Howdy kids, just thought I would do this community a big big favor and put up a big red flag on ZAGE turbos.
A little bit about me, I sold the "MOMENTUM EJ5-40T" turbocharger in the United States (
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22ej5-40t%22) and before that I sold the EVOIII GT turbo (
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...2&btnG=Search).
I sold about 100 of each turbo,which is a good representative sample of the total number of these turbos sold in the USA. I believe that I sold 25% of the EVOIII GT turbos in 2004, and 80% of the Subaru turbos in 2004/2005.
As the top seller in the entire country, I visited the manufacturing facilities in Taiwan and met Mark Tung. Mark actually GAVE me the first Subaru turbo himself in Taichung.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...try/zage06.jpg
That's mark. His dad owns a really big parts distributor for trucks in Taiwan. I've met his dad, but he doesn't speak english. Mark does, and he's not a bad guy, in fact. Very generous, easy to get along with, etc. etc.
The EVOIII GT turbos were direct copies of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries "EVOIII" td05h big 16g turbo. The earliest ones were direct replicas intended to fool the public and the distributors. Since I was a retailer, I was told that the EVOIII GT turbos were made in the same factories in Japan as the Mitsubishi turbos. No difference. I sold them like this.
Well, of course, everyone got really mad at me, so I had to sell the turbos differently. And then they started to fail. (see next post).
Since I was the super salesman, I went to taiwan and established the MOMENTUM brand for the Subaru version of the turbo for the U.S. after meeting mark and his dad. When I was in Taiwan, I got a pretty good song and dance about how well the turbos are tested, how well they are built, etc.
I was good to go and was looking to sell about 500 units a year, EVOIII GT and Subaru, comined. And then the turbos failed, en masse.