, catted and non-catted).
Even still, it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to put something of this magnitude together. Add in my recent health issues, and things have become very complicated and even more challenging. Most people that have gone through my surgery would still not be back to work, yet here I am.
As for the frequency of updates, keep in mind with how many vendors are involved with this product, sometimes it takes over a week just for us to get an update from them. Rest assured that we are trying our hardest to wrap this up and put this behind us.
Now, for the "update" part:
Our Mandrel Bender is up and running, but cannot bend the material we had gotten without the material breaking. So, we had to get the material heat treated before we can even bend it. That means working with yet another company that we don't have direct control over. Fortunately, we were able to get the heat treated piping in this afternoon so we can get back to bending pipes. We also discovered that we need more dies to do some of the other pipes as well.
For the cast pieces, we got samples to check and found some inaccuracies with several of them. Those have been fixed and sent back to get redone. This means that the molds had to get re-worked so that the parts will be in spec. That was a few weeks ago and things are back on track.
Sam
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