Ebay has some great looking deals for "factory Toyota" parts. The complete timing belt kits with water pump, cam and crank seals... All OEM parts. DON'T BELIEVE IT!!
The boxes look legit, the parts look really close, but they aren't the same as what Toyota US sells. I bought the kit, then pulled my stuff apart. The kit parts in their pretty boxes were slightly different in the details. Different bearing and seal manufacturers on the idlers and water pump, the impellar was slightly different, the parts are very close and if you weren't looking would never know. Then I went and bought legit oem parts from the dealer and had 3 sets of parts to look at and confirmed what I found. The bearings def didn't spin the same as the dealer parts. The Mitsuboshi belt in the kit looked great, but the timing marks were in the wrong spot. Fortunately, the ebay seller refunded my money.
The Toyo parts manager spotted that the date code on most of the boxes was the same- that's the biggest slip up as its pretty much impossible that many of these different types of parts could have been made the same week.
If it looks too good to be true... there's a reason!
The boxes look legit, the parts look really close, but they aren't the same as what Toyota US sells. I bought the kit, then pulled my stuff apart. The kit parts in their pretty boxes were slightly different in the details. Different bearing and seal manufacturers on the idlers and water pump, the impellar was slightly different, the parts are very close and if you weren't looking would never know. Then I went and bought legit oem parts from the dealer and had 3 sets of parts to look at and confirmed what I found. The bearings def didn't spin the same as the dealer parts. The Mitsuboshi belt in the kit looked great, but the timing marks were in the wrong spot. Fortunately, the ebay seller refunded my money.
The Toyo parts manager spotted that the date code on most of the boxes was the same- that's the biggest slip up as its pretty much impossible that many of these different types of parts could have been made the same week.
If it looks too good to be true... there's a reason!
