Column Pod Brainstorming

[einstein57]

Hay guys. Some of you guys may have seen my boost gauge pod and i was wondering what you guys thought about them. Would this be a part you'd be interested in purchasing? Would you want it to be injection molded plastic or ok with fiberglass? Price points? USA or China? And i'm having a custom mount for the AFR gauge that is going to be a stealth mount as well. More on that next month after it gets water jet cut.

In case your wondering it took me at least 14hrs of head scratching, cutting, joining, filling, and sanding to get it where its at. But i'm going to make another one with a better angle and a straighter so i can have a mold made.

[Schnitzer318is]

I like this a lot and if I wasn't already happy with where my gauges were I'd be making this too. Nice work.

[MC Hammered]

That is a nice prototype you hand made.

If you want to get it injected molded the cost of the computer model is $3-5000 and the steel injection mold itself is around $12-15000, however, you do end up with the near perfect color and texture match. Add the cost of production on top of that.

The cheaper route is to vacuum form them using ABS but the end product does not look as good.

In case you were wondering how I came up with these numbers, I made a column pod for my Audi 4 years ago like you did above and it has turned into this: www.podi.ca

[einstein57]

I used to have a New South Performance one on my MK4 jetta and loved the placement. Kinda why i made this one. I did not plan on making a high quality mold for these considering it would be hard for me to sell more then 30 of these a year. There is just is not a market for the e30 community for a high quality boost pod. At least not that i'm aware of. I was going to give mold making a shot. That damn instructables site makes you feel like you can make anything. Lol. But the vacuum molds sound like the most viable option. Thanks for the input. Thats the kinda stuff i'm looking for.

[MC Hammered]

Well I hope there is a market in the e30 world for a quality gauge solution as I plan to release one I designed for the center vent "Alpina style" in 2011.

My designs replace OEM pieces that is why I chose to take the injection mold route, for a less expensive option a vacuum formed pod that you use glue/tape/velco to attach does lower the production costs a lot and the quantity you make to make is lower as well.

If you have any questions about the various processes feel free to email me at winston (at) podi.ca

[einstein57]

Sweet. I'm sure we'll do some business together. The hard part about the e30 market is there are only a hundred or so boosted e30 in existance vs the hundreds of thousand of vw and audis. Much smaller market potential. Not to say they won't sell but you'll probably have to sell them for over 400 in order to recoupe your investment if the are going to work similar to the alpina gauge. I love that multi function digital gauge you have. I'll definitely be recommending them to my customers. Any chance i can get a small batch with my logo on them?

[MC Hammered]

Well the vent setup I have will look similar to an Alpina setup but much more flexible in application as I was hoping to target the racers that need to monitor certain vitals on the car.

My setup will allow you to chose what fixed items you wish to monitor vs. having a preset 4 items like the Alpina setup.

So if you want: boost, AFR, oil temp, oil pressure you can have that combination or if you want oil temp, water temp and Valentine 1 remote display you can have that too.

Until I get the lenses made I won't know where the logo placement will be, but when i do post up pictures of the prototype hit me up again and we can chat about it.