Grumpy,
Sorry - you're building houses has far less to do with designing parts for automotive assemblies than mine does. Do your design your houses with DFLSS methodologies? Do your houses meet QS9000 standards? Do the parts you use needs to meet mil-spec and ASTM standards? Do you design houses that are sold to GM? Anyway, we're entrenched in our positions and I see there's no budging you. Oh well - I won't lose any sleep over it.
But back to the issues at hand:
You say I would need to "believe in the tooth fairy" in order to expect that the aftermarket performance industry would stand behind their products as the OEMer's have come to do. And I say that it's equivalent to a belief in the tooth fairy for the aftermarket performance industry NOT to stand behind their products as they should and think they can persist as viable business entities.
As I said before, that's one of many reasons why the aftermarket industry is shrinking.
In a sense, and kind of ironically, I suspect you and I actually have more in common in our opinions than our recent posts might have suggested.
Frankly, if it were a given that anything I'd buy from the aftermarket - and this certainly includes trannies - is "gonna break," and with the implication that it's "gonna break" more than once over the life of the car, then I'd be a fool to buy such parts. And I won't. And I don't.
And so, instead of dumping my dollars on unproven aftermarket "high performance" parts, I increasingly go to the OEM which, even if it doesn't do a perfect job of quality control, at least does a far, far better job than the majority of the aftermarket.
Aftermarket builders reading here: I know that not all of you fall under this pessimistic characterization - thank heavens too, because quite seriously, you're our hope. But to the rest: it's 2008 - wake up and smell the methyl-ethyl-ketone: selling performance parts isn't just sourcing expensive parts and chrome-plating them.
And about reliable trannies: it's not just good parts, and it's not just good assembly practices, and it's not just good quality control, but it's generous helpings of all three. The chain fails if any link is weak. Grumpy - take notes.
Best,
MAP