Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob@RBTurbo
We actually have another RHD installer who said this much effort was not required after we sent this picture, but they still said some was for sure. Hopefully he will share what he had to do for the shield as well, but this one did look tastefully modified. As for a RHD specific design, we may do something but it is up in the air at the moment. A lot will probably pend on how many actually join and follow through with payment, and those who are willing to flip the extra cost for the heat shield. We often find the consumer these days are looking for the cheapest offering regardless of the scenario and demand tapers significantly when you make extra high quality components that obviously come at an extra cost. If demand is low for the heat shield and we opt out of a RHD specific shield worse case you know it can work with around 15 minutes of cutting efforts. But once again if there is some even remotely fair amount willing to pay for the extra bits we can follow through with a one designed specifically for RHD as pictured.
More on your thought in the in the next response.
The heat shield certainly adds a bit of taste to the silicone outlet kit. However as we are the now 3rd silicone outlet offering, with a proclaimed 250+ unit sales by only one (of the other two) offering; neither of them offer such a shield.
On top of our shield, we have routed our outlets in a custom fashion as far away from the manifolds as possible. If you search pictures of the routes of the other competitive offerings you will see that between the turbos they curve upward very close to the turbo manifolds as this is what the OEM pipe does, and that OEM pipe is what those vendors used for a sample to replicate into a production silicone. We have seen and heard of many failures of that route, and the failure always seems to be in this area where it curves upward in between the turbos.
Then when you search our offering you'll see we did put a bit more thought into them to keep them safer than the competition by keeping as much distance as possible with the heat shield is an added benefit. We've also sold the heat shield to some others (a la carte) who have went a step further and got it thermal coated which is desirable surely, but something like this adds cost even more.
At the end of the day we are trying to offer what we believe is a competitive priced product that goes a bit above and beyond the others and in this case actually works with RHD cars, but there comes a point you can easily price yourself out of a sale because ultimately the consumer will pay the least they can for items- typically disregarding that you are getting higher quality components, more hardware, or a product that actually fits the application with the purchase. This said we are making the shield optional, as competitively speaking it is non-existent- but we would recommend it nonetheless. We'd also recommend taking any extra install or thermal protection measure thought to be appropriate, just as our competition would recommend.
Rob
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I'm probably in the minority, but would be happy to pay for a shield which was nicely fabbed up and which is proven to fit out of the box in a RHD application. I do understand the majority of your business will be the young kids who want a BFYB mod and want the cheapest option available, but there are still plenty of guys willing to pay for nice bits of engineering for a quality product that's proven to offer improvements.
The other scenario is that a generic shield is supplied, the bits are given to a workshop, they get the shits because it doesn't fit don't have the tools to mod it properly (most mechanics don't have the skills or tools to fabricate/mod components) so out comes the angle grinder and they hack it up and charge an extra hour or so labour. In this scenario it may well work out more expensive then just paying for a nicely fabricated piece which is proven to fit.
I appreciate the fact you use some common sense when you designed your silicon inlets, rather then one of the competitors who went for maximum flow (resulting in a marginally inferior product in terms of fitment issues etc) and you got my business for the silicon inlets. There's no way I would have bought the VRSF inlets they looked woeful in terms of fitment and quality of components etc!
So please engineer a proper RHD solution for the heat shield, heck send your R&D tester a heat shield have them mod it and send it back for you as a RHD prototype?
Once you have this anyone who places an order for the RHD heat shield you will have it.
I'm sure once there's some real data on what this product offers in terms of improvments, there will be some further sales as I'm sure there are a few guys sitting on the fence undecided on purchasing this item.