Agree with Tim. Building a forged engine for a starlet can be had for £2000, that would just get you a set of pistons and rods for a 3sgte, RB, 2JZ engine.
Not at my prices there not but i understand your point lol
See one thing I find with the starlet market is everything is pushed to be cheap because of the market situation. There are well known companies sell Fuel pressure regulators/Fuel Pumps that I've proven are destroying engines, and people are buying them over using a well branded reliable "genuine" items that are proven to work, People opt for that because its trusted to do the job but the 2/3 price tag is very appealing. But the negative side of things is that often they don't do as advertised or as well as they should.
A few engine building companies on the internet are advertising a full engine for £2000.00 this is very attractive but you look into it and find out what's being done. some listing "balancing" as optional extra. Personally this should be part of an engine build anyway. Then look into how its done, just straight bore and hone of the pistons like its built in the factory. But a forged engine and race applications should have a torque blocked used to simulate the head stresses, and like I do on the 3sgte engines the block casting is pre-warmed to 85 degrees so it expands like it would when in operation. These processes are needed when doing a proper "built engine" but are absent to keep prices low to make them attractive.
What I'm saying is the goal of bringing costs down is overtaking work quality and to keep the prices low and attractive by having all information not present to why its cheaper. And the current market place is just pushing this type of thing to happen more and more.
The whole replica market is another minefield which can lead to causing problems. I will agree some of the time parts are expensive because of the "brand" name only, but in alot of cases the copies just aren't upto the same level. The cheap Garrett turbocharger replicas coming from china, for example i had a GT35 replica come through the workshop lately and at 1.9bar was making 380bhp on a GT4 celica, i've had them over 600bhp at that pressure on a genuine item. On closer inspection the compressor housing hadn't been machined right for the close tolerance against the blades, the gap was huge in comparison so yes it was close enough to create a boost pressure but lost huge amounts of flow because of this. One example of where a genuine item surpassed the copy. But again my customer was attracted to the £200 price tag compared to the nearly £1000 of a genuine item. But its false economy in the long run as he's had to buy a genuine item anyway.
Tim
