Guys, is there a business opportunity in replacement hoods? The tooling isn't cheap, but..................... Anyway, here is the feedback I got.
To: Carl
Subject: Need a source suggestion
Hi Carl,
Hope all is well, always enjoy reading your Holiday letter.
Anyway, need your manufacturing expertise. I have taken up bike collecting and enjoy the shop time cleaning and restoring them. It is also a hobby that supports itself.
Certain components wear out and are stupid expensive to find replacments per the link below. Any suggestions on a source to reproduce the same in batches of say 200 at a reasonable cost?Right and left are the same. Most of these are from 30-40 years ago, but the logo on them is unimportant.
Universal 51 61 68 Gum Brake Lever Hoods for Road 68 Genuine | eBay
REPLY
$80???? We need to change over from military products to brake lever hoods!
We've got different urethane materials that could probably replace gum rubber in appearance and performance. Depending upon the complexity of the part, we may be able to do the tooling relatively cheaply and still leave the Universal logo intact. I would suspect we could make these for probably $10-15 each plus $3,000 for tooling but that's just a guess.
Hope you're doing well.
Carl