This comes up often enough it should be part of an FAQ somewhere.... When I was into VW stuff years ago there was a Karmann Ghia guy in Oregon called "House of Ghia" that made a lot of reproduction parts. He had a great article on non-OE rubber parts.
The business has returned since he died a few years ago, but the website does not have all of his articles. The best example I have seen is one that Randy Steele of EPS, Ltd. showed me in person one time. He had an MB W123 windshield seal and an aftermarket seal. In the lower corners of the MB seal there were three small lips along the seal groove. The aftermarket seal has one. These were almost imperceptible. Had he not shown them to me I would have never noticed. This was one example of why aftermarket rubber parts can be substandard but the differences almost impossible to detect. To add to this, the materials themselves can be suspect - this is what the House of Ghia guy highlighted. Really, do you want to save a few bucks to roll the dice? If you are selling the car I could see it, but if you plan on having it around for any length of time it's a "penny wise/pound foolish" situation. Dan On Sep 20, 2013, at 8:08 AM, Larry T <l02tur...@comcast.net> wrote: > The OE seals are much better made - just like other parts their genealogy may > be questionable. There was a huge thread on the 911 list a while back with > lots of stories of seals that didn't fit and work that had to be redone. > > It's even possible to get a seal from the dealer that does not fit properly > but these are more rare. > > YMMV > > LarryT > 91 300D > > On 9/19/2013 4:45 PM, MG wrote: >> Why? >> >> Manfred >> >> >> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 09:20:42 -0400 >> From: Dan Penoff <d...@penoff.com> >> >> Get an OE seal, NO exceptions! >> >> Dan >> >> _______________________________________ >> http://www.okiebenz.com >> >> To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ >> >> To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: >> http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com >> > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
