Ok, here's the loooong overdue update straight from the horses mouth.
As others have posted, my current Navy assignment has me stationed in Japan.
I'll be here until around the Summer of 2024, and at the moment I have no clue where I'll be going after that. I'm not producing kits while overseas. I can't give any accurate information at this point on if/when the brake kit will be available again.
I appreciate all the support from the members who purchased kits and I hope that you're happy with the swap from drums.
At the height of this thread, I had some interest in establishing partnerships for web sales or collaborating with other people for product bundles. The issue was that this kit was never intended to be a money maker. Everyone got the buddy hookup price, which meant that there wasn't any room to provide a discount to a vendor.
In order to try and keep these kits at what I considered a reasonable price, I had to do the majority of it myself. The only things that I outsourced were the laser cutting, electroplating, and DOT approved braided steel brake lines. I handled all transportation of brackets between facilities, ordering of components, assembly, packaging, invoice management, shipping, etc. I even made the copper-nickel hard brake lines in-house to keep the price down. It ended up being a very time consuming project.
This was fine during the height of COVID and when I was between assignments, but once things started getting back to normal and I was back at work daily it became very difficult to keep up with. I quickly understood why these types of products generally sell for a lot more.
I'm very proud of this kit and the way that the product turned out. I also have very high standards, which is hopefully apparent to anyone who purchased one. Because of this, I have no intention to sell or distribute the design for others to produce. It took a lot of time, effort, research, trial and error, and testing to get things dialed in the way I wanted them. Then identifying all the necessary components and sourcing them in order to provide the complete package to the community. I can't think of a way to put a value on those things that would make them worth giving up.
So thanks again for all the interest/support.
If I get the project started up again I'll be sure to get it posted here and updated on post #1.
