VWDiesel.net The IDI, TDI, and mTDI source.
General Information => General => Topic started by: jettabrendan on April 17, 2009, 06:42:09 pm
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has anyone had any luck with this website? everything seems like its a good deal. http://www.dieselvw.com/16SuperTimingBeltSet.htm
i want to order this kit. sorry if its been asked and if this is the wrong forum.
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We should probably put this question in the FAQ. :wink:
The vendor's name is "prothe"... if you do a quick search you'll find lots of opinions.
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I ordered his $74 kit (minus the belt and tensioner) lol
The tools are in my opinion really good quality. Mind you the cam lock was just a piece of aluminum.... However it was the perfect size piece i ddint have :)
Dunno if i would trust my entire engine on his belt and tensioner though...
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Tools I'd buy... They'll probably last through several dozen timing jobs without issue.
Timing belt, no way in hell... A Conitech timing belt set costs about $75 (belt and tensioner). Failure of a timing belt will cost you more like $750 by the time you fix all the damage.
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Hey, Prothe has downpipes!!
http://www.dieselvw.com/1H0253087HDownpipe.htm
(http://www.westportparts.com/images/1H0253087H.jpg)
(that's a Mk III one btw)
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yeah, but would the one he ships look as good as that? or even be all there? that was mean.... lmao
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At $119 I honestly couldn't care less if it was just plain steel or painted pink with yellow polkadots...
I don't think anyone has ever had trouble getting stuff from Prothe...
I'd never ever ever buy an injection pump from him, I'd never buy injection pump internal parts, I have bought injectors and wouldn't do it again, but he does have a lot of stuff I would buy. I mean, how much can you screw up a piece of exhaust pipe?
Complicated stuff with lots of high precision small parts, no way. Simple stuff that's pretty hard to mess up, no problem.
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yo make a good point Bryn.
I was being like everyone else.. PROTHE OMG NO!
Im sure its hard to get quality parts and sell them for any sort of profit these days.. he's doing a swell job :)
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I'm happy with Pete's business. The customer service is less than desirable but without him/his business i wouldn't have a car!!! Or if i did it wouldn't be what it is today. nothing close.
I think Mr.Rothenbacher would benefit his company by removing the items that will bring people to think ill of his company. ie. the injection pumps, tensioners that will screw your engine, injectors that don't work very well and so on. They just give people with more insight the impression that he doesn't care what happens to people and their cars, just if he gets his money. Which i highly doubt is Mr. R's intention.
His other stuff. Well worth it in my opinion. With some minor smoothing out and a bit of dremel work his AAZ head and valves (With lapping of course) have worked great for me so far. Good compression. Pushing 1,000 km now and the mileage is still going up.
The only thing im very weary of are the 9$ ring sets i bought.... very weary....
My only reasoning is ... his are 9$ US... two shops in my town, the vw shop = $60/set... the Lordco = over $200/set
EDIT: Another change that would make Prothe seem more ... or ... less dodgy would be isntead of saying "this part fits all passats, jetta's..." and so on ... it should say what item it is intendted for.
Example. The downpipe there... he says it's for 1.9 aaz, passat, jetta, ect.
What he REALLY should say is what TURBO it's for and perhaps body style.
even if he adds that line in addition to what is there... it would solve so many of his return problems. (People getting items that DONT work for their car)
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Well put Edna.
:P:P
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I'll never deal with Prothe for the simple reason that he has, and continues to screw people over with his "rebuilt" injection pumps. I don't think a person like that deserves my hard earned money.
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all i pretty much want out of that set is the tools, i have a brand new belt and tensioner, but it is good to have spares.
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I bought his IP bushings, I figured they're probably good metal and they pressed in very tight. They also need to get reamed to the proper size, so how can I go wrong unless I messed up when reaming 'em?
Check out his 1.6na to turbo coversion kit, complete minus the oil lines for $450. The problem is the intake mani is off of a TDI so it has the "D" ports, you'd have to do a lot of porting to get decent flow. It does show it in the pics though and the description says TDI manifolds included, it should say that the ports don't match up though. I can see some ignorant person buying it assuming it'll fit though.
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Just for information purposes, Prothe's eBay listings for pumps now have an added section that reads: "In March 2009 I set up a VW 1.6 diesel engine in my shop to further test (after the calibration) all outgoing injector pumps. So this pump has been tested on a running engine to ensure 100% quality. This pump has already been installed and run on a real VW 1.6 diesel engine, so you can be 100% sure that the pump will work 100% right out of the box."
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I'll never deal with Prothe for the simple reason that he has, and continues to screw people over with his "rebuilt" injection pumps. I don't think a person like that deserves my hard earned money.
I hear ya Tyler. Loud and clear... but do you think he means to do it?
My understanding is that he's probably got some ties to china and he can get really cheap crap sent to his big warehouse. And he's like ebay... just packs and ships and takes a %.
Do you think he does much wrenching him self though?
He must get such an incredible pa lava dealing with people upset and angry with his rebuilt pumps... you'd think he would stop trying to sell them...
I fall back onto saying, he says his parts fit such and such a year/model... when IN OUR MINDS it should say "this part goes with this part" not ... "this part goes with this car". Stuff like that makes me think he's his own Ebay and not really a parts dealer who knows anything about the parts he's selling just a rough description and a picture to boot.
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I hear ya Tyler. Loud and clear... but do you think he means to do it?
He knows he has(had) a problem and has(had) not done anything to fix it. So yes, I think he meant to do it.
Even with his testing on the engine, I'll never support him.
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I bought alot of the parts for my new engine from you.. Although I still couldn;t bring myself to buy $10 main bearings.. (And to be honest I may have but I didn;t find anyone who has tried them yet).. THe pistons look darn good and my uber fussey machinist agreed.. I have also bought a pump sealing kit from you years ago that is still working fine.. The water pump I bought seems to be about the same quality of the one's I;ve bought at the local autoparts for alot more $$$.. Haven;t put it to the test yet... I was pleased with your service, all questions answered, parts arrived quickely...
I can agree with what you said about an $800 pump for a $700 car, but a But a $400 pump that does work leaves you with an $1100 lawn ornamanet versus a $1500 car that works... It had been a while since I've seen any post about one of your pumps giving problems, I hoped that you have gotten that turned around.. Probably the only reason I even considered purchasing my parts from you.. However again in the past several weeks I find more horror stories popping up about non working pumps from emiata.com.. And I wouldn;t hold that against you so much (hey everyone screws up) but then as the story unfolds I still hear about people going through hoops to get another working pump out of you.. So in additions to the hassle of getting a working pump these people are without a car.. Some completely out of a car becuase that was their only ride.. For me at least, being without my VW for even a few weeks is gonna cost way more than $400 in gas alone..
Maybe it's just that I'm in the right place to hear and see all the horror stories versus the sucess stories
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Kinda looks like a piece of aluminum to me. The pump lock also looks like a piece of steel round stock with a crosshatch done on a lathe.
This is the exact as to what I got when I ordered your timing kit. So yeah, don't tell what I did or didn't receive from you :)
(http://www.dieselvw.com/images/1ZTools.JPG)
Oh well, at least the dial gauge seemed of fair quality ;)
Peter, you seem like an alright guy.. If you don't want people to dislike your work, maybe you need to add some more effort. :-*
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The pump lock also looks like a piece of steel round stock with a crosshatch done on a lathe.
That's about all the pump lock actually is... :P I musta gotten gyped, mine doesn;t have crosshatch..
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I guess we need to have a sticky here and on Vortex about where your best deal is on Timing Tools for 1.5 / 1.6
The $76 kit from Prothe is really about the only thing on his site that isn't a tremendous bargain price. It should be about $50 tops by his other pricing standards.
The "German Guy" on eBay - rdigerb5315 - has the deal that is about 4 levels higher in quality - and METRIC dial gauge to boot !
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/rdigerb5315
You pay $65 plus $20 Shipping = $85
Prothe is $76 - and with shipping probably about same total cost.
Close enough anyway.
Granted you get a flat bar tensioner tool - but thats easily obtainable for around $10-13, if thats the one you want. hello hardworking hands. be good to yourself when you can. at least pile on some duct tape to the handle or something before you grapple with it. In and after your 40's, you start feeling ALL your mistakes from your youth.
The difference in quality and content should put the german kit more towards $150-200 compared to the $76 kit. But don't tell that to the german !
In fact if you can speak/write fluent german - you can call or write him in effort to save $13. He offers the same kit on european eBay for equivilent of $52 USD. I wrote him from that euro link once in effort to get it for that price through that auction - but got no response. So just went through the english link and paid the 65.
NO REGRETS.
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If you want to spend $800 on a rebuilt injector pump, you know where to go. But I don't think that someone who has a old rabbit diesel should spend more money on an injector pump than their car is worth.
I think your argument here is a bit of a red herring. People wanting a cheap replacement pump and people wanting a Giles pump are probably not the same crowd. That being said it was worth the extra few hundred to me to have Giles rebuild my NA pump when it went. The power, fuel economy, and higher RPM gains made it more than worth it IMHO. I would have been a fool to buy a $400 pump, or have another shop just rebuild it for that amount. I went diesel partly for the added reliability. I know it's a VW, but I like the idea of paying a few extra $'s for the peace of mind and driving the crap out of it for 300,000 miles.
I do have your timing kit however and it works great, and the price was right, sure a metric dial indicator would have been nicer, but not a major inconvenience as even google will do the conversion
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Well I know I wrote this thread a few months ago, but I am happy with the quality of the tools. They did the job I needed to do, but the cam lock is flimsy and I bent it somehow, still usesble. The timing belt looks subpar but its holding up. Tensioner looks identical to the one that came off.
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I'll definately buy from him again. Quick shipping, any part ill ever need for a good price. Why not?
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Prothe is a parts salesman, not a mechanical engineer.
he tried converting a 1.6 into a TDI, but its not gonna work without the right head or pistons...
anyone can sell parts, not everyone can build engines out of those parts. we should just go in on a group buy and buy him out and ditch all the crappy parts. just think of it, each one of us could own a little piece of our own VW parts store... haha!