Ebay BOV - good or bad
 

I was just looking on eBay for a BOV and I keep coming across sales like this, http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Type-...Q5fAccessories .
Does anyone have one? Do they work as well as the more expensive units? I really would like a Blitz $200, but for under $35 I could live with a no name if it works as well.
Any feed back would be helpful.
Thanks, Joe

i bought one a loooong time ago when i was into hondas..... but i bought a hks knockoff one and it worked but made my turbo surge like a mofo. On the other hand my friend bought one off ebay just like mines and his worked good.....I went ahead and bought the real thing and it worked great.

your taking a chance buying ebay but it "might" work

i think there is a few things on an fd you can cheap out on abit. i don't think this is 1 i would risk. if you don't want to spend alot of cash just keep using the stock 1 till a QUALITY 1 can be had imo

Sounds like I should hold out for the real thing. Thanks for the input.
Joe

There was a magazine article where they tested some of these ebay knockoff products a couple of years ago. They found that things like BOVs were terrible and didn't work well enough to be a safe risk to buy and run. There were plenty of people that bought them and you would then see used BOVs on different forums as people were trying to unload them.

Yeah, like the above mentioned, I really wouldnt trust an e-bay BOV to prevent compressor surge... Health of your turbo really is quite dependent on these.

Just buy a real one, they are under $200.

I ended up getting a tial 50mm knockoff for free. I had ordered something else and received the BOV instead, then the company closed and I got my money back through the claims service.

I ended up using it and it's worked flawlessly for over a year. I've pressure tested my intake several times and it's never leaked. I think the tials are a good design, so if the knockoff was made accurately then it shouldn't be an issue, as I said mine works great. Most of them were probably designed for piston cars in mind which pull more vacuum, if they are getting surge they may need a lighter spring, or the spring cut down. Unless they are stuck closed for some reason which is another problem all together.

Good for you, bad for the company that did all the r&d and got coppied. As far as quality, who cares for something that doesnt see stress.

I say buy name brand. Dont support commies.

what he said ^

! YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR ! i have learned a few things over the years and one thing is for sure.Do it once,do it right and you will never have to go back.

^^ Not always, sometimes there's better ways to do things then just buy expensive parts, you just have to be smart about it. For instance, I got a knockoff BOV for free and it's working great. So in my case, I saved $200 and got something for nothing. Knowing what I know now, if I had to pay the $60 for this BOV I would do that before spending $200 on the real part. It's exactly the same thing, works the same and is a 1/4th the price. There is no reason a BOV should cost $200 its just a spring loaded plunger that seals against a beveled seat, very simple. I imagine someone could get the same BOV I did and pay $60 and have the same good results.

But there are some things that you don't want to risk. Injectors for instance, they are also pretty simple, but i would never get some off brand injector.

bov does not cause turbo surge.
 

how you figure that it is the blow off valve that cause your surge??

The real ones can cause surge too if its set too tight or the spring is too tight. Cutting the spring or getting a lighter one is sometimes required.

i agree. but brand name companies do goof every once and a while. one downfall too is the fact that a brand name item could be sold for $1,000 somewhere and $700 another. there is a large fluctuation in prices..gotta know where to look

suck. had one it froze in 6 months

Keep in mind a batch of authentic TiALs might have a 1% failure rate, while the knockoffs have a much higher failure rate.

I think you got lucky....i'm in the medical/pharmaceutical industry and we call individual situations 'case studies.' You can't draw a real (statistically significant) conclusion unless you're looking at hundreds or thousands of cases.

Personally, I don't support the knockoff garbage. There are lots of things ruining this country in my opinion, and this 'industry' is one of them.

You buy knock off catch cans and trim pieces—not turbo system stuff.

I'm predicting another "RX7's suck, they're unreliable" thread.

because when i switched to a real hks bov it didnt surge!

you get what you pay for.

Come on dude, you drive a 3rd gen. man up and buy the real thing.

Do like i did with my old supra, buy the real thing, on ebay, payed the price of a Greddy type RS for the Greddy RS, pipe with flange, coupler with t-clamp all shipped to my door

I took mine apart when i first got it, it's so simple i don't see how they could screw up, its good quality and well made. I am going to disagree with the majority and say at least my tial knock off is a very high quality piece. I would go so far to say its of the same quality as a real tial.

While I agree with you that the design is simple and probably an exact copy of the TIAL, you cant say that they are the same quality unless you have TIAL side by side with this one apart.
Little things matter, when you drive an S13 or a EG hatch with a B18 LS yes things like a knock off BOV go unnoticed, but when you drive an icon sportscar like the FD sometimes you have to step it up a notch.
Its like having a Ferrari and going to Autozone for brake pads.

I am a plumber and although we would like to use the cheap Chinese materials" because its cheaper in price" we bite the bullet and buy the over expensive USA stuff. When we are doing a multi million dollar home its nice to sleep at night not worrying about a pipe exploding and causing massive damage just because we didn't want to pay an extra couple dollars.

In your case why gamble with a $3500 dollar engine "rebuild" just to save $200 dollars.

Whats scary is they now have knock-offs of the HKS GT 60mm wastegate. I've seen two customer's cars with them so far. I haven't had one fail, but they worry me. Some places you can save money, but this isn't the place.

A bov has nothing to do with the engine surviving so there is no engine risk that you speak of. And now that i've already tested one of them out for everyone, the risk of having to replace that particular model is at least lower. Personally i think if everyone ran the one i got they would work just fine for everyone.
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If i had a ferrari and autozone had a good price on pads of good quality for my ferrari then i would have no problem buying them there. I don't care what persona or class a car is supposed to fit into, if it has parts that are designed to do the job right and look the same then i don't care and no one else knows the difference.. Just like if I was rich and famous I would still buy acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) through eqaute or some other generic brand, rather then name brand stuff by Bayer that costs more.

Sometimes cheap knock offs are exactly that, other times they are an inexpensive alternative to the same part. I've used lots of ebay items on a number of different things, the money I've saved by doing this far out weighs the inconvenience of possibly having to do something over again. Which is unlikely in my case because I can tell the difference between crap parts and stuff made well regardless of origin of purchase.
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My rx7 has a few things from ebay but every last one of them is fully functional, solid, & performs just the same as it's name brand counter part, i've had no trouble in 2 years, and saved myself well over a grand by now while making close to 500hp. So am I really that lucky? Maybe I should play the lottery.

Thanks for the input it is all very helpful and appreciated, except this quote;
This has nothing with being a man, I've sent more on my FD than I payed for the car and will spending alot more before its done. If I can save some money here and there, it just gets me closer to my next part.
In the end I think holding out for the real thing may be the safe thing to do in this case. I will agree with Dudemaaanownsanrx7 If you can get the same quality for a better price, it doesn’t matter where you get it.

Didnt mean to upset you, I am just going by experience from Ebay parts on mine and my friends car. The problem is you dont know if you get crap until the day you open the box.
Now I do like the fact that you havent had problems because it might mean in the future it might be possible to buy cheap quality parts, but at the time it has not been proven to me.
Hope you keep having luck with your car, that way we can all learn what to buy or not and where to save money and not.