Good lord.....what a can of worms you have opened..hehe!
I would think sheet metal parts would be in greater demand than anything else. It is always the first thing to be damaged, torn off or tossed away. But how does a small timer afford dies to stamp out a myriad of fenders, grills, hoods, and engine louvers/side curtains for all the old tractors out there? In a word.....he can"t.
Perhaps if you could roll/form thin sheet metal parts...that could be done economically and....profitably. For example...galvanized hoppers and lids for planters and fertilizer canisters......it"s next to impossible to find these replacement parts....everything is fiberglass nowadays and costs out the a$$. How about stamping out replacement pan seats? Sure, you can still get them....I priced one on Ebay for my Super A.......$166! That"s robbery. Plenty of them offered for Cubs and Super C"s at $80.....that"s still robbery. There is nothing to a pan seat but maybe $5 worth of steel and 50 cents worth of paint..add your overhead and a plastic bag...you could make it for less than $20 and sell it for $40......or be like the other guys and sell it for $80!
If you want to get into something that can and will make you money......buy a steel roofing roller mill and cut and sell it made to order. The last mill I seen was about the size of a phone booth, computerized and made in France.....that was 20 something years ago...no telling what is out there today. They hung a coil of colored roofing on an attached rack...fed it into the mill, dialed in the amount and length and pushed a button. The sheet metal was forced through a die that rolled the 5 Vee"s into the roofing and then sheared it to length. The sheared sheet was shoved into a stack...automatically and when the order wad done, the machine shut off. The outfit I bought roofing from had a skeleton crew....but that was all it required. One man with a small forklift would get a coil of the desired color metal and hang it on the rolling mill. He got the edge started into the rollers, programmed the machine and turned it on. He was then free to do something else while the machine ran unattended. When the roller mill was finished, the sheets of roofing were already in a stack and the forklift guy picked them up and sat them on your truck/trailer and away the customer went.
You"d make and sell lots more roofing...than tractor parts. Metal roofs are the current rage....big market.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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