Before last day and first stop… Marilia a manufacturer of relays and switches… they will produce some switches for us…  could this be the most friendly company in Brazil?

From the moment we entered we felt at home at Marilia.

Alain check out the production of switch indicator components, almost all component and halfparts are made inside this factory…

Tooling department…

Plastic injection… the operator says hi to all BBT Blog friends and readers!

 Steel mfg dept of this factory… I love this machines, they’re automatic and work kind a like organs… I love to call them mechanical CNC machines, but actually better would be to call them CN machines, without last C…:)

Assembling of solenoids! Wowh this lovely lady says Hi again to all of You, the BBT Blog readers!

You recognise the print on your wiper switch?… it has to come from somewhere…:)

Many assembly lines… all well organised with the Lean system management… a kind of efficiency program we came across in several factories, but here LEAN is all finished and operating…  very effective…

 Hi-five also out of the production assembly lines!

 Another sweet girl says Hi to us here… Marilia is for sure the most friendly factory we have visit this trip!

Quality control is everything… here there’s no labels are printed as long as the screen is not green!

Every single relays and switch made in this  is tested and approved, this lady loved to say hi as well but ws in the middle of a testing cycle and the show has to go on…

Time for lunch… Alain seems to have found the salad bar!

Bob awaits the meat… Brazilian meat is the best on planet earth… tested and approved regularly by yours truly…:)

After lunch we visit this factory producing small engine parts and camshafts , very professional set up, many CNC machines…

Their warehouse is full of parts for immediate shipping…

Beetle camshafts… the reason we came here, samples are in our suitcase…:)

Production grinding of VW camshafts…

You need Camshaft blanks? They have “towers” of blanks over here! They sell around 4000 Beetle camshafts a month!

Not VW anymore, but they supply to many brands!

so far so good… more visits to more factories in the next two days, but Blog space don’t allow more reports anymore… Alain and myself hope You enjoyed the little travel with us… sorry we can’t give the taste of the food through the Blog as we would loved you had joined us on these terrific menu’s over here…

Brazil is a very nice country.. People are very very friendly, everywhere, every says bom Dia (hello) to everybody and smiles are on almost all of people’s faces, problems don’t exist (only in politics!!) what a relief, wish it was everywhere like this…

Especially to our guides this trip… Uncle Samy, Ricardo and Mauci … we enjoyed your company fully, and couldn’t have done this wonderful trip without you guys, thanks for driving us EVERYWHERE through crazy Sao Paolo traffic, thanks for translations, for the help with our internet connections, to arrange our visits, actually thanks for the whole trip!

The last words to ALL the wonderful people from Brazil… thank You so much for your hospitality, we enjoyed fully and can’t wait to come back for more… we will always remember You as a warm community with lots of smiles, and open-minded people.. keep up, we all know You suffer the recession, but this can not break that wonderful mentality! Your real strength is inside your hearts and we’re completely behind you and will try to buy as many Fusca parts we can to help our little bit to your economy what we can! The Itamar Fusca saved the country once, let’s try to spare parts for the Fusca save the country this time around!

One day, another three factories, lunch, dinner and an airplane ride back to Sao Paolo… yes we “deserved” this trip! …:)

used kombis everywhere in Brazil… feels good…:)

First stop… Hubner/ Auto Linea… Manufacturer of engine cases and cylinder heads… yes, the news is out now, we do work on a new cylinder head, because our old ones are not up to standards and we dislike Chinese… so we started a while ago the new secret project called “German cylinder head”… no less than Three NOS  (Real NOS German!) been provided as samples, and today we check the progress in this project!

Hubner is a state of the art factory, with “tons” of CNC machinery… here ‘s a small part of the Vw cylinder head production…

Main products for Hubner is the production of Mercedes-Benz Truck  engine blocks..; believe me or not they sell more of those as Mercedes themselves! Production is just impressive…

R&D use extreme high technology German machines for testing, measuring and drawing… this latest technology is used to create our  new heads as well…

This is a production honing machine, slightly different from the ones we’re used to see in Machine shops all over the world…:)

More engine blocks…

ever saw a 4 cylinder Boxer diesel engine???

After Hubner/Auto Linea we went to our manufacturer for our New 6 volt regulator… and they gave us a lunch to die for… everybody seems to be convinced that this will be a good selling product! The lunch? Was incredible…this restaurant is voted regularly the best burger in the world… Alain and me can testify this is nothing but the truth!

Thanks Alisson and Luiz!

Here it is, in different stages… the lower pictures are the  new BBT 6 volt regulator that will work what it supposed to be made for, no cheap chinese stupid part, but  well-engineered super part!! Above some larger regulators to understand the working of an electronic regulator… complete below are our conductor board, actually the regulator it selves… funny uh?  The engineers here are extremely high skilled!

oh good news, test face is over, production started now!!!

Close up for the patented conduction boards…

and here mounted in the housing…

The factory is like a clinic, some departments we could only see from behind glass… dust free is not just a saying here!

Full automated assembly of the conduction boards!

Next to Igasa, our manufacturer of Front axles (and gastanks)

here start the production from our front axles, believe me or not…:)

and yes, they need serious machines to produce front axles…

Can You believe these pipes will become close to 500 ft axles, I’m not joking!

Serious punching machines, this is a real serious manufacturing plant!

Press works…

line up of 12ton presses!

the “puma” part of the front axles…stamped in the back!

New tooling almost finished for the shock towers …

And so another day passed by, we had dinner (Thanks Bino!) and ran for our plane back to Sao Paolo, only to found out had a 2 hour delay… planes…:(

Stay tuned for more crazy factory visits tomorrow!

Last Friday we planned a visit to ZF/TRW/VARGA and MAHLE,  two major BBT suppliers

Let’s get on the road! here’s the skyline of our destination the city of Limeira still in the state of Sao Paolo Population is about 267.804. It must been said that this is a real nice area of Brazil, its safe, clean and there’s still  a lot of work, although the recession took here also a lot of jobs away.

First stop TRW

Very well received by Enilton (Export sales manager) and our daily contact inside this company Nayara (export analyst) unfortunately we are not allowed to publish pictures from the production…:( but the plant is very impressive in size and our meeting was a real good one, we opened a lot of opportunities to centralize TRW VARGA classic Volkswagen solutions in europe around BBT.

A smaller freeway brings us to the South American aftermarket distribution center of Mahle..

Huge, brand new and state of the art complex, blew us of our socks!

Very well received by our friend and inside Mahle contact Pedro,
Pedro insisted to say Hi to all BBT friends and customers worldwide, a big Hi! Thanks Pedro to keep providing us the good piston and liner kits, bearings  and other engine parts!

The warehouse is HUGE!! and remember this is only aftermarket!

Packing BBT orders…:)

rows and rows of piston and liner kits..

Small parts been warehoused in a 100% automatic section, inventory is made by weight!

Next stop was the Mahle Piston factory… this is almost like a village… here do work no less than 9000 people!

And this plant is also the home base for our friend Claus, CEO of Mahle South America. Claus is a VW lover like all of us and this was his brand new toy a real Double door Kombi… so sorry Claus was in Germany during our visit…

The Mahle show room!

How nice is this? Mahle don’t forget its history…

Claus his split window beetle is continuously on display in the Mahle showroom to remember everybody on the heritage of the company! This is the right spirit!

The Belgium flag was out with reason! Wowh this makes You very proud as a rather small customer from such a huge factory! Thanks for the respect Mahle, we will work even harder now to promote your products!

Due to company policy also here were not allowed to publish any pictures from production… but seeing the making of pistons from A to Z is a very very interesting procedure, and the quality control is immense in this factory! One of the quality controls is a X-ray of every piston for Diesel engines!

After our meeting and tour (and  again also Mahle wants to concentrate their classic VW parts  line around BBT for Europe) we went to Pedro’s house for our happy hour! Pedro has a nice bar at the back of his house! very cool place to hang out!
on the way back I spotted these two Brasilia’s in a back yard… cool view huh? oh yes there was another 10 orso Beetles as well… 🙂

Exhausted we arrived back in Sao Paolo and crashed on our beds… tomorrow there’s another day…

We insist to thank the teams from TRW and Mahle very very hard for the wonderful receptions and meetings, and for transport back and forth from Sao Paolo. Thank You to make our trip easier!