That’s a complete load of crap…
TAS was just as big as it has been for years, same with ALL the Avex mode group shows. Every month new products show up in the magazines and on the shelves, companies liket Attain and URAs have been doubling their product line for the last 3 years.
I can agree to that… Only reason I went with the #s was to prove or show that in “most” cases the knock off or cheaper product in the long run can still produce/work just as good as the brand name item.
As for Durabiltiy and Materials… Yes I would also admit that on products like the Full Race Manifold vs a Megan, you would have a much higher grade of Material (but that is also why its so much). So if a Megan Manifold only last say 2yrs but a Full Race is good for 5yrs “example” I myself with my own personal preference would buy the knock off 3 times “which then turns into a 6 year period” and still have spent less money then on the Full Race Manifold (to me… spending 3x the amount to hopefully not have a problem with the product is out of the question)
I’ll spend 3x less and take my chances… Not so much because I’m a Cheap Individual but how am I suppose to have any money to pay bills or live my life or ever own a house if I spent every penny I had buying all the “brand name items for my car” which honestly arent give you much better performance vs the money.
BUT… as many others have stated “this is based on manifolds/exhaust/shifters/pulleys etc etc” I like others would never cheap out on Suspension or aspects of the Vehicle which would keep you safe on the road just to save a buck “lives arent worth dollars”
comparing Full Race to knock-off is a stretch.
you are at both ends of the spectrum here, full-race manifolds are exceptional products, they should last forever.
that said, most people are not willing to pay $1100 for a manifold.
whereas $150 on the knock-off is not so much of a stretch.
whats more is that the knock-off manifolds, when installed properly, can also last for extended periods of time.
there is also the whole ego-factor.
i would pay $1100 for a full race manifold just so you guys would be mad jealous of me… like we all are of dan.
anyways, this is all slightly off topic.
obviously everything goes back to real vs. knock-off but all of a sudden lines are as blurred as they are in other industries.
the family-owned company i work for is a private label co-packer, we process and package tens of millions of dollars of food products and almost none of them are in out name.
we do this for MAple Lodge, Presidents Choice, Sobey;s etc… so is it a PC product? or is it ours?
is it a megan manifold or a Meng Header manifold?
are they Apexi EXV Coilovers or BCEC?
and why is it that companies keep thier suppliers under such heavy wraps and go so far as to deny that they outsource?
if they are ashamed of it then why do it in the first place?
i realise that there are competitive and trade secrets but outsourcing is not a secret and the manufacturers actively seek out other clients for their products as well… we do
these threads and me dont go well because everyone thinks my money has been handed to me on a platter but let me explain that no matter how much or little money you have buying GOOD parts will always pay off:
Stock 1998 Lexus GS300
4100$ spent on 3 mods
Apex RSM-GP installed cleanly and professionaly, if lexus did it no one would complain
TEIN HA coilovers
GReddy Power Extreme exhaust
now thats a clean car that is fun to drive. you can be proud of it. even though there are only 3 mods on the car it is a car you can be proud of and know you couldn’t have done any better with the money.
Had i done the following:
Eibach sportline springs
Cheap-o sway bars
Vibrant mufflers stock piping
Ricer intake
Cheap purpleovertimetint
goon ugly wheels with cheapo fuzion tires
all this could be done for 4100$
but to be honest with you i would be ASHAMED of this car. Sure you have a “more built” car for less money, more mods, more visably modified car. but what have you done? you’ve taken a beautiful car and turned it into a peice of shit. You’ve created a car that is now no better than a riced out civic.
Now i know our 89-98 240s are no 60,000$ lexus but the point remains. You have the opportunity to take a path to make the car AMAZING. sure that path will be slow, but each modification will give you so much satisfaction in knowing that your car is the best of the best and each time you’ve modified it you’ve given your baby the ultimate.
3 years down the road you have the same car because you didn’t rice it out and it hasn’t annoyed you with all its breaking parts and you didnt come to the realization that your car is a peice of trash and you want a fresh start. You now have a gorgeous car that nissan would be proud to sell as a limited edition track ready sports car.
You decide to part out your car and realize the good parts are easy to sell and you get some of your money back, you sell the car and do it all over again.
Now there are always compromises, like what is the “best of the best” when are you just wasting your money? Like bing said there is a definite grey zone there, and you need to be careful.
but thats just my take on things, if everyone built cars the way i belive cars should be built we’d all be driving the same cars and who wants that!
point of the story: im bored waiting for breakfast so im talking shit to you guys.
My ONE and ONLY reason for getting Full-Race 8) …So Bing can like me.
i dig fire-bushes anyways.
your analogies to real vs knockoff are VERY misleading…
They are NOT the same product, I’ve said this before; materials, tolerances and quality of build parts included are are vastly different. between a ‘real’ part and a knockoff. Even if a part is made by another company for this specific knockoff wholesaler, they still have thier own set of specs and TOC for the supplier to build to.
EG: a branded part would never spec a non certified bolt… and certainly nothing below the 8.8 mark… I’ve yet to see a kit that has more then a 3 point or 3.0 bolt included, you can’t even buy those at canadian tyre they are so low quality.
not quite sure that i understand what you are commenting on as being misleading
here is some straight goods:
it ALL comes from there, knock of or not, there is no difference between half of the stuff that is out there. in many cases we have just been lead to think so.
i agree that the hardware is junk
i 100% guarantee u that megan racing headers do not come from there…neither do their downpipes or turbi extensions…pieces such as the megan downpipe with the flex have been engineered and designed by people at megan and built specifically for them… i can show u autocad files that i did myself and sent in to them as a general idea as to what we a suppliers wanted…you cannot compare ALL the non branded items to each other in such a general manner, they are sometimes totally different to each other …
As far as megan racing exhaust headers go the only supplier i’ve seen that uses ideantical parts is “T-Pros”. Maybe varun can clarify but as far as I gather they have some sort of relationship with Megan Racing to begin with.
The stuff costs even less than Megan Racing but comes with no warranty.
So theres a tip for those who want Megan Racing… if you want to save say 25% on top of the already cheap prices and dont care about warranty - hit up E-Bay and buy T-Pros. IDENTICAL STUFF!
Sometimes Megan Racing “accidentally” ships me T-Pros branded pieces… They’re the same with a different badge.
hey man…the t-pros thing is not an accident…its done on purpose…let me tell u why t-pros is shipped instead of the megan stuff sometimes…
the warehouse that sends megan their shit, also sends the shit the shit to t-pros so then the megan exhaust pieces are out of stock, they send the tpros shit out instead…however, t’pros manifolds and megan manifolds are made of a slightly different material, and ure right the megan ones do have a warranty…speaking of warranty, megan offers the quickest and easiest warranty out of any other brand around here…most of the time i can even get around the shipping one way or another with warranty claims…but to be honest, the only items i ever warrantied were gauges, and once i had to warranty the older style turbo outlets…ive sold over 40 megan racing turbo manifolds, and not one has ever cracked on me as yet…fingers crossed they maintain they standards and quality for ever…
So if someone bought a megan manifold from you and it ended up being a tpros they get no warranty???
no, they are warrantied also through me because the ones i sold were sold before megan changed the quality of their manifolds, and before they didnt give warranties for t-pros products…therefore, the 3-4 people that got t-pros from me are under warranty for sure…
i don’t believe if you have a brand X manifold and a brand y manifold, and BOTH are said to be T321 [or T304] stainless steel with a 0.023" thickness and robotic welds are going to be much different.
yes, they may be manufactured with differing tolerances, but you can’t convince me that $25.00 of steel is worth 20 times that. most of their costs come from R&D, not materials. that’s the true area where big name companies take a hit. they spend hundreds of thousands designing a product, and some other company backwards engineers their work and sells it for less. not to mention the marketing that goes behind their products. with the advent of ebay, people don’t need advertising, they already know what they want.
if you have no qualms buying a copy-cat, then do it. if fitment is an issue, then you can’t complain.
who was the first to make a a/m S13 RUCA? JIC? Tein? Cusco? all their products look similar, and all of them are large enough companies to have their own R&D, but someone had to have pioneered the design.
i’m not saying all companies are equal, but to me it’s more of a grey area than anything else.
i’ll still stick to Apexi EXVs over Megans, and my HKS turbo over XS Power, but i think it’s more about preference than anything.
^^^
its a common misconception; the expenses involved in developing a product.
there are 10 muffler shops in every city in north america that build catback exhuasts from scratch when they have to.
there are a few places in my small little town that will build you a custom manifold. heck, Chris (canadiandrifter240sx) built his own KA-T top mount manifold by him self without any problems. he’s bene using it for a long time too.
it literally takes almost no R&D at all to build any exhuast piece or any suspension arm.
Apexi doesnt make their EXV’s they outsource the production to this place:
they also make the Megans there. who knows what aother suspension systems come from there. Gab is KYB. KYB also supplies for JIC and others. Tokico supplies for others still.
HKS doesnt make turbos, never did. neither does Apexi and Greddy doesnt make their 16G, 18G or 20G turbos for their turbo kits.
they simply give honeywell the specs and rebadge a garrett turbo.
or they outsource to that southasian company i showed above, meng header.
Vibrant test fitted an Jason’s (S14_240sx) S14 and then sent the designs over seas for production.
given the price point of the DC sports SR20DET manifold it is obviously built overseas as well.
R&D is often not a division of a company but a blanket excuse for higher prices.
We have to remember that nissan, honda, toyota or whomever made your car already did all the REAL R&D when they built the car. all the specs, tolerances, clearance issues, measurements etc. already exist on paper.
i could build you a set of coilovers from off the shelf components. the only R&D involved would be valving and spring rates but that to already exists somewhere on paper.
there are two phrases that are overused today:
Research and Development
and
You get what you pay for
in theory both are true, but in practice you dont actually know what you paid for and there is no such thing as re-research. once its known no one else has to research it, you;re just searching for the person who searched before…thus research…lol
good call with the turbo, because those products have far more engineering then coilovers and arent about personal preference…but as far as the coilovers go its all about personal preferance…some people prefer the GAB’s to the ZEAL’s and some dont…
it’s all about personal preference when it comes to coilovers…
each suspension suits a different driving style …
for example, when i race on mo sport, i would like to use TEIN RA or something really stiff for hi speed large corners…but for shannonville or cayuga, i would prefer to use megans, zeals,GAB’s or FLTA 2’s cuz they are softer and more flexible for the slower tight cornering…
It takes a whole lot of ‘R&D’ work make a product that performs reliably and safely. Something that should be very important to someone when the product is being trusted with personal safety. Durability is one of the toughest design challenges.
I think you’ll find that auto manufacturers are quite secretive about the details of their designs. Not just anyone can get their hands on engineering drawings. One can only reverse engineer so much, there is some data that is very difficult and expensive to determine from a final product. Tolerance, details of manufacturing process, heat treating, etc.
true enough, i meant only to point out that anything aftermarket is reverse engineered from factory spec.
as with suspension components specifically; hot rodders, dirt trackers et al are no strangers to piecing together their own coilover suspensions from off the shelf goods.
Bicknell motorsports here in St. Catharines builds a ton of it, and then they outsource alot of the other products to the guys that build my multi-link.
you walk in and pick out of a catalogue your spring rates, dampers, spring cups, rod ends, control arms all that stuff.
if there were off the shelf dampers that had a 100% threaded body like the ones on import cars i would alreayd have my own line of coilovers out. unfortunately there isnt.
dont be fooled by claims of extensive R&D.
as for exhuast, its just a steel pipe. you would do fine using common sense rather than R&D. all you have to do is have the bends straight and it will work.
make it corrision resistant and it will last
use better materials and it will last longer
its no secret whats makes an exhuast queiter or louder.
exhuasts are probably the easiest stuff to build.
that’s exactly what i’m talking about. i can’t be convinced that one product is ‘worth’ more than the other because of their ‘R&D’. if people had the materials and know-how, they’d be fabricating all their parts.
such is the case with exhausts for sure. my friend paid minute muffler $260 for turbo-back piping and it took one afternoon to make. compare to sending out $500+ to some exhaust company for virtually the same end product.
the apexi exv is selling around $1100US some places. if bcec offered the same product here for a similar price, i’d just choose apexi for name familarity.
the people who say that design and testing of product to make it a quality part and do the right job out of the box does not cost more or is not needed… do not make products themselves nor obviously do they have to warrenty products themselves.
You can try to justify your cheap Chinese knockoffs all you want, it comes down to customer and market awareness. if all you do if feed some kid , that’s new into the market the crap Iv’e been rerading above then he’s going to probably assume that a $180usd header made from ’ 304 stainless’ is just as good as a real HKS, FEED, ARC … whatever, header that costs in the $800-$1000 that ‘looks’ the same.
There are FUNDIMENTAL differences, right down the most basic molecular structure of the material used to make the tubing, all the way up to the final finishing work and clean up of the product.
Thier is a truly fatal flaw in Canadian and north american in general perception of costs for parts. The US is so walmart/target crazy that they are more then willing to close thier eyes to quality , as long as they get a ‘perceived’ quality at a much reduced price… The after market industry in Canada is very much based on this tennant… and unfortunately with no one to stand up and say… this IS crap, these parts are crap, what these people are telling you about these cheap parts is about as usefull as listening to someones ass try to talk.