Bleed nipple dust caps.

A motor factors. Maybe. But you only need 4, surely?

Not entirely sure why anyone bothers with them anyway....

A mate wants to fit them all round along with new bleed nipples. AFAIK that means he needs 12. I know 44p is not a lot in itself, but I work for a plastic moulding company. I'd guess at less than £10 per 1000 to manufacture, so 44p each seems a helluva lot. Mike.

Distribution - packaging - holding - risk of them not selling - profit -

John

If they are fitted, there is less chance of bleed nipples siezing and breaking off in the calipers or cylinders, particularly on older cars. Without caps, water, dirt etc can get to the inner end of the nipples, and start corroding the thread at that end. Any corrosion there will damage the thread when the nipple is unscrewed. In severe cases it can strip the thread or sieze the nipple solid enough for it to break when an attempt is made to unscrew it. They're certainly not essential, but I think it's a good idea to replace them if they're missing. Mike.

Hmmm. I can see where you're coming from, and certainly no harm in having them on there, but I'm inclined to think that if there'd been enough water, muck and passage of time to start rotting the nipple from the inner end out, then the outer end would be completely FUBAR by that point.

====================== A short length of plastic washer tubing (about 0.75" long) works almost as well on most nipples.

Cic.

There speaks a man who knows. Absolutely spot on.

Roj.

Take it one step further. Assuming injection moulding then you need to=20 make the master mould and then the mould itself.=20

My brother-in-law runs a company that does that kind of thing. They make=20 grommets and nylon things and anything you can mould in large amounts.=20 At one point I wondered about him making me up some rings to do ring=20 slings and sounded him out about it. The general idea was for him to=20 knock up a mould to make nylon rings of about 2.5" and make a couple of=20 hundred so that we could sell them online.=20

To make a profit per ring I'd have had to sell them at 50p each and have=20 a minimum order of 10,000 to cover the setup costs. I decided against=20 this as a bit of an earner.

Warwick

Caps of fairy liquid bottles used to be a perect long lasting fit.