Beware of fake Safari Snorkels hitting the market.

[cruiseroutfit]

Ok, please don't bash me for defending the products i sell... ask the guy that posted what happened after he found that problem... if you are gonna bash please post the whole story.

I don't know the whole story and frankly it doesn't matter. My point was the quality issues. The link was PM'd to me here on ExPo, he found it rather ironic that you chimed in on this thread yet made zero mention that your selling the snorkels in questions, the truth is I did too. I read through the thread on FJCforums and saw the picture of the pin-holed snorkle. As I pointed out you sent out a replacement ASAP, I don't know how much of the story beyond that matters? However my point stands, this is the type of quality I expect out of a knock-off snorkel.

i also like how you pointed staight to my auction. yes i sell them and yes.... all of my customers are happy with their purchases. if they are unhappy with it or have trouble, just like everyone else they can bring it to my attention, and i we will work toward a solution of refund or exchange.

Of course I pointed to your auction it was 100% applicable no?

1. You are selling the knock-off snorkels we are discussing.
2. Your snorkels have had quality issues as we are discussing.

by the way, again i will say it. there are things on this forum that are constantly sold that are copies from asia, but the quality is there and no one cares.

Feel free to discuss those items. If your referring to the Mombasa tents versus the Eezi-Awn tents as eluded to in the FJCforums thread, I find it apples and oranges. Having spent my fair share of time with both tents, they are very different. Mounting, floors, ladders, material, bows, etc... all different. Pretty rough to compare a 100% duplicate with a common design that Eezi-Awn did not even create

what i sell, i have had 1 (one) buyer that has had an issue that was resolved in a timely matter and he is happy like this smiley face :wings: . this was my favorite forum up until now. i started selling these things b/c this forum brought out an interest in traveling the world expo style. i started buying this stuff so i can get gear made vehicle specific for the xterra crowd, that i could use in my travels. but after this slight conflict i don't know anymore.

I take no issue in what you want to do and in fact think its great you want to bring innovative & new products to the market. Sending stuff other companies developed is neither new nor innovative. Don't hate the forum for my opinion.

fwiw, ebay is a hotspot for outsourced goods that are cloned.

Nothing groundbreaking there. I don't even know if it was your snorkels that sparked the press release from ARB and really is a moot point. Your free to do as you wish and you seem to be ethically content with the way your marketing your business. To that we can agree to disagree but don't blame the forum, you received similar responses on FJCforums and said you were thinking of halting sales based on their responses, so please don't play the martyr based on my comments alone. I just feel you should have been more open about your affiliation in this thread before making your comments

Have a good evening.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

I know you're highly respect on here, but that statement is just wrong.

You're saying sticking a piece of paper on a rig's fender and drilling a 3-4" hole along with a 4-5 5/16" holes Vs a hard template is over complicate? For who, You? How about the average Joe or Jill?

Wrong eh? Well, it wouldn't be fair for me to judge how hard it is for the average Joe and Jill to use the template, thus I said I clearly used "I" in my statements. Not sure what else you want me to say. I've not had problems with them and have done my fair share?

Answer me this.
How many hole have you had to elongate or make oversize using a paper template over the dozens and dozens installation?

Umm, honestly I can't even think of a single one? The hole dimensions provided by Safari Snorkel are already much larger than required so assuming you get the template installed as pictured is not much to get the holes to line up imo. I do have templates that I have modified a bit, labeled all the holes, labeled the sides really clearly, made the notch for the antenna on the US spec 80 but honestly, can't say I've had issues. I simply cut the hole using a bi-metal hole-saw, clean up the edges quickly with an air powered apply some paint to the bare metal and install the snorkel?

Maybe their Toyota templates are superior to their other applications. I can only think of two customers that have called me after the fact with install issues. One was a 100 Series in which the template was taped on sideways (which I could see happening if you get in a hurry). The second was a 80 Series in which they for some odd reason thought you needed to pull the fender to drill the hole Other than that I can't say I've heard of many issues. So with that I feel comfortable saying the simple paper template works. :costumed-smiley-007

For those that have never dealt with the templates I figured you might want to see them:

80 Series, you can see how easy it is to line it up on the left with the door and on top with the fender edge:


100 Series:


Tacoma:


40 Series:


As can be seen they have hole punched the spots you need to drill, you mark them with a felt tip marker or drill punch. Remove the template and drill holes as specified by the instructions. I could post more if you'd like? As you can see in at least the applications I deal with, they snorkel template is pretty straightforward when combined with their step by step instructions (with pictures).

 

[GrassCat]

Here's a simple hard template.

Notice it uses the A pillar for a reference point.
Clearly the vendor of this snorkel has recognized the paper template problem.

I have no idea why I asked that stupid question, I knew better.

Just saw you edit and added the, looks like, cardboard template. I've never seen that in a Montero template set.

 

[off-roader]

Not sure who you were working on this with but I have ordered loose heads and other small parts all the time, grills, heads, etc, all available as they have been since I've been dealing with them (personally for ~10 years now). Part numbers are listed in ARB's price guides and any ARB dealer should have been able to order it for you.

It was at least 5-6 years ago so I don't recall names but I contacted ARB USA directly on this after speaking with the local ARB reseller (4wheel parts). ARB USA told me they don't normally get spare parts for them. I then contacted ARB Australia who suggested I contact Safari directly since they only ever got whole units.

Safari's reasoning at that time was that in Australia, "a snorkel is bought by those who need it" and the price of a whole new unit was considered insignificant so they did not and would not sell just some parts such as the top or in the case when I called them for their engine bay parts since what some US Montero owners thought would work better for the 2.6L I4 engine was the Turbo Diesel setup. To this day, I don't believe they ever corrected that and from their own catalog don't offer a Snorkel for that model Montero.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Here's a simple hard template.

Notice it uses the A pillar for a reference point.
Clearly the vendor of this snorkel has recognized the paper template problem.

I have no idea why I asked that stupid question, I knew better.

Just saw you edit and added the, looks like, cardboard template. I've never seen that in a Montero template set.

Interesting. To be honest that looks harder to locate than the paper templates then again I've never used one so I'll take your word as such. For reference have you used the paper templates on the same vehicle as the hard template? Its nice that it uses the A-Pillar as a reference point but really its neither here nor there unless your working on vehicles that somehow have changing variables between the A-Pillar and the fender, nothing I've seen with the installs I've done but again let me be clear that 99% of my installs have been on the same 6 Toyota applications so it is quite possible that they mastered the template and instructions versus some of the less common applications?

I see you have a tape measure out? Is that to cross-check the location of the center hole? The hard template looks like it is rather easy to locate horizontally with the defined fender angle of the Montero, might not be so simple on vehicles with flatter A-Piller to fender applications such as the 100 Series. Not that it couldn't be done but when the paper works, why?

To say there is a 'paper template problem' is a bit misleading for the reasons I've already defined, to me they are neither difficult nor confusing. To each their own

 

[cruiseroutfit]

It was at least 5-6 years ago so I don't recall names but I contacted ARB USA directly on this after speaking with the local ARB reseller (4wheel parts). ARB USA told me they don't normally get spare parts for them. I then contacted ARB Australia who suggested I contact Safari directly since they only ever got whole units....

Sorry, I can't explain what happened there but I can assure you they are available now (or at least were as of September) and have been for the past few years. Same part as my 2003 pricing information too fwiw . ARB000-135-200 (for the old style 3.5") and ARB000-135-600 (new style 3.5"), ARB000-135-000 (3"). Replacement grill is an ARB000-135-500. Just checked the brand new guide from ARB and they are still shown as valid numbers. It could be that in those earlier years they had them listed as apart number for reference but didn't actually stock them here in the US? I am sure that other more vehicle specific parts would need to come from Safari but they are willing to ship to the US and there are already some dealers in the US buying direct from Safari's other lines (Turbo kits, etc) and while it might take sometime to get them to the US, they are available. That said if you need a part and can't source one locally. Call your dealer and they may be willing to yank the part out of a new snorkel and order one up to replace theirs.

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Somewhat unrelated NPR reported tonight of the British citizen that is being put to death tomorrow that China puts to death more people than all other countries combined. I will say that I personally feel very conflicted on their products in general regardless of the quality of the final product. This said you can't control who you are when you are born, including being one in five people in the world who is born a Chinese citizen. So it is difficult. But I completely utterly agree with the criticisms of the knock off designs. The photo that Scott posted of the imitation ARB bar is just astounding. Correct those guys should be locked up for theft...

 

[cruisertoy]

Andre-Heard the same thing. 1/2 hr court appearence and the guy gets the death sentence. Sure it was a fair trial. I don't think there is a country out there that isn't messed up in one way or another, but that is jacked up.

For single use stuff I think paper templates are just fine. We use fiberglass templates at work for repeated process' because they don't wear out. If I were doing 2-3 a day I would probably make a fiberglass template. When we send out products for field installs they always include a paper template.

While I defend the Chinese companies that I deal with, not all are the same or have the same ethics as has been pointed out. And not all those that are making knock off have sought to do so on thier own. They are producing what they are asked to produce. That again does not make the decision to produce that product right and they should obey international laws and copyrights. Unfortunately a lot of the people pushing for these products to be produced are from our own back yard and even American companies aren't innocent about knocking off stuff either.

The funny thing about this is that we are discussing a plastic tube that has a few bends in it and connects to your air box. Why anyone would choose to flat out knock off anothers design confuses me. I design, test and produce plastic parts every day. It's not rocket science and anyone with a vehicle for templating via Digital 3-d scanning, solidworks, and an a little $ for an SLA can protoype a snorkel or anything else made out of plastic for that matter. SLA's have come down in price to where you could have a full snorkel SLA'd for about the price of a Safari snorkel. So including paying someone to scan the fender and A-pillar, solidworks time and the SLA your looking at less than $2k per vehicle. Even that is a stretch. The mold has to be produced whether it is a knock off or not so it is six's. As far as an investment if your smart your not into it that much more to design your own plastic tube to fit to you given air box. Then there is no "knock off" and you could add other cool features to the snorkel like a Shower head holder, beer dispenser(I don't drink), remote controled squirt gun or the ever useful full blown LED light kit like a low rider Honda.(These were my ideas first so no one should copy them).

I guess I don't get where the big $ R&D comes into play. There is very little barrier to entry into this and a lot of other markets. If there is demand to knock off a snorkel then there is demand to come up with something better than a Safari at a better Price. I must say that I do not own a store bought snorkel. My 40 has had a home made one on it from 10 years ago that served me very well. I have plastic parts made at work that use similar amounts of plastic as a snorkel and they cost me about the price of a combo burger at BurgerKing. I am fully aware of mark ups having owned my own business, but even factoring volume, packaging, shipping to the US and overhead Keystoning this type of product doesn't get to the $3-400 that we are talking about. Remember how little R&D really has to go into these products. I look at Injection molded, roto molded, blow molded, sonic welded and vacuum formed parts and often laugh at what people pay for them. Then there are the Rotomolded water cans from LCI that cost you $15 shipped. That's about the same amount of plastic as a snorkel. $15 shipped. Shipping alone would be half that. Still laughing.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

...
The funny thing about this is that we are discussing a plastic tube that has a few bends in it and connects to your air box. Why anyone would choose to flat out knock off anothers design confuses me. I design, test and produce plastic parts every day. It's not rocket science and anyone with a vehicle for templating via Digital 3-d scanning, solidworks, and an a little $ for an SLA can protoype a snorkel or anything else made out of plastic for that matter. SLA's have come down in price to where you could have a full snorkel SLA'd for about the price of a Safari snorkel. So including paying someone to scan the fender and A-pillar, solidworks time and the SLA your looking at less than $2k per vehicle. Even that is a stretch. The mold has to be produced whether it is a knock off or not so it is six's. As far as an investment if your smart your not into it that much more to design your own plastic tube to fit to you given air box. Then there is no "knock off" and you could add other cool features to the snorkel like a Shower head holder, beer dispenser(I don't drink), remote controled squirt gun or the ever useful full blown LED light kit like a low rider Honda.(These were my ideas first so no one should copy them).

I guess I don't get where the big $ R&D comes into play. There is very little barrier to entry into this and a lot of other markets. If there is demand to knock off a snorkel then there is demand to come up with something better than a Safari at a better Price. I must say that I do not own a store bought snorkel. My 40 has had a home made one on it from 10 years ago that served me very well. I have plastic parts made at work that use similar amounts of plastic as a snorkel and they cost me about the price of a combo burger at BurgerKing. I am fully aware of mark ups having owned my own business, but even factoring volume, packaging, shipping to the US and overhead Keystoning this type of product doesn't get to the $3-400 that we are talking about. Remember how little R&D really has to go into these products. I look at Injection molded, roto molded, blow molded, sonic welded and vacuum formed parts and often laugh at what people pay for them. Then there are the Rotomolded water cans from LCI that cost you $15 shipped. That's about the same amount of plastic as a snorkel. $15 shipped. Shipping alone would be half that. Still laughing.

Agreed on the ability to produce something different, something innovative and unique, your dead on. However I can see how they come up with the market price. Remember Scepter was selling those same exact cans for $45 to the average end user And that is a single application sold by the thousands, now try 50+ applications some of which you many only sell dozens a year? So that cost incurs everything from the software acquisition, vehicle acquisition, tooling, actual production, inventory in Australia, shipping to the US, duties/tariffs, inventory in the US, shipping to a US retailer, mark up for the US importer (ARB) and then markup for the US retailer. A lot of mouths to feed Is it expensive, sure, I'll be the first to say so... but given the overall low market yield and the logistics its hard to see it being otherwise.

Funny subject really. I spent a semester in an Advanced Manufacturing class at the UofU using a proprietary solid-modeling software called Alpha1. We had to design something and then investigate the steps of taking it to the market. I designed a one piece snorkel intended to be roto-molded, ironically it was a right hand mount 40 Series snorkel that had a square cross section along the fender transitioning into a round profile for the rise along the windshield and investigated the cost of having a mold made by a local SLC plastic firm. Several thousand for the mold alone. While we could have produced it for far cheaper in our manufacturing lab, this was an excersize and while I wanted to to work, we had to assume we were developing this in the 'real world'. Roughly $35-40 per unit production (in quantities of 100), add the needed mounting, packaging components and the snorkel head and that number could double. Add the overhead of a normal business, and it was easy to talk me out of it. In the end we concluded that we couldn't beat the current market offerings though our theoretical design did offer a more appropriate application for a US spec 40 imo. While the abilities of SLA machines have changed over the years I don't know that I've seen any SLA examples that I would compare to that of a production roto-mold. We had a small desktop rapid-prototype machine at the U, I really wish I would have used it more often though it couldn't handle anything the size of a snorkel.

Dre' (dieselcruiserhead) and I had a near identical conversation, man it must have been 2-3 years ago now. Funny how these things come full circle :sombrero:

 

[off-roader]

well, good thing mine was 'pirated' in malaysia instead of china. LOL:victory:

 

[articulate]

The reason cheap, sweatshop Chinese labor is acceptable and those companies can now "innovate" is because US consumers have bought a crapload of junk, knockoffs and killed real businesses . . . it is unavoidable to buy Chinese. However, don't defend this type of thing!

I have to point out that it's not really because of U.S. consumers buying "junk." It's because of U.S. consumers demanding lower prices for their goods.

I work in a segment of the power tool business, which is nearly all Chinese made these days. I'm not talking about knock-offs, either, but reputable (or formerly reputable) power tool brands and manufacturers. Porter-Cable, DeWalt, Delta, Bosch, and so on. It has everything to do with the necessity to compete in the U.S. market by lowering the retail price of said tools. And you can't arbitrarily lower prices - you've got to cut something that costs money. Metal parts, labor costs, and so forth. To the credit of many of these American and European tool makers, many keep quality control standards and management under a tight scope.

Not all Chinese made goods are knock-offs. Much of it is simply outsourced by, possibly, your favorite red blooded mid-western U.S.A. business owner. I don't mean to defend cheaply manufactured product or stolen designs, but we do need to shine the correct light on China. It's not all blatant rip offs coming out of China - much is outsourced there on purpose by business people around the world trying to turn a dollar. The statistics would be interesting to see for sure.

I thought that was worth saying, even if it has nothing to do with this funky snorkel. For that diversion, I beg your pardon.

 

[cruisertoy]

Excellent additions to the conversation Kurt and Articulate(sorry don't know your name). Articulate expressed much clearer what I was trying to get accross earlier.

Kurt,

SLA's have come a long way in the last year alone. We paid about $3k for an SLA the size of a snorkel 5 years ago and about $300 a few months ago. There are so many machines out there now that can do really large pieces that they have become a comodity instead of such a high tech expensive item. You couldn't use the SLA on your vehicle with the abuse we put on them, but they give you the fit and finish in order to make final adjustments to your disigns. We SLA a lot more know than we machine because it is cheaper than shop time in a lot of cases.

At 100 units molded you are still in 1st article/sample run quantities for a part. The price savings kicks in at 500+ units. They get really cheap if you can commit to an order of 3-5000 units and have the shop opperate on a running PO so you don't pay for or recieve them all at once. If thinking on the global market you are probably looking into selling a few thousand of each every year at least. If your not, then you probably decide not to supply product to that particular vehicle. You make your "head" units and other components universal so you reap volume discounts on those accross all your sales Often times the total price of an assemble at 1000 units is only marginally more than what it would cost you for a few hundred units. You have to break through the cost and hassle of setting up the molds in the machine, sourcing the materials, training the opperator to run the part to your specifications... Make it worth them running and they give much better pricing

It is very interesting the earlier points on the Quality of the "knock off" parts that we are supposed to be talking about. I would bet that they are using regrind in thier molding process. Regrind is fine as long as controls are put over it. I don't think I would ever use regrind on a part that was going to see the abuse we put these things through. It's a little more expensive to use virgin material and produces a more UV stable product. I'm no expert in this, but everything that we make that sees the light of day is virgin or has a Centrax cap for UV.

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Very interesting stuff. Trent (cruisertoy) you also always continue to impress with all your awesome info regarding plastics...

It is funny how this all comes full circle. As has been the discussion lately it is simply amazing how minimal the markups actually are for most products. If you want to make money, don't get into the 4WD industry. I was having a conversation with a custom vehicle builder who was telling me he paid $6000 to spend months building a fully custom beautiful frame off Rover a few years ago.

 

[cruisertoy]

Very interesting stuff. Trent (cruisertoy) you also always continue to impress with all your awesome info regarding plastics...

It is funny how this all comes full circle. As has been the discussion lately it is simply amazing how minimal the markups actually are for most products. If you want to make money, don't get into the 4WD industry. I was having a conversation with a custom vehicle builder who was telling me he paid $6000 to spend months building a fully custom beautiful frame off Rover a few years ago.

I am alway impressed with guys like Kurt and Paul May that are making a go of it. We all need to support these guys more often than we do. Especially me.

Last point before I head off to the Aquarium with the kids. I am banging my head against the wall right now trying to work with our "sister" company in Australia to have a large product produced. It is amazing how much materials and things cost down there. That is a big reason why thier stuff costs so much. Something that I can source here for $1 they also source here for a buck, pay all the shipping and duties..... If they can get it in Australia it is often times even more than shipping it in because someone else already did and marked it up. Crazy stuff.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

We have the same problem in Canada, we're just lucky we're not as far away as Australia. Prices for things in Canada aren't what it costs to make in Canada. It is the US price, plus whatever it would have cost to ship to Canada if you had bought it in the US.