[Shop-talk] Lug Bolts?

[Randall]

>     Do you?  Even on something like my F150, the best selling 
> vehicle in 
> the country at around 1M units annually, $0.002 adds up to a whopping 
> $2,000 annual savings.  That's not enough to pay for someone 
> to come up 
> with the idea, nevermind the engineering and tooling.

All you have to do is multiply that by how long the F150 has been produced,
and you have plenty of money to pay an engineer to come up with the idea.
And since it would have been done before the tooling was made, there are no
retooling costs.

One of my friends did some work for Ford a few years back, and complained
bitterly about being sent back to the drawing board, because they felt he
could shave $.02 off the unit cost by redesigning for cheaper components.
And it wasn't for anything nearly as popular as an F150.

Randall