BBT Travels

Brazil trip last legs…. wrap up; pack and get out of here…:)

On last couple of days we’ve been busier as ever. Many OE suppliers (no pictures allowed) had to be visited before our departure.

Passing our friend of Da Houze Marcos from Garage MACFEL fame we halted for a coffee and some cool pictures.

Marcos has a growing restoration shop, building only Kombi Brazil for export to Europe and USA, Every time we come here his business is growing…

A dinner invitation with THE man behind the Brazilian Volkswagen scene we couldn’t decline neither, on the way back from another far away visit to Sao Paolo we stopped in Campinas to meet our friend Luiz, editor of VW Klassik and VW Kustom, the two leading Volkswagen magazines in Brazil.

He’s absolutely my favorite source for Brazilian specifications….:)

Thanks for dinner Luiz, Madero rocks!!

Driver Clemmerson was a great guy, we had good laughs and he’s official BBT driver now, please see the BBT sticker on the back of his car…:)

Thanks Clemmerson, you’re a fantastic driver…

On the road to next supplier and to the airport, Brazil has many freeways and most are  busy enough….

We like to thank everybody that helped this trip come to what it was. I had great times, life time memories and worked never any harder like last two weeks.

Many new products have been found, more suppliers convinced that quality really does matter and more productions secured.

But in the end it was the people that made the difference.

I’m extremely happy I can tell I have really good friends and relationships in Brazil.

Thank You guys, you made this trip as successful as it became.

Brazil trip, Fania, BBT’s favorite supplier for cables.

Fania and BBT go a long way back.

With thousands of cables sold per year and hardly any complaints we feel we have a good brand of cable on offer for the right price.

Fania is in the beautiful city of Itajubà, a mere 400km north of Sao Paolo.
It’s a long drive so I decided to make myself a mobile office on the back seat of my driver Emerson’s car…:)

The moments I wasn’t working I was spoiled with the beautiful Brazilian landscape.

Arrived we start first with a factory tour before our meeting.
@ Fania everything starts with raw material arriving.

Test, test, test is the big secret of the Fania quality, incoming raw material, half product and finished product.
All are tested thoroughly on the most sophisticated test equipment necessary.

The production happens in several different departments… I will try to give you an overview…
Here is part of the assembly department.

Cable winder department….

Plastic injection department…

This was my favorite department Speedo cable winding…

A speedo cable is made from 4 times 4 wires over one central cable,
Let me try to show how it works in next the video.

Video not visible? Click HERE

More cable winding machines.

Small eagle view from the assembly hall.

The city of Itajubà is situated in the state of Minas Gerais a mere 586.520km² in size, that’s almost 20 times! Belgium (30.528 km²) and that’s only one state, not even 7% of the total Brazilian surface of 8.502.728km².

They always told me they have good coffee in Minas Gerais, I can approve all rumors now…:)

The way back was even more beautiful as the way up… we took a slightly different road…

What a trip, what a day…

I want to thank Edgar, Luiz, Liliane and the entire Fania team for this wonderful meeting and tour, I think we both learned a lot and our partnership become only stronger!
The Fania brand will appear on our website soon and we will show the Fania logo’s with pride.

If you have any Fania need or question, or like to produce whatever cable, please contact us, for sure we can help You.

Oh yes, a very special thank you to my driver, Emerson, Brazilian best driver! If you ever need a driver in Southern Brazil, I can only recommend him!

Brazil trip; Kombi engine lids, door handles, knobs and plenty more…:)

Almost every shopping mall has its own Kombi in Brazil, The shopping mall in Vila Olimpia Sao Paolo is no difference…
In Brazil You use shopping malls a lot as they have huge food courts, and we have to eat anyway!…:)

We visited a metal pressing plant, where some of our bay window & Kombi Brazil engine lids are made, more then likely they will make the 55-58 engine lid for us too… soon…:)

Safety first!

All 4 operators have to have their BOTH hands on the security knobs before they can operate the press and give an extra push before the press push through…

Deep draw presses are magic….
But very dangerous machines!

Video not visible? Click HERE

They just finished a production of engine lid inner frames for us… this is for Kombi Brazil.

After pressing comes laser cutting, unless you do it with a cutting die under a press …
Laser cutting is kind a interesting, completely CNC robotic off course…

Video not visible? Click HERE

The paint line, all is completely dipped, a 1 hour and 15 minutes cycle.

Their tooling department was busy too, making a new tool for a front hood of a modern car.

Talking about tooling, they had many toolings, all nicely stored…. Inside!

This is the tooling shelf for Kombi engine lids…
All these tools in all these colors, and they’re double stacked… 🙂

Next we visit a supplier who makes doorhandles, gribs, knobs locks, you name it…
I was kind a surprised from the number of injection machines they had…
Aluminium, zamak, plastic, these guys extrude literally everything!

The assembly lines (they have multiple) are so nice to look at…

These ladies are fantastic!
Without a doubt the heart of this company…
Look how fast she assembles the lock cilinder.

Just try this at home…:)

Video not visible? Click HERE

Half product storage, was huge too!

Tooling and dies, somebody has to make them.
These guys are comparable to lock smiths!!

If every shopping mall has its own Kombi, every factory has his own Fusca over here…. 🙂

Hope You enjoy and follow…

Much more to come… Stay tuned!

Brazil trip continues, more factories, more ideas, more parts… 

We visit factories every single working day, somedays three, more often four different.
Or we have meetings in hotel lobby’s or private offices…

Some factories leave deep impressions. And we’re very happy to share with you.
Unfortunately most big OE suppliers do have a “no pictures” philosophy…:(…. sorry for that.

Our fuel pump rebuild kit manufacturer was one of the major stops this trip.

After a 4 hour monster meeting discussing every part from our fuel pump rebuild kits, one by one, every single component, we can say that we will improve quality of these kits quite a bit. We need some new tooling and procedures, but we estimate to start to deliver the improved kits by the end of the year. Meanwhile we keep on delivering our existing kits.

We also stopped by one of our taillight producers.
It was good to see they enlarged quite a bit last couple of years…

Raw material… will this become your taillight?

This is one of their plastic injection machines to make Beetle and Bus taillights for us…

Everybody loves Bob, here in Brazil its a little ant with over 5 million followers on YouTube
Check it out on you Tube under Bob Zoom, its pretty cool made!

A slice of real meat anyone?

Ever questioned how a relay is born?
We visited a relative new supplier for our relays, its a rather smaller manufacturer , but one that can work flexible and garantee all of his product for two years.

He will made most of our relays under private label.
Let’s check it out….

They start with connectors…:)

and a lot of assembly work…

This is where they wind the spools…

…. and assemble…

Finally we need a golden handshake times to times right?

Marcel agreed to make a new badge of our Westfalia tent poles…. now we’re talking…:)

Stay tuned for more updates!

Cars and Coffee, the Brazilian way!

Encontro & Café… a Portuguese saying for Cars and coffee, a Sunday happening like all over the world…:)
Its always fun to participate with your own car.

The Bianco is quite a car, Volkswagen based , build on an all new platform of a Brazilia in 1978 by Tony Bianco in small series in order to get his race cars homologated…
I always loved them, they’re pretty rare, especially in good condition…

I found a good one overhere (Thanks for the tip Luiz) and bought it…
Time to test it out on Brazilian roads on this lazy Sunday!

The road went smooth and less as an half hour later we entered the Cars and Coffee…

Fleet bus, pretty rare to see a nice one!

Itamar, the last series of Fusca build in Brazil!

How low can you go Bro’?

The official Brazilian Satff car…:)

Very similar to a Gipsy in Europe, here they call Safari, officially made by Karmann overhere, pretty weird uh?

Wrench that baby….

Vinicius was my co driver all day long…

Thanks God we could park the Bianco safe and sound before the tropical rainstorm took over the views!!!!
This view is from the official BBT staff car on our way back to the hotel…

One Caipirinha a day rinse the dust away…:)

ok Monday, this means back to work, more visits, more products, stay tuned!