[72hotrod]

It seems to me that so much of the problem we face in modifying our vehicles at a reasonable price is that someone is always trying to make a buck off of "R&D" that isn't all that special. We spend a lot of time working on our old stuff, but are happy to give away the benefit of our experience and tell our friends anything that we learn that might help benefit them. There are many examples of this by our members, some who have put in a lot of personal time researching solutions mostly without any profit, to help others or just for the fun of it. Some specialty vendors, on the other hand, want to maximize profit by selling kits full of generic parts along with unique parts so they can make more money marking up every little piece. Whatever the market will bear. Nothing wrong in offering kits for sale, this is America, but these proprietary R&D "secrets" aren't really worth it to those with lower incomes who need to stretch every dollar and require more flexibility in our sourcing options. So a certain bracket will mount a certain caliper to a certain spindle using a certain hub and a certain rotor and will fit within the space of certain wheels and somebody has to figure it all out. But when nearly every component in a kit is a stock part, we have to ultimately pay for all the extra overhead the vendor creates in acquiring,stocking,assembling,and shipping parts that we can get locally. It might be different if the kit saved money for us on these generic items as well as having the convenience of one stop shopping, which adds value, but instead they usually just jack up the total mark-up. So, you're going to find that it is usually impossible to get these guys to sell just the unique parts to make these kits work, because that's not going to make enough money to satisfy them. But getting nickel and dimed to death makes it cost too much for some of us. Sure, I know profit is what makes this stuff possible in the marketplace, and many times you get customer service along with the R&D required for unique products, but we shouldn't have to bleed unnecessarily out of every orifice. I guess maybe it's just sour grapes because I want but can't have. But SCOTI has put in a lot of personal effort to promote this project, just like Glock35IPSC did on his, to GIVE us some R&D. So please recognise their contributions and be grateful enough to give them props for their efforts and the community spirit which it signifies. And be courteous enough to try not to crap other peoples threads please. Sorry I got carried away! Rant: Off