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Volk Metal Craft - Our official introduction

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99gst_racer

Moderator
11,976
1,542
Apr 5, 2003
Coloma, Michigan
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Hello guys!

Most of you guys here already know me and most are familiar with my fabrication endeavors. I've been making some changes lately toward growing it into something greater than it has been for the past few years. I'd like to officially introduce Volk Metal Craft!

As most of you know, this is mostly a 1-man show, ran by yours truly. But I can't take all of the credit. Aside from myself, we have one other welder (Todd) who welds periodically when the workload builds up. Todd has been welding professionally for the past 30 years and takes pride in his work. Many of you have been driving on his weld work for many years. As well, we have three lathe operators; myself, Lauren, and Michaela. Most VMC products require some lathe work, so that keeps us all pretty busy.

Over the past 3 years, all of our equipment has been upgraded at least once - our lathe, welders, tubing notchers, and more recently, our bandsaw. We have a 3D printer in house and are able to print and test fit prototype small parts and flanges. And we also have a welding positioner for repeatability and consistency on any capped tubing or threaded weld ends. The plan is to continue to invest more and more into this every year.

We also work with our local southwest Michigan businesses. We use a local chassis fab shop for our CNC laser cut and CNC bent bracketry. And we use a local source for e-coating and powdercoating of our products. Completely mitten-made from beginning to end.

www.volkmetalcraft.com

We just launched our website on January 1st. Check it out! It's a work in progress, but it is fully functioning and taking orders. We look forward to adding a handful of new products to it this year.


https://www.facebook.com/VolkMetalCraft/


We also just kicked off our Facebook page. Come like our FB page to keep up on the latest developments!

We'd like to thank you for all of your support leading up to this, and all of your support going forward. We wouldn't be doing what we're doing if it weren't for you guys!
 
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I know many of you guys already have products made by us. I would love it if you guys could take a minute and write a review. Either a product review on our website or a vendor review on our FB page. After you do, send me a message letting me know, along with your mailing address, and I'll send you some vinyl decals.

(Note: I'm switching vinyl suppliers right now, so they wont ship right away - but I promise they will eventually get to you)

Also, you'll notice we have a "Customer Gallery" on the website. If you're currently running any VMC products on your DSM and want to be a part of that gallery, send us some images. Preferably your choice of a great exterior shot of the car, and then a good shot of your installed VMC part. Please e-mail them to: [email protected]
 
2G front upper control arms & 2G front compression arms: When can I send you my $$$$ ?
As soon as they're built!

I'll be looking for a tester for these later this year if you're in.


I drew up a pretty neat gated monoball bearing cup a few months ago. The gates limit motion on one axis to zero, while allowing full motion on the other 2 axis - no arm droop. Aside from being a bit expensive to machine, they should be perfect for the job. I've 3d printed all of the parts but I haven't had a chance to test fit the assembly yet.

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Site looks great, Paul! I see you're offering the rear tow bar. Are you also planning to offer the trailing bar and/or the lateral. I'm doing an awd swap on my spyder and I'm currently rebuilding the new rear suspension. I've been poking around at the megan trailing and tow bars the last couple weeks, but the price on your tow bar isn't much more, so I'll likely go with that. If I can get the other bars to match, I'd prefer that. Planning to go with the RM sway bar, so the 3G lowers are now good to me.
 
this is great news guys. i love the talent/ product pool of sw michigan. would never have got into dsms if i didnt live here
 
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My volks with porsche brake ducts
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Extremely excited for you and what's to come, Paul!!!
Thanks Matt and Samantha!

Site looks great, Paul! I see you're offering the rear tow bar. Are you also planning to offer the trailing bar and/or the lateral. I'm doing an awd swap on my spyder and I'm currently rebuilding the new rear suspension. I've been poking around at the megan trailing and tow bars the last couple weeks, but the price on your tow bar isn't much more, so I'll likely go with that. If I can get the other bars to match, I'd prefer that. Planning to go with the RM sway bar, so the 3G lowers are now good to me.
Thanks! The 2G rear LCA's will be on the website very, very soon. I recently redesigned the end link adjuster that I've been using and I'm looking to have a batch machined this week. As soon as those arrive, I'll have a batch of LCA's ready for sale and listed on the website. I'll probably never build the trailing arm though. I just can't compete with the price of the Megan Racing arms. I might offer a solid bushing option (probably Delrin) for the OE trailing arm though.
 
Thanks for getting back Paul. After doing some talking with the local guys, it looks like my stock trailing arm will be fine. Changing the arms at all is overkill for me, but I'd like to go tubular while it's all apart. What's the life expecancy on the teflon bearings you use in your arms for a street car? I know they're able to be greased and are replaced/rebuilt, just trying to gauge the service window.
 
Thanks for getting back Paul. After doing some talking with the local guys, it looks like my stock trailing arm will be fine. Changing the arms at all is overkill for me, but I'd like to go tubular while it's all apart. What's the life expecancy on the teflon bearings you use in your arms for a street car? I know they're able to be greased and are replaced/rebuilt, just trying to gauge the service window.
I use nice/tight heims on all of my control arms. I've never actually worn out one of these heims. 5 years and counting on some of the older ones. Most would consider these particular heims to be overkill (in terms of size and quality) for the application and environment, but I like overkill. :) IMO, it's worth the slightly greater cost to gain enduring performance. If you aren't baja racing or driving exclusively on gravel roads, they're going to last a very, very long time. And even if subjected to an abusive environment, they'll still probably last a very long time.
 
Picked up the three piece crossmember and couldn't be happier. Installed it just in time to see how it'll perform in -50 degree weather in Alaska.

Only issue I had was having to drill new front mount holes; have mount 347 but this car has been beat on pretty hard, some stuff doesn't line up as well as they used to.

Paul, do you have any plans on fender braces for a 1g?
 

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Glad to see you have been up to something good while you were away, i've missed seeing your posts.
It's wild, the tech stuff you begin to forget as soon as you no longer own one of these cars. I got rusty, and then rustier. It's tough to participate in the tech forum unless it's a topic relevant to something that I work with these days. I've even searched a topic before and found posts of my own from 10 years ago, and "re-learned" something that I didn't even know I once knew. ROFL

I'll work on being far more active. I'm even kicking around the idea of a GVR4 project car, if I can find one at the right price. :)

Picked up the three piece crossmember and couldn't be happier. Installed it just in time to see how it'll perform in -50 degree weather in Alaska.

Only issue I had was having to drill new front mount holes; have mount 347 but this car has been beat on pretty hard, some stuff doesn't line up as well as they used to.

Paul, do you have any plans on fender braces for a 1g?
Matt, thanks for posting! I'm glad your crossmember system made it all the way to Alaska unscathed. It's not very often that I ship that far.

I'd surprised you had to re-drill the roll stop bracket. I'm not sure why, but it looks just like when the '90 guys have to re-drill. PIC

I kicked around the idea of fender braces for the 1G cars. But last I checked, there was an incredibly inexpensive option on eBay marketed toward the GVR4 cars. I remember the price being something I probably wouldn't want to compete with.
 
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Hey all!! I just wanted to follow up and say thank you for everyone's support! It's been a fun 1-3/4 years since this initial introduction. VMC is still growing over here. I’ve introduced a few new DSM products and also jumped into the 3000GT/Stealth market a little bit. Sometime in 2020, I’ll be expanding into offering arm sets for the EVO 8/9/X cars as well. In the next couple months, I’ll be investing $20k into some new shop equipment to help speed up production on all welded products. My primary goal is to get subframe build times down to 3 days (not including powdercoat time), so that I have more time to develop new products.

Anyway, I recently put together a little promo video. Check it out and let me know what you guys think!! Thanks for reading.

PS - The video is more fun with audio on. ;-)

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