Freight for cranks to Australia will be $12. Freewheel $12. A full kit $42. USPS Registered and insured. Actually we ship to Australia (100's of kits!) and all over the world every day. (Argentina, Brazil, UK, Bulgaria, Israel, Iraq, South Africa, Malaysia, NZ, Aus to name a few) So by mentioning USA freight I was just stating an example and I was not being xenophobic.
I think the average person would take more than two hours to design and fab plates, gears, shaft, etc. For the average MB person? 4-6 hours, shop costs, etc, then all the parts. How will folks at home make our gears? I know there are ways around this - but we are doing a comparison here. $120 labor at least plus $150+ worth of parts at least for someone to do an exact set-up.....Listen - we don't discourage people from saving money and doing a set up themselves I can't think of any time we have done this. In fact we sell parts to people doing customs all the time. We are actually a low cost Cyclone seller and one of the largest Cyclone customers. (And our freight bills from Taiwan prove it
)
Our costs are our costs - determined by the cost of our landed materials (and no not everything in the kit is a cheap OTS part), what the market will bear and our sense of fairness. To have gears custom made, to have steel, aluminum and plastic pieces fabbed to drawing in 100 lots the USA is not a free proposition. To compare to a crude engine assembled by folks for $1-2 day may give you some claim in your mind, but it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
Feel free to try to buy OUR (DESIGN) HD FW from White. They won't sell to you - so that's another 15 minutes at $30/hour down the tube.
(Sorry couldn't resist having some fun with this mate) Besides - if you knew our wafer thin mark-up on the the HD FW, most would wonder why we bother!
I don't want some internet battle to break out - I'm just saying bro, I love YOUR work, you are the MAN, but when you say our prices are "ridiculous" I think it's a bit of an exaggeration. From your point of view, our prices are high. That's fine, that's your opinion but our prices are NOT ridiculous or outrageous.
Thanks,
Paul