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Why are Acerbis Tanks so expensive ! Why are Acerbis Tanks so expensive !
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Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
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Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



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  #1  
Old 26 Nov 2011
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Yep I will go for a Jerry can unless a cheaper one comes up on ebay


Im quite happy to pay good money for something I can look at and think "yep thats worth the money" but for a plastic tank... it will never be that !

Cheers
Geordie aka Will
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  #2  
Old 26 Nov 2011
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I expect they are so expensive because of the cost of a mold for something that is made in relatively small numbers, although the cost of the molds is coming down as like everything else the Chinese are making then much more cheaply than we can.
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  #3  
Old 26 Nov 2011
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Check out E-bay, there are guys who can weld who make race, grass tracking tanks etc. Made me a 10 litre auxilliary tank for 90-quid.

I'm an engineer. It's a while since I bought plastic automotive parts but with any blow or injection moulded part tooling and set up costs are key. Take ten shots to get it right then do a run of five parts and your costs just trebbled. Run of five thousand parts and no one will notice.

This isn't what drives Acerbis though it's what they might use as an excuse. The market is swamped with Starbucks customers who'll blow two grand to make their bike look like the one inside the cover of the Touratech catalogue. The market is now saying Acerbis tanks are worth £350 so they'd be daft to hold their prices. Prices only fall when someone else stumps up the cost of entry or some other fashion takes over. I've been out of this market for ten years but would guess you could make a profit selling these tanks for £200.

Andy
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  #4  
Old 26 Nov 2011
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it would be interesting to find out the raw cost of a tank ... but then its like the KFC secret ingredient... something we will probably never find out.

When you look at say, a large screen tv these days, you can pick up a fairly decent screen around the £350 mark.... then I think well theres lots of little circuit boards and components... however I still look at an acerbis and think.. its just a blown out lump of plastic

Surely if they lowered the price then they would sell more units.. at £200 all my bikes would have larger tanks !

Cheers
Geordie aka Will
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  #5  
Old 26 Nov 2011
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You think £350 is expensive for a tank (actually it is). About 10yrs I paid Acerbis double that for a 40L tank for my XR600 - and then had to make up or modify all of the mounting brackets. Ok its a bigger tank than most but the mould making process is going to be much the same and the extra plastic is going to be pence. Looking at what they charge now I suspect Acerbis think that their prices have come down.
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Old 26 Nov 2011
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Think ya self lucky you don't have a BMW X Challenge .....................
..............£550







Cheers
Pete
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Old 26 Nov 2011
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Surely it is just a question of volume (and I don't mean the tank capacity )

The product range and the market for long distance motorcycling is very much niche and the costs are unavoidably high when serving a small market.

With product liability laws and so on, it is simply not feasible for a proper manufacturer to put onto the market anything that has not been properly designed, tested and proved safe. Especially if that product has to hold 30 litres of highly flammable liquid 5 centimetres away from a boiling hot piece of metal that is bouncing hard over corrugations at 60mph.

Its alright for an individual to bodge it up, not a well established company like Acerbis
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  #8  
Old 26 Nov 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mcgiggle View Post
Think ya self lucky you don't have a BMW X Challenge .....................
..............£550







Cheers
Pete
R100 GS tank from Touratech...£870.

I was given one for nothing
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