| Nice cover story from jschrauwen on 300zxclub: "If one searches, you'll find that quite some time agoe I
was supposed to be the very first person to sport the new
AMS cast manifolds in the fall of 2007. My Z was given to
AMS for a complete rebuild while I was away on deployment in
Afghanistan and it was to include the new Z1 GT675's mounted
to the new AMS manifolds. Problems with the initially
contracted manufacturer occured and after considerable
delays wrt regards to design and specifications, the very
first batch of manifolds were finally delivered to AMS.
Upon inspection, they did not meet AMS's specifications as
agreed upon and the contract was cancelled. AMS had to
start again (after loosing $$$ on the first venture) with
another manufacturer. The second manufacturer did make the
manifolds according to AMS specs and are the currecnt
product that's available from AMS. It's highly likely that the first manifold manufacturer
decided to produce those manifolds and utilized a 3rd party
network to get them sold in various places in the world via
Ebay. Case in point would be the two different
ViewItem&item=140348919686&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT"]vendors
[/URL] from the UK. One would not sell out of the UK and
the other would sell
[URL="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?
ViewItem&item=350270304542&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:GB:1123"]ev
erywhere[/URL] in the world except North America. This in
itself seemed extremely strange. Lets add to the fact that
of those 2 UK Ebay vendors selling Z32 cast manifolds were
also located in Lancashire, UK. Very strange coincidence,
wouldn't you say.
Then shortly after they bring their manifolds out,
[URL="http://motors.shop.ebay.com/eworldsales1/m.html?
_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg="">another one springs up.
This time in the US (Although they are no longer listed
anymore by eworldsales1). We've seen it very clearly that
all 3 vendors made a point to hide the AMS logo from their
product display pics. Yet when one member here (sky z from
Portugal) announced the he picked up some after market cast
manifolds from ebay, he was astonished to see that they had
the AMS logo on them. Of course to him they look like the
Real McCoy and had all of the same hardware as AMS normally
provides. Again, this is the exact same spec's (hardware-
wise) that the first manifold manufacturer was supposed to
provide anyway.
Unfortunately, what's apparently happened is that the first
manufacturer (or someone within that company) probably found
a way to make a quick buck and sell these AMS rejected
products as AMS originals. No doubt that that first
manufacturer may have found out how successfull the the
second manufacturer's dealings were with AMS as far as to
the volume of demand for product and saw an opportunity to
exploit.
Another unfortunate part is that the flaws that Mitch from
EPR has made a point of addressing are those of the first
manufacturers rejected design of the AMS manifolds and not
of the currect manifolds sold by AMS.
However close they may appear to the real AMS manifolds,
they're more than likely those that were rejected by AMS for
not meeting the specs required by AMS and are the product of
that rejected first manufacturer.
BTW, the revised (current) AMS manifolds didn't arrive in
time from the second manufacturer to meet the build deadline
of my Z and it was necessary to acquire an alternative cast
manifold. AMS was able to get the scarcely available MSP
manifolds (at a substantially higher cost) from Z1 for my Z
so as to complete the build on time."
Doesn't it seem like they ordered his MSP manifolds just in
time to ship them to the next manufacturer to copy them
better than the first one?
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