I thought i would leave it while before responding again, so you could all get your comments in and flame me a bit more
As for the genuine article I have also seen many sad faced recipients of unadulterated junk sent here from the UK under the guise of a good CS type engines and parts. They call me and want me to bale them out of their mess lock stock and barrel and I sadly must turn them away. Not all of of UK transactions are this way course but enough to be very leery of importing from unknown individuals.
Butch,
I totally agree with you, I very recently sold to someone on this forum some genuine Lister CE parts (and we all know what CE engines are like for spares availability) during the course of the email ping pong he relayed a tale of miss fortune, whereby a UK based conman relieved him of $3,000 for a Lister startomatic set. Con men like this are a waste of good skin, and may I suggest to the forum moderator here that a sub forum in the members only section be created, so that these type occurrences can be highlighted so that no one else falls prey to these Oxygen scavengers! The lesson here is carry out due diligence checks before hand, and ultimately until you have established trust, invest no more money than your prepared to walk away from.
Our other choice for genuine parts? Pay Sleeman Hawkin's asking price, then pay through the nose for currency exchange, customs, air freight shipping. The end result is genuine parts sourced through S-H are just plain not in the picture, the cost is not just high, or a little high it is nothing short of INSANE.
But that's how capitalism works and you yourself being from the capital of capitalism, you shouldn't be surprised by the prices Keith Mason charges. He has been involved with LP spares a long time, and knows exactly what the critical spares are for every Lister engine ever made, and therefore what price the market will stand for.
He must be able to sell at those prices, because if you have ever been to his premises, from the size of that operation it is clear he has a lot of overheads to meet. Hence he would not be in business if he was not selling sufficient levels of stock.
Furthermore, and now that the new man living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has got rid of TTIP, the customs duty will not be reducing in the near future either.
Finally look on the bright side, with BREXIT the £/$ exchange rate has improved significantly in your favor of late
So what is the big secret as to whom and where this effort is taking place?
I reserve the right to keep that information to myself, because although I gave up on the idea of manufacturing these parts myself. I am still keeping my options open at a later date to possibly develop this into an export business in my retirement, and as one capitalist to another, surely you can understand that I would effectively be committing business suicide by divulging who now owns this information, and where they are located. Would you be willing to release onto this forum a list of all of your suppliers, so that those who would be inclined to do so could cut you out of the deal, and go straight to the source of supply?
And... , I echo the "no offense" sentiment regarding Indian suppliers posting... however, they must be able to respond to parts queries and be able to speak intelligently and honestly about the realities of the third-world parts they are dealing in.
But... , You still do not acknowledge that no matter how polite, and helpful your Indian supplier is, the items you ultimately end up with are invariably still coming from the same source and often even the same manufacturer. Hence these parts may be afflicted with all of the usual problems detailed throughout this forum
Do you subject the parts sourced from India to any sort of random QA procedure upon arrival in the USA? If not do you have confidence in your Indian supplier to be able to undertake these activities upon your behalf?
What the Fk would the majority of people here do with it?
Firstly Glort, I don’t feel the need to resort to crudely disguised expletives when replying to your posts, so please extend to me the same courtesy.
You sound annoyed no one here bought the info.
Not at all, I was never expecting any serious interest here for the reasons you identify, it was the wider audience I was interested in (the people who read this forum but who are not members). As I had effectively already sold this information already it was no loss to me what response it garnered on this forum, ultimately it was interesting to see the wider reaction, and also the inquiries and discussions that have since taken place outside of this forum and which are still on-going for other LP information that I have on the later air cooled engines, which also came from the same source.
It seems from your own account, the main thing the Indians have to do is get the metallurgy right. Don't need drawings to do that!
Well they have had nearly 70 years of trying so far (the Indians started to produce Lister CS spares shortly after independence), and it should be obvious from some of the ongoing forum post content on here alone, that they still have much to learn
If the Chinese think there is a buck to be made with these things they will be spitting them out before you know it and not doubt if they are of the quality of their other engines. they are going to be dam near impossible to compete with given their industrial muscle.
Quite so, the Chinese are very smart people, look how they have outsmarted the Western capitalists, by playing the long game with them and by quickly recognizing our insatiable demand for [and then helpfully producing an] endless quantities of consumerism driven cheap worthless rubbish that is imported into western counties [yes it has made some western capitalists very rich in the process, but at the same time it has decimated a lot of the manufacturing capability in these same countries], whilst then using these profits to invest in long term strategic goals. Such as: buying up American debt, acquiring key areas of Western industry (to get the IP rights), and buying vast areas of; Australia, Africa, and South America for the natural resources. Which will all contribute to allowing them to up their game further and compete in advanced industries. For example they have just started production of their own domestic passenger aircraft, and that was only ten years after Airbus transferred some of its manufacturing capability to China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919However from how easily you recently and eloquently described how you proceeded to split one of those Chinese cylinder barrels in half. It would seem they, like their Indian counterparts still have much to learn in the metallurgy department
. So until then I think I will pass on flying in one of these aircraft.
I believe that another factor in parts decisions is that practically nobody is running these slow speed engines any kind of hours.The price of fuel , lower priced solar , better battery technology, newer engine technologies such as the excellent Kubota and who knows what else comes into play.
I would agree with you there regarding the use of these engines in Western countries, but the export figures from India would still suggest a strong demand for exports to 3rd world countries.
See here for the latest export figures from India, for all types of Lister engine, and it is clear that the CS engine still forms a significant part of those exports, which are mainly destined to third world countries. With Iraq and Nigeria been the most popular export destinations.
https://www.zauba.com/export-Lister-hs-code.html