chrissyboy

Well Land Rover chassis's are beautifully made in my opinion. But there is always a fair amount of weld splatter and one or two bits of welding wire in my experience. No-one ever notices because no-one ever looks. But it if you put the original LR chassis under a microscope there are plenty of cosmetic imperfections. Cheers Chris

Just goes to show that you get what you pay for! How much was it? Its going to be made to a price. How much would one cost if it was made to Les's standard and would you buy it at that price? Or would you go for the cheaper but not so good one. I suspect at least 95% would go for the cheaper option. Cheers Chris

Hi Al, you are thinking of a company called Brian. Rustmaster (at least to my knowledge) do not offer a courtesy car or pick up service. Cheers Chris

Please note that my above post was edited. If mods are going to edit my posts, I think it fair to mention it. You could put at the bottom of the post: Edited by ........ for (reasons).......... Of course, some of my posts may not get posted at all. I am told I am on 'unlimited mod approval" whatever that means! Cheers Chris Your posts are on 'unlimited mod approval' because you continuously spam yourself in pretty-much every post you make. You don't really offer any technical advice to this website - just seize any opportunity to spam. We have to go through the chore of checking every post you make before it approved for the members to see. Too much of a chore in my opinion - you ain't worth the work. Les.

Hi Fireman, The £500ish bloke himself here Remember you get what you pay for! If it is not too bad you might have a bash at doing it yourself. Remember this rough rule of thumb. If I do it: on light to medium rust the waxoyl will kill the rust and stop any further rust for about 5 years. On very heavy rust it will only slow it down for a year or two . If it is very rusty, there is only one place that can do it properly I'm afraid. If it is not too rusty and you decide to do it yourself here are some tips: 1. Pick a warm day. The waxoyl will flow much better so you will not have to dilute it too much. I would advise against doing it on a very hot day because the waxoyl will be very thin and you will not get a good coat. 2. Use a proper rustproofing gun (they are not too expensive nowadays - do a web search) and hire or borrow a small compressor for the day. 3. Heat the waxoyl gently before use if its still thick. Do this by putting it in a bucket of hot water. For safety you should really take off the cap if the water is boiling but if the water in your bucket is not boiling you might take the risk and leave it on. Don't tell Health and Safety I said that though! DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES try heating the can in or on anything other than hot water - because you would be putting your life in danger! Once the waxoyl is nice and warm, give the can a damn good shake. You want to do this for a few minutes until you are knackered. 4. There are businesses which specialize in pressure washing the underneath of lorries and trailers. You might find someone locally to do this for you.

Hi Si, Sorry - I gave you a bum steer! I'd lost my Zig Ziglar tape and went on Amazon to try and find it. The link I gave you is to another Zig Ziglar audiobook and its not so good. I know cos I ordered it myself and I've just listened to it. Its quite good but not really all that entertaining. The one you want is this one: Really Entertaining and absolutely inspired Zig Ziglar! Cheers Chris

Hi Hillbilly. I don't know about "sell". I think "preach" is nearer the mark. LOL Cheers Chris

Hi Simon, I'm glad you found some of my thoughts useful. I'm afraid copying is common currency in business. If we are honest we all do it to some extent or other. In Scorpion's defence they are taking the risks of having a large advertising spend in order to take a high profile and they are generally doing a good job of marketing their products. You thought you would take a shortcut by piggybacking on their high profile and expensive advertising. It has now backfired on you. What I have learned in business though is that setbacks can often be turned round and even turned to your advantage. You should milk setbacks for all their lessons. This problem could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you because in five years time you might have a whole raft of products designed/invented by yourself and successfully marketed by yourself and it will all be thanks to the lesson you learned with the brake. Most of my best ideas have come when I have felt threatened by competition. I would not take too much notice of these cases unless you actually contact the people concerned and get them to tell you everything which actually happened (which would be extremely useful to you of course). I think you may find in a lot of cases where people have lost it may be because their original application was badly drafted or because they did not have the resources to defend the patent properly - not necessarily because of some weakness in the patenting process itself. I think it would pay you to look at this very carefully. There must be tons of information on the internet and also some good books. With limited resources you need to become your own expert on patent law. I know that a million other things are sucking away all your time and money resources but with your business based on your engineering ingenuity and innovation this is going to be crucial to your success. The patent office do some very good leaflets including one on how to draft your own patent. Read "Ogilvy on Advertising" and "Tested Advertising Methods". I would not place too much reliance on fancy graphics. Fancy graphics and logos are "me messages". You need to be concentrating on "you messages" ie. benefits! Never do an ad without it listing all the benefits. An interested prospect will read as much as you want to tell him about the benefits your product is offering. Never make the mistake of thinking too much copy will bore people. People who are not interested in the product will find it boring no matter what the format. This is the conundrum every businessman has to face. Given unlimited resources and time we could all run world beating businesses. I recommend this book: "The Ultimate Entrepeneur's Book" by Richard Dobbins and Barrie Pettman Here is a CD audiobook that will put you on the right track: Zig Ziglar The guy is very entertaining! Cheers Chris

Hi Si, Some thoughts: Thought 1. Was this patentable? You have probably looked into this yourself at some stage. You may know this already but to be patentable the thing must not be in the public domain. So if you talk to anyone at all about it it is no longer patentable (unless you get them to sign a confidentiality agreement aka non disclosure agreement.) Obviously you cannot patent this now but if it was patentable you should really have done it. I think 2 things might have put you off, 1. The diffulties and expense of defending any patent infraction and 2. The expense of taking out a patent in the first place. To be patentable the idea must be a genuine innovation and not something which would be obvious to anyone in that particular field. I don't know enough about your product to judge that. (By the way some history and an explanation of what the brake does exactly might be useful for us non-anoraks.) If you have any more ideas like this I think you should definitely patent them. Did you know that the inital costs of registering a patent are very small? It is only after a year or so when the patent office has done a thorough search and are sure that your innovation can be patented that you have to pay big bucks. During this time however, you can say "patent applied for" and no one is allowed to copy it. This gives you a year or more of protection for peanuts. During this time you can make as much money as you can and when it comes time to take out a full patent, a. you may have raised enough from selling the product to cover this and b. you will know from the market reaction whether it is worth taking out the full patent or whether you want to just quietly let it drop. If you do let it drop of course there is no need to go around shouting from the rooftops that you are not taking out a patent after all and most potential rip off merchants would be too lazy to check whether you have let the patent lapse and would just assume that you have patent protection. Thought 2 You may still have some protection under copyright law. You do not have to do anything to own copyright of something you have created. It is intrinsic in the act of creation. (The copyright of this post belongs to me for example - unless there is something in this forum's terms and conditions where I have agreed to waive my copyright when I signed up). You have design copyright on your handbrake - that is a fact. The question is whether scorpion racing infringed your copyright in copying it. If they did then you should send them a "cease and desist" letter telling them to stop sales of their copy of your copyrighted work. To pursue this line is going to cost you quite a lot of money up front but if you win you should get it all back in the form of damages and costs. The trouble is you are going to have to employ a barrister and if you think Colin is a plop wait until you meet the average barrister! The first thing you will want to know of course if you consult a barrister (or solicitor) is whether you stand a chance of winning. The problem is that barristers will always tell you there is a very good chance of winning. They will then proceed to bleed you dry! If you want to pursue this path I would advise you to do as much research as you can on your own and then make sure you give your barrister clear written instructions (That way if he goes off on a tangent of his own you can always sue him). What you could do is approach the "job shop" of a University with a good law department and find yourself a law student to research the question. He or she will be able to dig up all the relevant case law and precedents for beer money. In any case it is going to cost you nothing to send a "cease and desist" letter. It is then for Colin to decide if you are bluffing or not. Thought 3 In my opinion the best defence of your products is good marketing and advertising. Have you read a lot of books on advertising? If not - why not? Advertising nous is the difference between success and failure. Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that there is nothing to learn about advertising and that anything there is to learn is obvious. If you think like this you should not be in business IMHO. Did you know that only 1 in 20 business start ups survive more than five years? Two books which are absolutely apposite for this case are "Positioning" and "Marketing Warfare" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Read them several times. If I was in your position I would get together a group of enthusiasts like yourself who have designed their own products. I saw an article not long ago about a couple of guys who designed some way over the top suspension designs. Why not get together with them and pool the marketing and distribution costs and take out a full page full colour spread every month in LRO? Why not call yourselves "The Real Thing" products? By the way - what is the most effective kind of advertising? Editorial of course. But you don't have to beg the magazines to do some editorial for you. You can write your own editorial every month. You just don't call it editorial you call it an "advert". If you want an "advertorial" written I am available but it'llcostya! Cheers Chris www.before-n-after.co.uk

Hi Guys, Sorry this is a bit late but better late than never! Can Waxoyl be applied to a wet surface? Yes and no. To be pedantic about it, any surface will be wet, even if it appears dry. Waxoyl is formulted to displace water and it does this very effectively. I am about to re-run my ads showing the tests I did about 3 years ago. In these tests I dipped a load of test panels in a salt solution and then brushed the various rustproofing waxes and oils straight onto the wet panels. With all of the materials the water was displaced. It was striking how the water just bubbled through the various waxes and oils. On Waxoyl it really fizzed through. So yes, it does displace moisture. Does this mean you can apply it straight onto a wet surface? Well I still prefer to apply it to a bone dry surface. I have never done a comparative test to see what the difference would be between applying it to a wet surface and applying it to a dry surface but I suspect there would be a loss of performance. Re: using PX24, this is a very effective, high performance displacing fluid used extensively by the Armed Forces. This is what I used to use. I now have very effective drying booths and I can get a vehicle absolutely bone dry very quickly including in the cavities so I don't use it any more. The "Robinson" link above is fairly accurate (apart from one or two inaccuracies, like Waxoyl being manufactured in Switzerland - its not - its just that the people who hold the "international" rights to Waxoyl are based in Switzerland (its a long story!). I suspect that he has got most of his information from reading my website and my ads. [wink] Cheers Chris