It took us close to 2 years to develop this hose kit for Datsun 240Z 1969-1973 Air pump/Emission system.

These hoses were discontined back in 80's and has been almost impossible to find new, since JDM models never had them on early Z cars in Japan.

We manage to have our manufacture wrap the hose as original ones.

Sold as set only at $299 for the hose set. only 100 sets are available, and we have no plans to make more at this point.

Wow that's a pretty penny, at least I would fell good about the quality since your involved. esprist I was thinking about some products that I thought you might get involved with one is the 70/71 ashtrays, and the antenna mounting parts. Have you looked into them?

It is about BIG investment. Ash tray is made out of bakelight and it is possible to make one out of high temp plastic, but it takes so many parts to reproduce..........

These hoses took us 2 years to make. With a such a small run, it is not cheap, especially if it is made by Nissan/Toyota OEM suppplier in Japan.

I know their was a lot of bends in those hoses and that's why it was expensive to reproduce.

The ashtray would be 7 parts if I'm thinking correctly the tray, lid, handle, chrome ring, the metal ashing plate, and one or two springs. I wonder how many would go for a fake plate that looked like it from the outside most people now days don't need an ashtray and I would not want to ash in a tray that expensive anyways. This would cut it down to 2-3 parts: plate, chrome ring and maybe the handle (don't know if could be easily molded as one).

In re-engineering process is very hard as old parts from Nissan is not really high quality (perhaps something is not made streight, even, or not matching left and right.....)

So it takes hours of hand-measuring, creating SLA model(CNC model), and test fitting, and then making a model. After that, you put the right texture or finish in the mold.

As far as cost goes, it becomes expensive since we only make 100 or so on each production run. It would be cheaper if you are taking about producing 10000 of them.

Exchange rate is killing us right now as well.

Ash tray idea might be good, but mold for just the lid and body will be about 25000 after paying for re-engineering and making few test CNC models. And the metal cigarette tray must be laser cut and chromed.........

It seems easy, but when do we get our money back?...........Very questionable.........

Well that's why it surprises me what you get produced, I't seems things just get harder to make anymore. Well maybe in the future we could use a 3d printer

http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?&p=3d+printer&vid=1165720551549&dt=1308860281&l=0&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts2.mm.bing.net%2Fvideos%2Fthumbnail.aspx%3Fq%3D1165720551549%26id%3D43b2a76f715ea3b59e2f4b535e4f0bc2%26bid%3DO%252fKTPgD3FraUSw%26bn%3DThumb%26url%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.youtube.com%252fwatch%253fv%253dZboxMsSz5Aw&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fv%2FZboxMsSz5Aw%26autoplay%3D1&tit=3D+Printer&sigr=11f0a4tn3&newfp=1&surl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DZboxMsSz5Aw&sigs=11alv1en0