[Fot] Public Service Announcement, knockoff Datsun brake drums

[Rich Hahn]

Just a thought on "where parts come from".  I have had many discussions about USA vs. China, Mexico, Germany et al. regarding quality with an engineer friend (retired chief engineer for MTD Corp.) who is now designing and having made high quality bearings and seals amongst other products.  While some across the globe may make inferior products, most times the fault lies not in manufacturer but in the specifications they were given for their design.  If a companies main goal is "price" then the spec will be looser and quality will suffer.  He tells a story of some prototype bearings he had made up for a major US blender company.  In testing they kept burning out and he couldn't figure out why.  Upon analysis he discovered that he had "spec'd" the bearing so tightly that the race had been machined so finely that there was no porosity which allowed the lubrication to fly off and thus burn out the bearing.  He had to relax the machining spec to correct the issue.  Yes, those bearings were made in China.  I guess the moral of the story is you never know what your going to get in todays world and to try to do some study on "real world" purchaser evaluation before buying, ie., don't do the road testing on a new product for a manufacturer or distributor.  Just my two cents.

      From: Ashley Page via Fot <fot at autox.team.net>
 To: davehogye <dlhogye at comcast.net> 
Cc: Friends of Triumph <fot at autox.team.net>
 Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2017 7:56 PM
 Subject: Re: [Fot] Public Service Announcement, knockoff Datsun brake drums
   
I have the Centric parts line and would be happy to quote - friendly prices. I can say that I have used their rotors for years and they are very good quality - used on all my company vehicles and personal cars. That said I have never used the Centric rotors on a race car - but have sold 1,000's of their StopTech branded rotors for racing and they are also very good. Some of the StopTech rotors are cast in the US and some outside the US including China. Today with AutoZones etc dominating aftermarket sales it's hard to compete only sourcing  domestic made rotors. 90+% of the market is private labeled sourced from who know where. Regarding Centric  (and other high volume manufactures) they don't just source this stuff on the web. They buy significant production from foundries and have quality control people at the foundry. 
I've never purchased drums but did enquire  about the GT6 drum and they do not have those. They also do not have the GT6 1/2" x 9.7" rotors. 
I am planing to make the 9.7"X 1/2" GT6 rotors at my shop but they will be 2 piece with an aluminum hat. I anticipate a selling price of $300 ea. For the assembly. Just finished a similar kit for the Ford 289 and 427 Cobra. Picture of dyno test below. GT6 is almost a miniature version of the Cobra rotor assembly. They will be bedded in and ready to run.
Brembo has foundries all over including Mexico and Michigan. 





Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 24, 2017, at 11:31 AM, davehogye via Fot <fot at autox.team.net> wrote:


Centric are the brand that I have.  They list standard and premium part numbers.  They do not share what the difference is.  Of course I went with premium.  Brembo used to make them.  I could not find Brembos.Unfortunately, even Brembos are made in China now, no matter the application.
// Dave H.

From: "Yellow04 via Fot" <fot at autox.team.net>
To: fot at autox.team.net
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2017 4:35:48 PM
Subject: [Fot] Public Service Announcement, knockoff Datsun brake drums

A couple years ago when I was accumulating parts for my TR250 vintage racer I sourced a pair of brake drums that I knew were aftermarket copies of the Datsun 240Z finned aluminum drum. These copies were getting decent reviews at the time, so I tried a pair.

So I am prepping for the next event and found this. These drums ran 8 weekends. The other drum shows a small crack, looks like it would grow to look like this one pretty quick. 

So anyone have a source for some real Datsun Z-car drums?

Henry Frye
Working on New Yellow now, Old Blue taking well deserved break...

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