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The forged wheel company in question made lots of other wheels and forgings that were profitable. The OEM contracts were not. The OEMs want your best work and they want you to make almost nothing. Reynolds aluminum made the forged Corvette wheels after us and were paid less than $200 per wheel...

Nope. The OEMs typically let vendors make 8% GP. You couldn't buy the carbon to make these wheels for $2k. I worked for a company that made forged wheels for Corvette and Viper. After two years and 30,000 wheels, our profit was enough for a Big Mac and a small order of fries. Ford is making a...

The manufacturing costs of carbon wheels are very high. I doubt the prices will ever come down. This isn't like a Samsung TV where they use robots and mass produce millions of pieces. Rumor has it that Carbon Rev's hard cost exceeds $8000 per set.

Changing the oil pump internals will void the warranty.

A successful carbon wheel aftermarket program will be very unlikely. It currently costs in the range of $6000 to make a set of carbon wheels. That's one style and one fitment. If you factor in the amortized tooling costs for several styles and a wide variety of sizes and mix in a generous...

Carbon, like most other materials, has wide variances in strength and stiffness based upon a huge number of highly variable factors. I'm just very uncomfortable with the assertion that "carbon is better" and "Carbon is stiffer" as unsupported glittering generalities. I am absolutely certain that...

I'm not confusing stiffness with strength. I'm an engineer with 40 years of experience in wheel making. Your assertion that there is one optimum shape for stiffness is nonsense. Your assertion that any Carbon wheel is stronger and stiffer than any forged wheel is also nonsense. Materials with...

The suggestion that "Forged and Cast Aluminum wheels have the same stiffness" is just plain nonsense. Which alloys are being used? Most cast wheels use A356/T6 (heat treated) with a nominal tensile strength of 34,000 psi. Many forged wheel companies use 6061T6 with a tensile strength of more...

There are lots of very good low mileage GT350s out there. I would definitely consider buying an under 10,000 mile car for many, many thousands less. Buy an extended warranty and have a blast.

Today, it costs nearly $1 billion to design and certify an automotive engine from scratch. Even a variant like the Voodoo 5.2 will cost nearly $100 million in engineering, development, testing, durability proof, and emission certification. Part of the durability testing is multiple test engines...

There is no "source". It is opinion and conjecture. "much sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Ford is well aware of the materials they use in OPGs. They specified a billet pump on some of the supercharged designs due to the torsional bending loads on the crank snout. The powdered metal isn't just for cost savings. Powdered metal gears can be made EXTREMELY accurate, holding close...

The Ti threads are in tension and they won't tolerate 135-150 ft lbs. Ti is not as strong a material as hardened steel. However, Ti has a better strength-to-weight ratio. It's value in this case is limited because so little Ti is used in a lug nut. In general, TI has the properties that make...

The OPG is NOT cast per se. It is made from specially blended powdered metal with very precise properties for close tolerances and excellent wear and durability characteristics. That is how this pump makes big oil pressure. I have written on this forum extensively about this pump design. There...

Grade 5 6AL4V Titanium bolts and nuts have a nominal tensile strength of 150,000 PSI. This is well below the tensile strength of the steel nuts supplied by Ford. However, Grade 5 titanium nuts are certainly strong enough for this application. Titanium has a different preload requirement...

If they rusted, they are NOT titanium.

I don't have any capacity data. Gerotor pumps are positive displacement pumps that are quite efficient at working pressures under 2500 psi. A well-designed and manufactured pump will operate at 80% efficiency or more. The volumetric efficiency increases with RPM and decreases with...

The 3D printer is just used for modeling. Production powdered metal parts are made with dies. And the production accuracy is near perfection. The production cost is low and the production accuracy is fantastic. That's why the material and production process is so popular.

Billet pumps can be built to produce the same pressure. They just costs a lot more and that's the issue. There is no credible evidence that these production engines suffer from any pump problems with powdered metal gears. I'll bet a pile of dough that they don't. The GT-350 pump is so good that...

Modern car companies are all about the value proposition. Powdered metal parts are quite durable, but mostly they are VERY accurate from a manufacturing standpoint. The Voodoo requires high oil pressure. It even has its own unique oil filter SKU accordingly. To get high oil pressure you need a...