My pride was hurt today :*( Bike fallen over at stoplight

[StageLeft]

That sucks. I did it on my bicycle last week. Light was red and i was hanging onto a stop sign so that I wouldn't have to unclip (cliped pedals, not clipless, so much slower to detach from). Light went green, my gear was far too high and I couldn't get going fast enough, hit a curb at about 1 mph and fell over onto my leg and the gayest thing about it is that my feet were still stuck in the pedals so I had to undo them like a goof, get back on the bike, and pedal away. I dropped my brother's motorbike once when he had no idea I was using it but no damage. I stopped to check mail and it was on a hill. Damn those are heavy.

 

[angry hampster]

The honest answer is because they can. There's usually no aftermarket company to compete with so companies make big profit on them because there's nowhere else for buyers to go.

It's the same reason that Harley sells an $80 turn signal relocation kit for my bike in order to allow Harley saddlebags to fit rather than simply designing saddlebags that fit the bike with its stock turn signals. (Thankfully, in my case, there are aftermarket solutions.)

ZV

Solution: remove turn signals.

 

[cardiac]

My Goldwing Interstate with all fluids is about 740#....

 

[Greenman]

D😀😀: wow! They look like they are 200 ish man those things are heavy!

A full dress Harley can top 900.

 

[hanoverphist]

i replaced my stock kickstand on my bike, and for a week or so i kept missing it with my boot. every once in a while i wouldnt notice i missed it, and almost let my bike drop to the ground. the one time i was actually getting looked at by a pretty girl, the bike went all the way to the ground and tossed me aside like a rag doll. it really was embarrassing.

 

[punjabiplaya]

 

[Kirby]

A full dress Harley can top 900.

And some of those guys have a 300 lbs woman on the back. 😱

 

[Evadman]

My CBX weighs a good 600 lbs. It was a PITA to get it back up when when I knocked it over in the garage, so I know how you feel.

 

[Occ]

Ouch. Is there any damage? If so, pics!

 

[zCypher]

Very nice bike 😀

 

[JulesMaximus]

The honest answer is because they can. There's usually no aftermarket company to compete with so companies make big profit on them because there's nowhere else for buyers to go.

It's the same reason that Harley sells an $80 turn signal relocation kit for my bike in order to allow Harley saddlebags to fit rather than simply designing saddlebags that fit the bike with its stock turn signals. (Thankfully, in my case, there are aftermarket solutions.)

ZV

Not really. It costs a motorcycle manufacturing company a good bit of change for the tooling to make those injection molded parts so they spread that cost over the cost of new bikes and the parts made for crash replacement. Then of course you have to clean up the parts, prep for painting, add in painting and decals along with the overhead of warehousing them and shipping to distribution points. So, while it may only cost $30-40 for the raw injection molded part from the vendor, there are many other costs associated with manufacturing that plastic fairing that you don't think about. Companies don't decide pricing based on things like "because they can."

That said, I'd bet the profit margin on a part like that is probably quite high.

 

[JulesMaximus]

why do fairings cost so much? i'm always very confused by that, cause if i'm not mistaken, they're just fiberglass...

They are injection molded plastic.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Not really. It costs a motorcycle manufacturing company a good bit of change for the tooling to make those injection molded parts so they spread that cost over the cost of new bikes and the parts made for crash replacement. Then of course you have to clean up the parts, prep for painting, add in painting and decals along with the overhead of warehousing them and shipping to distribution points. So, while it may only cost $30-40 for the raw injection molded part from the vendor, there are many other costs associated with manufacturing that plastic fairing that you don't think about. Companies don't decide pricing based on things like "because they can."

That said, I'd bet the profit margin on a part like that is probably quite high.

You go to a lot of effort in that first part only to ultimately agree with me in your final sentence.

Aftermarket versions of the ZX6R fairing that are produced in much smaller numbers (and therefore have a higher per-unit manufacturing cost in addition to the costs of having to reverse engineer the factory mounting system) run nearly $800. That's listed as no more than half the cost of factory parts, which means that you're looking at $1,600 for factory parts at the very least.

Given that the aftermarket companies can sell their versions for a profit at $800, this suggests that Kawasaki is charging based on what the market will bear rather than simply costs plus a basic profit.

If a small aftermarket company with much higher per-unit production costs can sell painted and finished fairing kits for $800 and still make a profit, there's really no legitimate reason why Kawasaki couldn't sell OE fairings, painted and finished, for the same price and make more profit than the aftermarket company. No matter how much overheard Kawasaki has (and, since the majority of the overhear for Kawasaki is sunk cost because it's required for their other operations the actual cost that can be assigned to warehousing fairings is, in actuality, incredibly small), they still have superior efficiency to a small aftermarket supplier.

ZV

 

[JulesMaximus]

You go to a lot of effort in that first part only to ultimately agree with me in your final sentence.

Aftermarket versions of the ZX6R fairing that are produced in much smaller numbers (and therefore have a higher per-unit manufacturing cost in addition to the costs of having to reverse engineer the factory mounting system) run nearly $800. That's listed as no more than half the cost of factory parts, which means that you're looking at $1,600 for factory parts at the very least.

Given that the aftermarket companies can sell their versions for a profit at $800, this suggests that Kawasaki is charging based on what the market will bear rather than simply costs plus a basic profit.

If a small aftermarket company with much higher per-unit production costs can sell painted and finished fairing kits for $800 and still make a profit, there's really no legitimate reason why Kawasaki couldn't sell OE fairings, painted and finished, for the same price and make more profit than the aftermarket company. No matter how much overheard Kawasaki has (and, since the majority of the overhear for Kawasaki is sunk cost because it's required for their other operations the actual cost that can be assigned to warehousing fairings is, in actuality, incredibly small), they still have superior efficiency to a small aftermarket supplier.

ZV

Honestly, they probably price them that high because they don't really want to be in the business of supplying parts for their bikes for decades to come...they'd probably prefer that people just junk them and buy new bikes which is, for the most part, what they do.

After the initial run of bikes the tooling probably sees relatively little use so the cost to produce a small batch of fairings goes up...a lot.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Honestly, they probably price them that high because they don't really want to be in the business of supplying parts for their bikes for decades to come...they'd probably prefer that people just junk them and buy new bikes which is, for the most part, what they do.

After the initial run of bikes the tooling probably sees relatively little use so the cost to produce a small batch of fairings goes up...a lot.

The first point rather supports my position that they aren't basing the price on actual cost and are instead charging essentially as much as they can. I'll definitely admit that I phrased my initial response rather more flippantly than seriously though. 🙂

As for the second position, even if the price goes up, it's still never going to be as expensive per unit as it is for the aftermarket companies that are producing in even smaller quantities, so that still doesn't justify the price difference between OE fairings and aftermarket.

ZV