Folks Of Interest Good Vibrations Motorsports Did me wrong.

I totally disagree, this is a valuable thread. If you measure it, and its wrong, managing to force it together and hoping for the best is not likely to improve the situation(note: a mixture of sarcasm and understatement here). This is a hard lesson that a HELL of a lot of guys have difficulty absorbing...

 

From 8 am:
"I know all of those first time (and 2 time) posters and they are the sort of guys who lurk in the background unless they have something to say. Being hard core drag racers they usually don't have much to say here but are gear heads like the rest of us.
Even if you want to disregard their comments, the testimony from Swade41 and goatroper should carry some weight as they are both prolific posters (nearly 9,000 total) and both well respected here on the HAMB (and obviously did not sign up to support Maher)."

Followed by a couple of those posters confirming my statement.

Roo

 

Rooman got it right. Yeah, I joined in 2009 just waiting for this day. NOT. And, I've known Rooman for about 30 years, I believe.

 

I would like to see you get a pass on the 4.5 -5 years time you had the new parts but never got around to using....or needed them if they were spares. I have lots of new unused parts laying around, I would think lots of guys have parts stashed away. Otherwise I'd like to see pictures of the plate, I would have expected a slip fit or light press fit on the bearing. Just my 2 cents.

 

Ya, we should all be machinist when we assemble a part, right?

Raise of hands please...when you buy a new axle bearing, do you mic it out?

I agree the 4.5 years is wrong time to get full replacement, but geesh, the part wasn't made right...why should the average Joe, who bought a a part, have to Q C it?

Maybe I'm just dense, I am certainly not a hard core racer, but if I bought "part xx" and was told to use "part yy", why would I be responsible for checking them both out?

Again, raise of hands please, who mics bearings when rebuilding their diff?

(keep engine bearings out of the question please)

Gosh, I guess we should all invest in a mega tool set, heck, next time that one orders a door hinge....it better be in spec!

My point is, the part was bad..., incorrect, etc.
OP got zilch for help, wtf would a pic do for BDS?

They must have some super tech there to say "yay/nay"...but not enough knowledge to tell the OP...Will/will not " work?

Bottom line the OP received no help from the vendor or the manufacture.

So, raise of hands again please...what would you do?

 

If I thought something was wrong, I would have sent it back before assembling it.

 

Curious, how would you go about that?

 

They (GVM) already stated that they were no longer dealing with BDS, but that it wasn't a quality issue.

The BDS tech asked for something (a picture), the OP figured he must not know what he is talking about, so he ignored it. By doing so he did not give BDS the opportunity to try and make it right. He blew them off. That was his mistake. Maybe a picture wouldn't have told them anything, then again maybe it would have shown a part that they were aware of - we'll never know, because he didn't bother to follow through.

BDS has been sold since he bought this product from GVM, about 2 years ago Craig Railsbeck sold the company that they had started in 1969. Many things have changed since then and yet the OP didn't give them a chance to make it right. New owner Steve Yetzke and his family have been in the Broaching and machining business longer than most here have walked the earth. He also knows a thing our two about blower drives as he was involved with the original Cragar Blower Drives among others and also owns Belt Drives Limited, the most respected name in Harley Belt Drives. I know Steve to be a stand up guy whose company does the right thing - but again, he wasn't given the chance.

Lastly, as a manufacturer, I can tell you that it is a struggle to deal with parts that have been in the consumer's hands for a long time. Most manufacturer's have a warranty and I'm sure this was well outside that period. I have had people try and return products that are 3,4, 5 or more years old, many times it is a discontinued product or the design has changed. We try and work with them as much as possible, but it isn't always in the cards.
Additionally most retailers have a policy of how long before they won't take an item back - they have to, it is very costly to take returns on old merchandise. Hell, I just had WalMart, who is generally very easy to return stuff to, refuse to take back some socks that I bought 6 months earlier, even though they carry the brand still. They have a 90 day return policy, so My Fault - not theirs!

Bottom line here is the OP really didn't handle this right, and GVM is under no obligation to go to bat on an almost 5 year old sale of a product they no longer carry. I doubt that they still have a working relationship to solve this and he blew off DBS. Sorry dude, but you are out of line on this one.

 

First off if stuff doesn't fit and I am asked by a company to provide some information, regardless of how useless I personally think it might be, I do it. If for no other reason than to have a yeah or nay from the company. If they look at the picture and say go ahead do this and this you at least have a foot to stand on if it fails. He doesn't know what BDS would have said or what they might have been able to do with a picture because he never followed through with their request.

 

One might wonder that if the photo had been sent as requested that the 'new' BDS would have recognized the part as problematic for the 'old' BDS and had a recommendation for disposition of the part and its fit. Tech support can be what you allow it to be sometimes.

 

The responses from 1st timers would have garnered a proper flaming for not first introducing yourself out of common courtesy. And to the street racer . how many times to have to comment on a thread like a social net work page everyone bashes?

 

Perhaps BDS, before sending you a new one, simply wanted to see a clean, obviously unused part and not something covered in oil staining and gasket shellac from having been used for the past 4 plus years.
I would....

 

James Maher, thank you for taking the time to respond to this bullshit session
courtesy of someone else's bought and paid for band width over the internet.
It is interesting to note that the parts are 5 years old and not "New" as the op stated.


My big question is, what are the chances that 100s of identically machined parts are to spec and
then the machinist accidentally reset the lathe for ONE plate
and then went back to the original measurement.
I'll bet they are about the same as WINNING THE LOTTERY!
(I'll bet the chances of somebody installing it incorrectly are much smaller)..



Whoo Hooooo!
Congratulations drifters cc, you won!

....suck it up buttercup.


.

 

You get a set of heads from your local machine shop and assume they are ok. Some of the intake valves are fitted too tight in the guides. You lean on the tune-up, start making some power, and get some heat in the cylinder. An intake valve sticks open, the piston comes up, knocks the head off the intake valve at 7000, and it goes through the next four cylinders in the firing order, swells two pistons to the point where the bores crack, chews up 4 chambers, and puts a hole in one head.
Yes, you measure everything, if you don't, and a HUMAN makes a mistake and you don't catch it, its on you. The above is not hypothetical, it happened to a friend of mine that did not subscribe to my "check and make sure" approach. I was there, he learned.

 

It's amazing how many people assume that just because someone has sat on their
ass in front of a digital typewriter for hour after hour that this somehow makes
them an expert/perfectionist on working underneath a hood.



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