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Old 2nd July 2013, 13:17   #561
jubbarelly
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MG ZT 180 SE Poseidon, Peugeot 508 GT Sport Tourer

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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryM1BYT View Post
Artic - I'm finding some of your public forum verbal antics to increase your profit out of this, quite offensive. No doubt you are being even more critical via PM. Just to set the record straight....

You use stainless shackles, quite simply because you cannot work metal and you cannot weld. I have no issue with that.

I devised the original method to modify compensators and then offered the original service of exchanging old for modified. You then saw what I was doing and thought what a 'good earner' and jumped in, with your then half thought out alternative. I offered to do them and still do offer them at no profit. I am perfectly happy doing them as a simple favour to the owners of the car and have even shown members how to do them themselves. I quite openly charge the members £7 for the item, including P+P. You insist on keeping your cost a secret, but several members have said you are charging a whopping £27 for the exchange and doing it in secret via PM. Your costs are similar to mine - the shackles + pins cost around £2.50, suggesting you are making a clear profit of around £22 at least on each one, which is to put it bluntly - scandalous.

No doubt you maybe also charge for them fitting - I don't and never have. I charge just £7 whether they are posted out, or whether they drop in here for some help with the fitting. Usually i have to provide the tools, the help and the bacon butties and coffee too - spending at least a couple of hours on each, ensuring the job is done right. By right, I mean the compensator replaced, the car jacked up, the rear wheels taken off and the back end properly adjusted up, sometimes even having to remove the drums. At the end, hopefully they have learned something and my charge is still - £7, just the cost of the modified compensator.

A couple of weeks ago, I had someone drop in who had bought one of yours, but was not confident of fitting it himself - his intention was to sell the one he bought from you on and have one of my versions fitted. Last week I had a young lad drop in on his way from the north, to Oxford Uni. He had just bought the car, had no tools, zero experience, no handbrake at all and not much spare cash. He had seen your compensator, the cost and decided the welded one was not only more than adequate, but certainly a lot cheaper - he left for Oxford delighted to have a properly working handbrake. His compensator was 'stretched' and is rear adjustment, as I often find, had never been done since the car left the factory. Which is why I keep stressing the need to do the compensator mod and the rear end drum adjustment as one.

I spend around ten to fifteen minutes per compensator in the modification work, which is much more extensive and involved than yours. With the parts to hand, I could do your mod in two or three minutes per item. I modify them without charging for my time, just for a contribution towards the materials and equipment used.

As to the relative merits of the two methods - there really is not much to choose between them. As most proper engineers will tell you, stainless steel is a somewhat weaker metal than the mild steel from which the original compensators are made (read the material properties tables). Shiny and several times the cost, does not automatically mean better. The original compensator was more than adequate for the job, except there is a design flaw which left the open end unsupported. As we all ought to be aware by now, the metal does not stretch, the bend simply moves around the pin. Prevent the bend from moving and the whole thing becomes many times stronger than the original - absolutely no need for shiny shackles, that is unless you lack the means to reform and weld them. I have the skill and equipment to hand, so I weld them. You don't, so you are stuck with using shiny shackles.

So the original weld modified item is theoretically stronger than stainless, but as said I have no concerns that your shackle method is not adequately strong, my only argument is with you suggesting that my modification method might be inferior in some way - it absolutely is not. I have sent a few hundred of these out and not had a single complaint.

If you think back to your early attempts at modifying compensators Arctic, you were sending them out with the pin just peened over. A method which at the time, I expressed serious concerns over, with the possibility that the pin might come out. Happily you decided to replace the pin.

For the record - I devised my welded version, whilst at the same time considering a completely revised verion made from solid rather than the pressed steel, which would allow much more compensation for differences in the rear adjustment. Cost of the re-engineered version would have been around what Mr Arctic is charging for his simple modification, but I thought it far too much to pay so I quietly dropped the idea.

Cheaper has never necessarily equated to inferior in my book - make your own minds up.
Arctic did mine for nowt and only asked for the stretched one back at one of the nano meets.
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Old 2nd July 2013, 13:28   #562
J1MBO
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Rather than allowing an argument to spill out on the boards I have no option other than to close this thread.

Would members please realise that it is not in anybody's interest to get into these differences of opinion as it has the tendancy to split the membership into seperate camps.

I would however offer my thanks to both Harry and Steve for the sterling work both have done on this modification.
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