What incentive does DMC or its franchises have for making super-reliable parts?

[ccurzio]

I absolutely need to preface this post by stating that this is in no way a slight against DMCH, Stephen Wynne, or anyone at any of the DMC franchises. I've had nothing but the absolute best experiences dealing with the staff at ALL of these locations and they have been nothing short of absolutely professional, totally helpful, and unbelievably pleasant to deal with. I have, on repeated occasions, stated as such publicly as well as recommended their business to many people.

This is just a question regarding business viability in a market such as ours, relating to my own unfortunate (recent) personal experiences with DMC products.

As many of you know, I've had my car for some time now. It runs and runs well, and I've done a lot of work getting the broken stuff fixed and the existing stuff improved and much of that has been thanks to the folks at DMCH and its affiliates. As many of you also know, I was one of the early adopters of the new fuel pump/sender unit and after installing it I became a champion of what seemed to be a really nice unit. After installing it to replace the old and corroded and badly-failing oddball third-party fuel pump that came with my car, the new pump was a godsend. It worked beautifully and was pretty easy to install and I was very happy with it. Unfortunately, approaching the end of the unit's seemingly-unreasonably short warranty period (three CORRECTION: SIX months - my sole complaint with the device and something else I voiced publicly), I started to have rest-pressure problems with the pump causing hot-start issues. I was not the first to have this problem with the new unit, though James at DMCH was of course more than happy to swap out my pump for a new one with zero hassle. Once I got the new pump I installed it and sure enough the car stopped having any of the hot-start issues and started working perfectly once again.

Until recently. The exact same problems are cropping back up, right around the exact same amount of usage of the new fuel pump as the old one when it started showing these problems. Unfortunately since I've been in the process of moving, the usage of the car has been stretched out over a slightly longer period of time so my replacement pump is now outside of its warranty period. If I want to fix it, I will have to drop the $350 or so to get another pump, only to likely have the same issues once again four months from now.

This is a pretty big annoyance, which was exacerbated recently by the failure of my DMCH angle drive. The factory-original angle drive on my car finally failed last year, so I went ahead and purchased the replacement angle drive from DMCH and installed it. It worked great, up until about a month ago (almost a year after its purchase) when it started wandering around the speedo dial, exhibiting the same symptoms as the last failure. Finally the other day while on the road it failed completely and the speedo dropped to 0 on the interstate.

This got me thinking... aside from static parts like shock tower bars and interior pieces and carpet and fuel distributors, what real incentive does DMC (or any company catering to "extinct" cars) have to create reliable "wear" parts with mechanical components? If you think about it, creating rock-solid parts for our cars is a tremendously bad business idea from a long-term perspective as once those parts are sold to all of the owners with cars on the road, the market for those parts dries up and that's that. Obviously it's bad business to make a product that sucks because then nobody will buy it, but it does seem feasible that making an exclusive product that's "good enough" to last for a little while (and applying an oddly-small warranty) and then being the only source for a replacement once it dies is a viable long-term business strategy.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT THIS IS WHAT DMCH IS DOING. I AM STILL A FAN OF THEIR OPERATION AND A HAPPY CUSTOMER AND I AM NOT SPEAKING NEGATIVELY OF THEM. IT COULD JUST BE THAT I HAVE HAD SHIT LUCK WITH THE STUFF THAT I'VE BOUGHT. I AM MERELY ASKING A QUESTION BASED ON THIS EXPERIENCE.

That said, I'm really disappointed in what promised to be an amazing fuel pump upgrade and even doubly so that a new angle drive seems to have failed only a year after a 30 year-old version of the same part died. I'll likely spring for yet another fuel pump from DMCH at some point, but I am still left kind of wondering if I'm buying the DeLorean mechanical equivalent of razor blades.

[uhhair]

Don't get why you had to preface your post with "I love DMCH" blah blah blah stuff. People don't have the balls to call it like it is. You just said yourself that you bought two parts that failed in a premature amount of time. Don't back down, tell it like it is.

"Hey DMCH, I bough two parts that failed within a reasonably short period of time. Could you please explain why this happened, and offer me some sort of remedy to the situation?"

That's the first e-mail I'd send to them.

The second would be to other vendors who supply similar parts. They exist, if DMCH parts fail, go buy from DPI, Hervey, Grady, etc.

Just don't act like you love and defend DMCH but call out their products at the same time. Are you honestly asking what business incentive they have, or are you just upset over this, and trying to passive-aggressively make a point about it?

If it's option A, then the answer is the other vendors. If it's option B, don't be passive about it, speak up.

[ccurzio]

The preface is there because it's entirely possible I have bad luck. It's not like I've only bought these two things from them, I've bought a LOT of other stuff from them and haven't had any issues whatsoever.

If I were to have bought as much as I have from DMCH and not say anything positive, and then post this thread saying "These parts from DMCH failed, what the shit?", that's not fair to them OR the community. The fact is, I've had mostly positive experiences with them except for these instances. My post needs to reflect that.

Likewise, I've also bought things from DPI and Hervey. Josh at DPI deserves lots of praise as well because he's awesome. Hervey? That's a story for another thread, and a story I've already voiced. Lots of people know how I feel about his outfit. In his case, my experience has been the exact opposite. The parts are fine but the customer service is absolutely AWFUL.

[Mark D]

I'd say the incentive isn't much different than any other company's incentive to offer a quality product. People learn fairly quickly where to get something that will last vs something that is junk. There ARE alternatives to many of the DMCH 'improved parts' if you so choose. Once the market realizes something is of poor quality the better alternatives bubble to the top. Either DMCH recognizes their shortcomings and takes steps to resolve the issue, or they suffer a loss in sales due to bad reviews such as yours from people in the community.

Another recent example I can think of are the DMCH remanufactured LCA ball joints. They were complete crap (in my opinion) and the community in general took notice of the high failure rates and people started looking elsewhere. DMC Club UK was able to spec and source their own parts to the original design that were of much higher quality. The DMC Club UK ball joints are now being offered by most vendors including DMCH.

Any new product will have its issues and it's not like DMCH is intentionally releasing shoddy parts to boost sales. The pump/sender unit is outsourced to a company that specializes in manufacturing these units, so any failures would be on them. If DMCH is like other OEMs they probably have a warranty agreement and the supplier will be eating the cost of any failed units. Even if you are beyond the warranty period on your second sender unit I'd still send it back to DMCH so the supplier has a chance to look at it and determine the root cause of failure. Hopefully improvements can be made and the next batch of parts will have an improved check valve or something to maintain rest pressure.

[Delorean Industries]

The preface is there because it's entirely possible I have bad luck. It's not like I've only bought these two things from them, I've bought a LOT of other stuff from them and haven't had any issues whatsoever.

If I were to have bought as much as I have from DMCH and not say anything positive, and then post this thread saying "These parts from DMCH failed, what the shit?", that's not fair to them OR the community. The fact is, I've had mostly positive experiences with them except for these instances. My post needs to reflect that.

Likewise, I've also bought things from DPI and Hervey. Josh at DPI deserves lots of praise as well because he's awesome. Hervey? That's a story for another thread, and a story I've already voiced. Lots of people know how I feel about his outfit. In his case, my experience has been the exact opposite. The parts are fine but the customer service is absolutely AWFUL.

If I have learned anything in my years as a vendor in this community quality, accountability when something fails is everything. As the market shifts and more and more owners are DIY instead of headed to a Delorean specific repair facility quality is everything. This is why I have geared our company towards only offering the best available. If the best isn't available we then set out to produce or source.

The market HAS changed big time to say the least. For lack of better wording DAP has put itself out of business, DPI has increased it's product lines ten fold with virtually everything in stock including many previously unavailable components and DMC is making electric cars, luggage and fuel pumps.



Again it is all about how the situation is handled. But I can guarantee one thing: Within five years there will only be DMC and DPI. If another one man show bargain basement situation occurs I personally will be very surprised. I fought tooth and nail into this community and it cost a lot. I don't see others making that choice on a grand scale or small for that matter. If the quality of one surpasses the other and the price is the same or less when comparing NOS to NPC (new production components) what will the owners choose? The answer should be obvious.

[ccurzio]

If DMCH is like other OEMs they probably have a warranty agreement and the supplier will be eating the cost of any failed units. Even if you are beyond the warranty period on your second sender unit I'd still send it back to DMCH so the supplier has a chance to look at it and determine the root cause of failure. Hopefully improvements can be made and the next batch of parts will have an improved check valve or something to maintain rest pressure.

I actually like this idea, although I wish I had some insight into the manufacturer's process in this regard. As a developer, when I file a bug with Apple, I get responses from Engineering asking for details on how to reproduce the problem and notifications when things are fixed or if they've already seen the issue. In this case, the manufacturer could take the returned unit and inspect it and see what the issue is. Then again, they could also throw it in the "known issue" pile. (Also likely known as either the "spare parts" or "waiting for refurbishing" piles.) I doubt I'd hear back either way.

Again it is all about how the situation is handled. But I can guarantee one thing: Within five years there will only be DMC and DPI.

I can definitely see this. I'm still chomping at the bit to get your Spec I system installed on my car. Care to make a combo fuel pump/sender unit?

[Delorean Industries]

I'd say the incentive isn't much different than any other company's incentive to offer a quality product. People learn fairly quickly where to get something that will last vs something that is junk. There ARE alternatives to many of the DMCH 'improved parts' if you so choose. Once the market realizes something is of poor quality the better alternatives bubble to the top. Either DMCH recognizes their shortcomings and takes steps to resolve the issue, or they suffer a loss in sales due to bad reviews such as yours from people in the community.

Another recent example I can think of are the DMCH remanufactured LCA ball joints. They were complete crap (in my opinion) and the community in general took notice of the high failure rates and people started looking elsewhere. DMC Club UK was able to spec and source their own parts to the original design that were of much higher quality. The DMC Club UK ball joints are now being offered by most vendors including DMCH.

Any new product will have its issues and it's not like DMCH is intentionally releasing shoddy parts to boost sales. The pump/sender unit is outsourced to a company that specializes in manufacturing these units, so any failures would be on them. If DMCH is like other OEMs they probably have a warranty agreement and the supplier will be eating the cost of any failed units. Even if you are beyond the warranty period on your second sender unit I'd still send it back to DMCH so the supplier has a chance to look at it and determine the root cause of failure. Hopefully improvements can be made and the next batch of parts will have an improved check valve or something to maintain rest pressure.

While we all outsource to manufacture anything we need it is OUR responsibility to test any potential components in their intended application prior to release. Case in point with both mentioned above. So it is not like I am poking fun at DMC we had a bit of an issue with fan shrouds. Shipped out a few stainless units an inch to long about a year ago... OOPS!

[Delorean Industries]

I actually like this idea, although I wish I had some insight into the manufacturer's process in this regard. As a developer, when I file a bug with Apple, I get responses from Engineering asking for details on how to reproduce the problem and notifications when things are fixed or if they've already seen the issue. In this case, the manufacturer could take the returned unit and inspect it and see what the issue is. Then again, they could also throw it in the "known issue" pile. (Also likely known as either the "spare parts" or "waiting for refurbishing" piles.) I doubt I'd hear back either way.



I can definitely see this. I'm still chomping at the bit to get your Spec I system installed on my car. Care to make a combo fuel pump/sender unit?

We are testing a unit of course as sales of the OEM application dwindled with the combo release. I don't feel that our application is ready for market yet. I do not like the logic box zip tied to the filler hose among other things we have corrected in our design.

[ccurzio]

Also Josh, one thing I've noticed about your operation is the understanding and the need to expand. Lots of your parts (exhaust systems and the like) aren't mechanical and are ideally meant to be bolted to the car once and never looked at again. So you kind of fall into that scenario I mentioned above, where you have the possibility of having your market dry up once everyone has your parts. Though you've been able to adapt and change with additions of other products and of course all of the services you offer, and that's an impressive skill. If you were parts-based alone I would be concerned, but long-term viability doesn't seem to be an issue for you.

DMCH does this as well of course, but being a larger operation I don't think they've been as... "nimble" I guess would be the right word.

We are testing a unit

YES PLEASE.

[JohnZ]

Hey Chris did you get any official responses from DMCH about these oddities?