CV Source? Options

[1973914]

Anyone know where i can get a new set of CV's (all four) or a full axle without spending a fortune? Or at least can find them period?

Thanks!
Bill

[lapuwali]

QUOTE (mskala @ Feb 16 2005, 06:44 PM)

QUOTE (nsyr @ Feb 16 2005, 08:40 PM) partsamerica.com has them for around 100 an axle. they are rebuilt units supposedly better than oem. No offense to the poster, but there is no country on earth that has low enough labor and machine shop costs to take 2 cv's, really do anything to them, clean, re-assemble, put on axles, re-grease, and sell through a middleman. What does rebuild mean? Probably just clean for these guys. Even if you were to work on them, you would have to machine the raceways oversize, get new balls and a new cage, then re-harden the pieces. Good luck for $100. Go to Hershey swap meet you may find used ones cheap.

This really has nothing to do with the part in question, but this is turning into a pet peeve of mine...

There are PLENTY of countries on this earth with labor costs low enough to turn out something as simple as a rebuilt 914 axle for under $100. There are countries where unskilled labor can be had for $1 per DAY, and it's pretty unlikely someone who's been trained disassemble a CV and replace the ball bearings (rarely is any more required), grease, and refit new boots, is going to command more than $5 per DAY in wages in such a country. How many axles could a person produce in one day for that $5? If they do only ONE, and you can produce a container-load (let's say 10,000, I'm making up a number) each month with 300 such employees, that's $50K per month in wages for $500K in product at $50 each wholesale. Transport for one container from Brisbane, Australia to LA is about $1500, so figure a container from Indonesia (say) is about the same. Figure about $1K to pay some US truck driver to get it to your warehouse, and $10K to ship them out to retail stores. You're still making over $400K on the deal, even after accounting for transport of ball bearings, grease, CV boots, and core axles to your factory in cheap labor land. With a cost structure like that, you could pay someone $20/day to do this in someplace exotic like, oh, MEXICO and still make out like a bandit, esp. considering your transport costs into the US would fall.

Could you do this only for 914 axles? No, not a big enough market. Could you do it if you rebuilt axles for lots of other makes, too. You bet. For the purposes of rebuilding them, the differences between halfshafts is pretty small, basically requiring you to stock different sized ball bearings and CV boots to rebuild pretty much any of the fwd or rwd or 4wd halfshafts used.

To remove all politics from this issue, I'd expect someone could set up a factory in, say, Iowa, to do the same thing and still make a good pile of money. With more than $30 per unit to spend and still make a profit, that's a lot of wiggle room. A semi-automated position in Alabama manned by a well-trained worker could probably crank out 100 units a day, or $5000 worth at wholesale prices, and the worker would be quite happy to take home only $150-200 of that, leaving a lot left over for transport, distribution, paying off the machinery, heating the building, paying sales staff, etc.

I've said it before: economies of scale WORK.

I talked to a guy that worked in a retail shop doing repairs and custom work on leather coats and such (and had a nice business in the sex trade, of course). He looked at a motorcycle jacket I had and told me it would cost him about $2000 to replicate it. His jaw hit the desk when I told him it cost me $400 new, made in Germany. At the time, a Pakistani-made jacket could be had for as little as $150.