Yesterday Jerry and I visited a brake drum and a rubber factory in Brazil

The brake drum factory was quiet impressive as they did their own casting…

They start from scrap and ore and melt it down in kettles…

1200°Celsius… pretty hot!

To being poured in distribution kettles… this is liquid metal!

The big distribution kettle pour anothertime in smaller melting kettles…

Driving around with kettles with liquid metal… weird job they do here…:)

These kettles been pouring the liquid metal into the sand castings…

whereafter the castings going through a tunnel to “distress”…

Same time on the other side they form the sand castings…

After the distress of the  castings they been send through enormous tumblers to break the sand casting…and free the new born casted drum…

All metal is severe controlled on quality continuously throughout the whole process.. hardness, structure, graphite quotation, it’s all very closely followed up… here we see our friend Cartlos at the Spectro meter to determine the structure and exact composition of the (liquid) metal. To give You an idea all steel is at least controlled twice before they pour it!

With these raw castings as a result…

No less as 38 CNC machines take it from here to transform the raw castings into high-end brake drum and discs…

Very small series been still drilled the “conventional” way…

But most been fully CNC machined… a production of close to a million pieces a month!!

Outside it was pouring rain (and hail!!) welcome to the summer in Brazil!

Next was a rubber factory… window and door seals…

This is the components “mixer”! Very impressive!

And the rollers, to make the base rubber for the extruder…

To get the rubber to the extruders…

And this was the molding machines where they make the Beetle door and hood seals!

What a day!! Another set of lessons about the production from the spare parts for our beloved Volkswagens…

This Volkswagen Gol was waiting us to bring to next city of Blumenau

Tomorrow we visit and aluminum foundry… so stay tuned!

Patina or project??? Your choice….

Super cool driving German Kombi for a very attractive price…

CLICK ON PHOTO FOR MORE INFORMATION  AND GALLERY

Yesterday (saturday) we made a verde a trip to see a very special car and we stopped by Katrake, a VW shop specialised in suspensions. We had a very fun day and learned to know a couple of new VW friends with their hearts in the right (VW) place!

My friend Luiz from  the Brazilian VW Magazine VW Klassik drove us today to see a very special car…

I heard from this car before, it looked like a race car  build on a platform from a 1946 Beetle.

Its made in Germany, around 1949 and it was part of a traveling circus…

Most parts are authentic 1946,a s are the numbers… it’s really beautiful made, with a big eye to detail!

Chassis is seriously shortened and also made smaller!

With a Kubelwagen rear axle and a sedan front axle…

as period newspaper pictures shows it was used on the “Wall of Death”!

First in Germany later it moved to Brazil…

In the collection the race car resides lately there’s a lot of other cars, very interesting we thought was also this Tatra… very nicely restored!!

And also this Tempo Matador panel van! Extremely rare! Never saw another one in the flesh!

and besides many other there was also a choice of Isetta’s!

After this breath-taking visit Luiz and his (highly pregnant) wife brought us to this very nice lunch place!

Thanks Luiz, You gave us a wonderful day!

Luiz dropped us off to meet another friend, Edgar… he awaited us at the Katrake Vw shop… highly specialised in VW suspensions!

Alexandre, the owner, his weak (VW) spot are standard beetles!

Mandatory sticker ceremony… this shop is BBT approved!!

From right to left BBT Jerry, Alexandre and yours truly… new friends for life!!

Today we fly to the south of Brazil for many more…. so stay tuned!