Some time back I prototyped a quick release fire extinguisher for my personal use in my '93 Rx7. After showing it to my buddy (who is a big defender guy), he liked it so much that he thought I needed to start mass producing them and he posted a clip of it up on the d-90 forum to see what kind of interest people may have in it.

Long story short, I've had requests for about 50 of them in the last couple of weeks so I will most likely be doing a group buy on them. As with most all group buys, the more I have manufactured, the lower the cost will be.

Below is a clip of the prototype which has since gone through many revisions of design changes to improve durability, functionality, and lower manufacturing costs. I've attached some renderings of the redesigned clamp that will give you a good idea what the end result will look like at this point.

I don't have a final price point just yet, but I will post it up as soon as I finish receiving all of my quotes back. Currently it looks like it will be in the $50-$75 range but, I'm doing everything I can to keep the cost down.

This fire extinguisher mount will accommodate any 2.5lb extinguisher with a 3.00" OD which appears to be a pretty standard size.

If you are interested in purchasing one or more, please reply and let me know how many to put you down for.

Thanks for looking!

 

I will take six for my fleet rigs

 

Thanks, I'm waiting on 1 more quote to come back for casting the clamp before I can officially set the price, but I am expecting to have it today. I'll let you know as soon as I have it.

 

Previously I had stated that this was going to be for an extinguisher with a 3" OD but I am strongly considering making it for a 3.25" OD extinguisher now instead of the 3". It looks like the major brands like Kidde use a 3.25" OD for their 2.5lb extinguishers. I would appreciate opinions on this and whether or not it would affect your decision to buy.

 

I'm back in the garage today fabricating another clamp using all of the dimensions & specs from the new design so that I can validate it before pulling the trigger. We're getting very close here, but I'm still waiting on a final quote on the casting. I've talked to the foundry a few times in the last week and I'm comfortable enough now to say that the initial price will be about $55. I didn't quite get down to the $50 dollar mark that I know many were hoping for, but I'm sure you guys can understand and I wouldn't imagine that $5 more dollars would really make a difference in your decision to buy if you were serious about it in the first place. As I said before, I've only added a little bit into the cost for my time and labor to assemble & test the mounts, which doesn't add up to much.

It's taken a lot of work, and hours, to get to this point in the process, and considering the fact that I've basically done all of the design and planning on this project for free (since I am not trying to recover my investment thus far in the cost of the parts I sell) I hope you will continue to be patient in waiting for all of this to come to fruition.

Thanks again everyone,

Brian T.

 

I've finished the new clamp based on the new design specifications which has a few tweaks to it. The main ones being that the clamp is now 1/4" thick with rounded ends on them making it much more durable than my initial prototype. Also, the base has a lower profile and a larger footprint to give it a more solid base when being bolted to a flat surface. Some of the other changes are very subtle and were simply to reduce the manufacturing costs as long as it didn't affect the durability or functionality of the mount.

I also visited with a spring manufacturer here in the Denver area yesterday and they were excited about helping us with designing a custom spring for the clamp. They recommended that I come down to their facility while they set up their machine to run a stainless steel spring specifically for this clamp. They want me to be there so we can tweak the parameters of the spring and test them in the clamp until we feel that we have the perfect spring for the application. I thought this was pretty cool of them, but unfortunately it will add a buck or two to the overall cost, but I think it will be worth it since the spring is the most critical piece of hardware in the clamp.

I also did some testing this evening to see how much force is required to extract the extinguisher from the clamp and found that this design requires ~29lbs of force, or ~6.5Gs. That is based on my extinguisher that I'm using which weighs about 4.5lbs. I don't have a scale that is accurate enough to get too specific, but this should give you a good idea of how well it holds onto the extinguisher. I'm hoping that we can improve on this even more with a custom spring.

Here's a couple of pics from the fabrication over the last few days as well as the finished part and another quick video of the operation. You can ignore the strap on the back of it, I just put it there to have something to hold onto when I pull the extinguisher out of the clamp.









Here's the video here:

 

No issues with me if it adds a buck or two. I would rather buy something that will work for a long time vs not. I look forward to buying a few.

 

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for your support here.

 

I got called back to work the day after Christmas so I will be out of town for a couple of weeks. Luckily I'm in pretty good shape to continue this process without being home and will continue to keep you guys up to date with any news.

 

Just a little update here, I spoke with the shop that is going to be cutting and bending all of the parts for the base of the unit, and they have quoted a price for the welding of the side plates to the center section which is the same price that I had figured it would cost me to do it. This will speed up the process quite a bit since I am regularly out of town for work, and should provide a better looking weld than I'm sure I'm capable of.