We do produce and buy a lot of spare parts for our beloved Volkswagens in Brazil. there is tons of factories and manufacturers and some do have real good quality, to find them and improve products and deliveries we have to travel over times to times and see how we can make the Aircooled Volkswagen aftermarket a better place on our planet…:)
Welcome in Sao Paolo, this is a real city, very large, (actually Third largest city in the world ranking) loads of traffic and very tall and modern buildings… this is the economical heart of South America…
Brazil country where kombis still work very hard… Kombis are everywhere and part of daily life… one have to work harder than the other…
First a sheet metal factory… can you see the floorpans?
rows and rows, stacks and stacks…:;)
Punching machines can make EVERYTHING!! I need a couple of those I guess, if only labor was not that expensive where we live!
Discussing split window bus cargo doors, will we succeed this trip to let them change the tooling so the Kombi door will fit european models? Can we bring finally a solution home?
more floorplates await paint booth…
Overview from the back, cool building, very old school…
More punching machines, my favorites!
Inside we choose for traditional Brazilian food, sold by the weight…:)
Everywhere the old Volkswagens are in Street view, here is the Brazilian made Brasilia on a billboard…
After lunch another factory… one of our larger suppliers in Brazil… bumper brackets, washers a load of parts… here we came especially to discuss back orders and poor deliveries, after 3 hours of meetings in different departments I think we did find a solution that suit all parties… thanks to our Brazilian BBT Ricardo and Uncle Samy off course! Hopefully supplies sart up soon again!
Production is very impressive! Here they make the bearings for the steering column!
Our friend in the manufacturing, so neat guy! say Hi to all BBT friends all over the world! We visit and talk to everybody, if we like to improve? We have to start with production!
This is how You make pulley’s… on a punching machine…:)
Another dept. where small parts been finished… this are production lathes… crazy how many of operations they can do at once… some machines been set up up to 20! operations in one spin! Imagine this is not CNC, no these machines still make parts like it should! Oh my God I love this plant!
And back to the hotel, first day was more than exhausting! Oh for You guys who were thing Alain and me entertained the girls near the swimming pool of the hotel, this was the kind of weather we had whole day… and forecast don’t show a lot of progress actually… this is work, hard work, but something we love to do, try to make the VW aftermarket world a better place!
stay tuned for more!