I don't think so.  Recently, I received a shipment of water hoses for a VW.
The hoses were made in Israel and had the VW-Audi mark on them, except
someone had taken a black marker and obscured the VW-Audi mark.  I've also
bought these same hoses at the dealer and they were identical: made in
Israel, but with the mark of course.

There's no doubt in my mind that these hoses were made by the same
manufacturer, were identical in quality, and came off the same assembly line
as the OE VW dealer hoses.  This is just one example of aftermarket and
dealer parts being exactly the same.

Cheers,

Jeff
www.vanagonparts.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of Jim Felder
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 3:45 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: OEM vs Aftermarket -- WAS: where is the best buy for drums
and rotors?

Possibly a rebuild using VW castings, and ground off knowing that VW
would come after anyone who used their logo? It would be much cheaper
to fill in the lettering on the original molds once and get rid of the
lettering forever than to have employees grind off thousands of VW and
AUDI logos.

Jim

On Feb 17, 2005, at 5:31 PM, Dennis Haynes wrote:

> May have also been a reject by OEM standards but good enough for after
> market sales?
>
> Dennis
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
> Of Jeffrey Schwaia
> Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 4:03 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: OEM vs Aftermarket -- WAS: where is the best buy for drums and
> rotors?
>
> Funny thing about some of the aftermarket parts: if you look closely,
> you
> see where the VW symbol has been ground off or covered up somehow.
> Basically, it is a OEM part that has been defaced for non-OEM sales.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff
> www.vanagonparts.com
>