speedmaster stuff pulled from Summit racing shelves

RustyRatRod said
It's also not hard to see a big drop in quality with Edelbrock products in the last few years. We've all seen mismatched intake ports and problems with some cylinder heads. SOMETHING is going on and making products overseas would explain it. What do you think it is?

I think, I know it's poor QC. Some of it is just the process. Most of the mopar parts are sand-cast versus permanent mold. Sand casting can produce good parts, but worn or neglected tooling results in more tolerances and of the processes they run, sand is probably the most variable. As a result I would expect to see the amount of shift we've seen in some parts in the last few years. Considering how the part would have to be setup for machining, and the other features considered critical, I could see alignment being off and that shift being 'shared' among features or hedged in a way that results in shifted ports. Combine that with younger employees who probably have never driven a carbureted vehicle and it's easy to imagine the many ways parts would get screwed up before it gets noticed.

The fact that customers reached out to them to show the issue and that the company responded at all and that we've heard more recent reports of those same parts being improved says a lot about the company. The adjustments needed to pull that off in the shop take some time and effort, but if parts were coming from overseas there would be 3-5 years worth of inventory to get through before the changes made it out the door. The issues shouldn't have happened in the first place, but a lazy workforce explains it perfectly.

My unpopular opinion is that made-in-USA is also a guarantee of **** quality these days. Kids expect $20/hr to flip burgers and foundry work is even more uncomfortable than that. This means companies either need to hike prices or scrap fewer parts by cutting corners. Prices can only go so high before the rip off artists take over, and so we get what we have at present. I'm not against imported parts at all, I just won't do business with china. Make me a cylinder head in Mexico or Honduras and I'd never whine a bit - so long as it's their own design.