We're still interested and still working on the job. Max has been kept really busy lately on a wide variety of projects and only has so many clock cycles to spare. That's why I'm stepping in here - I'm giving Max a hand.
We did some homework to see *exactly* what material and *exactly* what heat-treat and *exactly* what diameter to use. The difference between the two ODs on metric or inch tubing is not something that can be just handwaved away, as the stiffness of the bar is a function of a power of the OD - so stiffness is *very* sensitive to OD. We had to determine just how much difference there was between the metric and standard steels in terms of bar stiffness to make sure that using standard steel didn't compromise the product.
We are focussing on quality here. We don't want to go through all this trouble and make a substandard bar. We're also effectively doing R&D here on the potential for making bars for other makes and models of vehicle - if this goes well, we may well expand the product line to other vehicles, or offer multiple ODs in your fitment to allow more fine tuning of the car.
Max intends on getting the revised quote (for the inch steel) from the supplier this week, but he has other jobs competing for his attention. I *do* know that he really wants to pull this job off; you guys have been good to work with.
What would really help us is a count of the number of people who are *serious* about getting this bar. I understand that it's tough to commit when we don't have the price finalized, so I'm not looking for a binding commitment at this point. But there is a big difference between 10 serious people, 100 serious people, and 1000 serious people.
In particular, if the only way we can offer a reasonable price is to make quantities of 200 bars (the case with the metric steel; we expect the situation to be much improved with the standard steel) then the size of the market will determine if we do the job or not. If there's 200 firm buyers, we'd do it for sure. At 10, almost certainly not.
Have you got an idea of how many people we're talking about at this stage?
