I was doing some thinking, and I wanted to see how consumers would respond to this. What would be a fair market price for a manufacturer to make money and have consumer's pockets not bleeding to sell high quality aftermarket fairings? I'm not talking about 'cheap plastic' that would crack kind of fairings. I'm talking quality abs plastic, with a 99.9% fitment like OEM fairings made right here in the states. Please respond with painted and primered fairings as a sales option.
Injection moulds are ~$15k each. Imagine the cost divided over 3 years vs your sales. You'd need about 100% over cost to cover your bills and make money as well as make the distributor/dealer money. It's costly to do it right. That's why the "good ones" cost $600+ a set.
Let's say for argument sake, we'll ignore all overhead, molding cost, etc. Seeing as how OEMs are close to $2000 or so, I was thinking about $1200 give or take painted with a quality that's very close to OEM (if they were side by side with OEM, majority of the population wouldn't be able to tell the difference, not including paint).
Why would we ignore overhead? I'd say that would be important while figuring out the price. Why are you posing this hypothetical situation? Are you planning on cornering the market on aftermarket fairings, or just wonder?
opcorn: I wouldn't want to pay more than 1k painted.
But why would anyone want such expensive aftermarket fairings? Most use aftermarket stuff for track only. In that case, it doesn't make sense to get something that would be a massive write-off as soon as you drop the bike.
For those that ride street, you either have money for full coverage (which would cover repairs if shit went down) or you don't (in which case you wouldn't be able to afford expensive aftermarket plastics).
-Alex
EDIT: Just checked and I can get every plastic (minus hardware) fully painted with decals for my bike for 1.5k all OEM.
Cornering the market? No. Side money or to help others out? Yes. Have them made to order for people who drop their bikes w/o full coverage, or need 1 or 2 fairings because of some mishap.
Overhead isn't a problem as they are not mass produced, and raw materials can be had for free. Basically a 1-2 man job, where salaries aren't a concern.
I do not currently know how to make fairings. However, my background and skills give me the know how with minimal reading. My background is in automotive design and mechanical engineering. I've taken many classes, including hands on experience with regards to design and manufacturing applications.
I am asking to see if there would be a market for them. To keep it short, I plan on investing in a CNC machine, a Miller welder, and some other manufacturing tools to for X reasons. Yes, it's expensive.
Overhead isn't a problem as they are not mass produced, and raw materials can be had for free. Basically a 1-2 man job, where salaries aren't a concern.
Auctmarts are good fairings for the price. Personally, I wouldn't pay $1200 for OEM quality fairings and I'm STUPID picky about my bike. Also when you wreck, not ALL plastics get destroyed so ordering OEM stuff from places like partshark.com doesn't end up being all that expensive.
And if you do get oem priced to replace a couple pieces of your plastics, you can buy a who set from Auctmarts painted how I wanted :fact, this is what I did.
People may not buy them, but body shops may. If the fitment and craftsmanship is spot on, body shops would love to save a few dollars. Insurance companies too.
Insurance companies are going to pay for oem replacement parts threw the quoted price the shop gives them for an estimate, most shops are not going to buy some random make fairing to fix said estimated repair. Shops do like to make money, but you would be surprised what their markup is on fairings. Plus if I knew that a shop quoted me for the price of an oem and bought aftermarket to fix it I would be pissed. Most riders who do the work themselves are going to go with a better value for fairings with regards to replacing them (you could poll the forum for a sample group if you wanted).
You don't need any of that to make fairings.
Ill try to dig up an old thread I remember of. The guy made his own fairings and they looked sick. Your best bet is to learn shay is needed to make them. Then its a trial and error process to find the best material for the cost and find the best fit. Once you get that out of the way its pretty cheap to manufacture fiberglass/carbon fiber pieces.
You definitely need a mold for using abs plastic to get OEM fitment. That, or it's going to be many man hours on 1 piece.
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