Brazil has a large manufacturing of real full size trucks… as far as we could figure out it’s the 3th most sold truck in this immense country so You see plenty on freeways, not always easy to capture, I did my best and like to share this pictures with You on this cool lazy sunday… (read our lazy program for today below)

Today we will attend a VW show, have lunch with an export manager from a carburetor factory, take an airplane to another city 500km south, have dinner there with a production crew for engine cases, tomorrow three full factory tours with meetings, and in the evening we fly back to Sao Paolo. Only so You don’t have start feeling sorry that our trip would be a boring one….:)

oh yes we saw the swimming pool… in the hotel brochure already…LOL…:)

Day n°2 in Brasil … We set our trip further… today a hardware manufacturer, a stamping plant (where we were not allowed to take pictures sorry for that) and  the Wolff bumper factory.

First the hardware factory… in Brazil most of the factories still work conventional as labor cost still allow… all the parts on our beetles been made conventional back in the day… PLC and CNC only came after VW seized Beetle production…

This company is no exception..here we see the forging of the rear axle nuts, nut just made on a lathe, or a mill, but really forged like it should, with this type of manufacturing BBT parts makes the difference!

This is the forging machine for axle nuts, pretty impressive uh?

The forging department… they produce valve adjusting screws, pins for fuel pump etc etc all that need to be forged, hardened or tempered… exactly the same way like VW used to make back in the day… even hardware is important for us!

The “Fusca” from the boss of the plant , believe me or not…

All kind of lathes to make all kind of hardware, nice view uh?

Rolling the tread on a valve adjusting screw… a little experience to operate the machine was really necessary, man that went fast!

Up to the next… did i tell you traffic in Sao Paolo is a mess?

Welcome to BBT Brazil nerve center… BBT Ricardo in “our” office…:)  BBT run two offices in Brazil…

and it rained again “cats and dogs”…  swimming pool, palm trees, bikinis and cocktails? i don’t think so…:)

This is Wolff, a plant where they make bumpers, a lot of bumpers if you can see well the size of the building…

This steel becomes bumpers anytime soon!

now it get into dimension…

One of the deep throat pressings, pressing bumpers is kind a special procedure… deep throat pressing is a passion here, like VW’s are passion for us…

The final “rolling” after pressing to take the stress out of the metal..

tooling for VW bumpers..

a mixture of product, half product, tooling materials machines… wowh! almost art to me!

another way of working is the vacuum procedure, here been plastic bumpers made in low volumes… plastic bumpers, that’s NOT for us…:)

Alain in the warehouse where thousands and thousands of bumpers been stocked… Wollf sells no less like  4000 beetle bumpers and 1500 bus bumpers a MONTH! Quiet a very impressive operation…

Bird view of metal bumper production..

And these are two injection machines, the green one push 2000tons! The white one in the back 1200 tons, jawadde!  Every one of this machines “spit” out a bumper every 2,5 minutes! Plastic bumpers for modern cars only…:)

after a days work man deserves a good meal… welcome to Brazil, the country of MEAT!

stay tuned for more… we have a lot of visits to take care for!