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Schumacher tyres = expensive [my personal moan!]
Hi all racers,
I'm sure this is something that everyone can agree with...why are tyres, for example, Schumacher pins/spikes/whatever so damn expensive? It's nuts. Okay you do the research into a good compound that works, then you make a mould, and from that you can produce millions of tyres. It must cost them about £1 per pair of tyres (probably a lot less), and yet we pay £7.49 + everytime we need some new grip. If you ask me, Schumacher have something here that is probably more profitable than the tabacco industry....except it doesn't kill you (only the soul inside of you!) Please feel free to add to my moan here. Grrr. |
As is everything expensive in the UK....lifes a bitch, yadayada. :P
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at £20000-30000 for a mould would charge 6-7 quid for them also
but i still think there dear |
a mould cost upwards of £20,000 plus you have to have it refurbished every so many pairs, the suppliers make there cut so do the shops so £8 is expensive but losi and prolines are near £10 a pair, yes you do get inserts but still more expensive than schy's
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I think the mould has paid for itself it's fair to say!
They charge whatever they can get away with, and I bet it costs them a lot less than a quid to make a pair these days... |
Who says they dint get the mould made in china on the cheap ? :D
Seriously though, I agree with rich |
£60-£90,000 worth of moulds at say £3 profit per pair is still a hell of a lot of tyres to sell before they even start making money so in that respect i don't. how many tyres per year in spikes do you think they actually sell? even averaging it out to £70000 for the mould they will need to have sold 23,000 pairs of tyres before any profit is shown
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A hell of a lot would be my guess! I think it's pretty obvious Tyres are profitable for them. The ones that aren't get ditched.
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I find it hard to beleive that a mould costs that much to make. And yes, the mould would need refurbishing/replacing occaisionaly, but I realy find it hard to justify the high cost, but it is like everything, we need it, they set their price, and until someone undercuts them with an equivalent tyre, they ain't going to budge.
More so, they don't do any developement work these days in tyres, I remember Bibx and stuff. |
Losixxx din't mention that 65k of that 70k was spent finding someone who could operate the machinery in the first place :D.
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:D:D:D:D:D
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not 100% sure but i thought they made thier moulds in house, though im trying to remember from 98 is when i was a team driver
certainly no dearer than on road tc |
can't believe we are moaning about the price of schuey tyres!!!
Most people can get through a day on one set of these tyres, at £8 that works out pretty cheap. Pro lines and Losi tyres lucky to get decent 2nd run £10. I do agree they aren't cheap but if you ran a business would you cut your income ???????? |
Ok, let's get AutoCAD fired up.
http://www.protomold.co.uk/Default.aspx The tooling cost with these guys seems to be closer to the £2k mark than the £20k mark, so I reckon we can make a killing. I'll do the drawing if somebody else provides the money :p:):p |
lol
I don't think anyones really 'having a go' at schumacher - just the general costs of racing which everyone knows isn't cheap. :p |
Get your pre-orders in! Announcing the "Jony Maxi Spike":
http://j-star.org/images/spike.JPG Available in a variety of compounds including polystyrene and plaster of paris. £6 per pair, paypal to [email protected] . |
what cad program did you use?? put me down for some :D
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If anyone does actually fancy designing a tyre, MedialPRO have a competition to design some RallyX tyres on their website here:
http://www.medialpro.com/concours_ang.html I opened the file up - realised how 'techie' it was and got bored.. Yeah I can draw a cool tyre, but I don't wanna write numbers down - dayaaam. |
The tooling would have been expensive. The profits at this stage, X years down the line must be good but I don't think we should begrudge Schumacher that. They have to make money somewhere, and I'm sure it must be a struggle to make much on kits, to be honest. Of course, we could buy them out of China and help further the demise of our own homegrown manufacturing..
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I never expected this kind of response.
The different viewpoints makes for interesting reading. |
how come Ballistic Buggy could always make them cheaper.....
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I think the main problem everyone here should really have with Schumacher Tyres is WHAT do Schumacher put back into Off Road nowadays? They don't have any form of kit out, and don't attend any meetings with a team etc, yet rake in a shed load of cash everytime there's a national (just about)!
I think it's a shame but they really don't "support" the 1/10 Off Road section any more so why should we/you all continue using their tyres? Simple answer - because there's nothing out there that's any better when it comes to Grass or some astro tracks. If someone that actually supports this side of R/C comes out with something that's as good as a Yellow minispike (or even better) then everyone would want to use that anyway i'm sure |
totally agree Nick.
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well said Nick.
i dont think anyone will disagree with any of the comments made there... |
not that they would, but what would happen if Schumacher decided to pack in supplying off-road tyres now they're not very intrested in off-road? basically what alternative would work as good?
personally, now I can use glue remover to re-used wheels much easier I'm not buying wheels/inserts anymore which is a saving. but they are getting a bit more expensive each year i agree. |
My issue was (not so much anymore) the quality of both the mini spike and mini pins, they came with no definde edge, almost like pre scrubbed :( In fairness I haven't had one of those for a while though!
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I hear ya dan! I took some back to a shop one time as they were so bad, no nice flat tops to the spikes, just rounded ill defined mess. But like you, not had any like that for a while.
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OK so how much time is spent in testing and development to find one tyre and compound that works, think about how many moulds that may have been made to find out the tyre was useless.
If it was easy id do it;) |
I was using minispikes 15 years ago, and then some.... put a timeline on it...
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i know what you mean, but schuey also have a hold on the market that others will struggle to get into, for instance, the nationals, its pretty much a control tyre for every round so nobody would really try a tyre that they are not allowed to use when it counts.
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If a company developed their own tyre and it was seen to work well, last well and is popular between drivers then i see no reason why the BRCA wouldn't vote in a different supplier for the nationals at the AGM.
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Tyres
Over the years I have been involved RC Racing, I have looked into the prospect with my Company who specilise in Rubber products manufacturing alternative Tyres.The main problem is tooling cost & refurbishment of tooling and also there is certain problems with coping designs of existing tyres.Who would take a chance on using un-proven tyres at a meeting ?? I am sure Adam may add a thread to this.
Li;) ;) ;) ndsay |
Technically the BRCA or individual tracks could nominate a tyre that was completely useless at the track, as it would be the same for everyone just a lot harder to get the car set-up to work as well and would probably require more concentration on just getting the thing around - not really ideal for a national championship but it could happen!
Another idea would be to get Ballistic Buggy spikes nominated for every meeting where Schumacher tyres are currently the nominated tyre - would it really make the racing that much worse? I think you'd still have the same quick guys at the top, but a company that's still involved in the Off Road scene would be benefitting. I heard a rumour they were developing another tyre also so that could make things interesting? Someone just needs to replicate the Yellow compound - i'm sure the ballistic spikes would be just about as good as the Schumachers if they were in Yellow compound and would probably last a tad longer for the average club racers due to the length of spike! I'm sure something will change soon, either someone will have a new tyre out or maybe Schumacher would even get back into Off Road another day which would be good for everyone. You could arguably then almost have one manufacturers tyre for each national - that would be a fair way to do it rather then Schumacher having 5/6 of the current rounds. |
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losixxx - that's why i put "Another idea would be" :D
It's just a suggestion, if you limited it to two sets per national and a 3rd for A Finalists it wouldn't matter what the tyre was anyway. I was just pointing out that at least Ballistic Buggy are still developing tyres and supporting the Off Road racing as a whole so wouldn't the money be better off there? At least some of it's getting put back into the sport that way. |
Playing Devil's Advocate here a little,
Schumacher make tyres for a price comparable to the competition that works better than all the others for the majority of our racing. What's the problem? Not that I like paying £16 for a set any more than the next guy :) |
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is that why they have discontinued making 2wd front's? the problem with limiting to 2 sets and marking them would cause problem's 1. not all tracks go as well on brand new tyres 2. a lot more work involved for an already hard pushed club/brca official's to control. 3. what do you do with the park worn tyres you have left if you can't use them next national and don't do regional's. that would work out even more expensive |
that was one of my biggest gripes about 10th offroad..the cost of tyres.
now i race 1/8th offroad and the tyres are around £22-£24 a set of 4 glued on wheels with foams..yet they last about 4-5 meetings,if they can make 1/8th tyres for that price theres no reason they cant for 1/10th..its simply the fact schumacher has no real competetion in the offroad market,as others have said,if joe blogs brought out a tire costing a fiver and everyone used them then schumacher would have to toe the price line or go out of business as i think that most of their profit comes from tyres. dave |
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