| Now I have met Vuk and the AMS guys before, and as people I like them just fine. I have never met Mike Smith, but he is highly regarded on this forum so I will use that as clout that he is a stand up guy. That being said, I am going to try and be as unbiased as possible. #1 – Assumptions - A lot of assumptions are floating around right now. Although a big part of my feels these AMS Manifolds are exact copies of the Mike Smith ones, no body has any proof yet. Everyone is just assuming these are cheap copies made in China with no difference in flow or characteritics. This may be true, but until someone “unbiased” dissects these 2 manifolds from A to Z, we truly do not know. #2 – Free Enterprise – Maybe copying a product is unethical, but if there is no patent on the design, it is completely Legal. I know It sucks (especially for the person that was copied), but as a business, you have to deal with it. It happens everywhere in this world. Walmart is one of the biggest copycats for cheap products. If you do not want to buy AMS products personally cause you feel it is a copy (which has not been 100% proven yet BTW), then that is your prerogative. But it seems a LOT of people are taking it much more personal than that. Don’t take it personal, it’s just Business. I have not seen this much complaining about a copied product in a long long time. Ther is a whole but ton of things we buy for the Z is copied from somewhere. Seriously, think about how many people make radiator air guides, suspension components, strut braces, Hicas eliminators etc etc. They are all the same. Yet no-one says anything about that. It just seems to be an issue when a predominantly unliked vendor on tt.net (i.e. AMS or Z1) creates a product similar (and possibly identical) to a respected vendor on tt.net (i.e. Mike Smith). I doubt there would be any drama if Z1 made a part and someone like Mike Smith or Specialty Z came out with a copy version…. I’m not saying it’s ethically right to copy someone’s product – and if the AMS manifolds do in fact turn out to be identical to Mike Smith’s, then from a moral stand point I would question AMS….but I am not gonna judge until I see the facts. p.s. Even if the AMS manifolds turn out different and have better flow, people are still gonna bash them saying “AMS still copied and just changed a few things” – welcome to the real world, it’s called reverse engineering. Take a good product, copy it, and improve on it… it’s done everywhere…
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