Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:47:19 -0400
Reply-To: The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject: Re: AMC Heads (My views)
In-Reply-To: <003101c4b301$16ed5bd0$6500a8c0@DELL>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> I called Marnal today and spoke with the salesman there.
> This is the supplier that my heads come from before they
> trickle down to all of the big wholesalers. They confirmed
> that they do get the AMC heads bare
> into their warehouse and then install the valves, springs, etc. He
> said that they use an Italian valve made by a company called
> Ivam. You can check out their website at the link below.
> http://www.paginegialle.it/ivam
>
> He said about eight years ago they had problems with valves
> but they have since changed suppliers for the valves. He
> said that they sold around 1000 of the waterboxer cylinder
> heads last year in the US and had no major issues with the valves.
>
> All of this info took me one phone call and about 5 mins to
> get. Just FYI.
I deal with Marnal myself, and as a rule have not had problems with other
things they sell. I do not want to badmouth Marnal. They sell many good
quality products (as well as some promotionally-priced Brazilian parts that
I choose not to sell) and have been in business a long time. But still, I do
not buy the Vanagon heads from them, for the reasons that I have outlined.
Ivams are decent valves, from what Leonard tells me. He has not had any
problems with AMC heads that used Ivam valves. But as I noted in my last
email, of the four seemingly identical brand new AMC heads that AVP received
within the last FEW WEEKS - not eight years ago, but a few weeks ago - only
two turned out to have Ivam valves when Leonard took them apart. To
reiterate, Leonard could not say that the valves on the other two heads were
necessarily bad - he replaced them just to be on the safe side - but he
could say that they were not Ivams.
Also, bear in mind that if a valve fails, it may not happen during the
warranty period. If it failed after, say, 20,000 miles, it would be a
non-warranty failure and would not be returned to the distributor (to be
identified as a "major issue").
Again, I cannot state definitively that there is a current problem, but
neither can I feel 100 percent confident that there is not. And I am not
alone in leaning toward caution; several rebuilders (notably AVP, Boston
Bob, GoWesty's rebuilder) are also playing it safe and replacing the valves
right away before installing the heads. They are doing this because they
have experienced problems far more recently than eight years ago.
But we are severely beating a very dead horse. What is the downside to
paying LESS money for actual European built heads that have not had any
reports of issues?
- Ron Salmon
The Bus Depot, Inc.
www.busdepot.com
(215) 234-VWVW
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