Your parts store is either ignorant or lying to your face in order to sell you parts.

I'm going to go with ignorant. People not in the OEM industry have no idea.

Yes, mitsu prob buys from the lowest bidder... The lowest bidder to meet their specs. So the question is what those specs are. The next question is what specs the aftermarket comunity demands and are they the same as oem.

Using the lowest bidder isn't bad. Neither is using Chinese suppliers. Its all about what specs you demand. (I own a Chinese made katana, hand forged to top notch specs. Its absolutely top notch)

Like imagine the lowest bidder to supply engines for a Bentley. The cheapest option for world class. Make sense.

You got it. "Most" of the aftermarket has no access to the OEM Engineering documents as these are confidential, therefore they guess - and certainly don't have the opportunity to participate with the OEM to test and validate the components.

I put "most" in quotes because some aftermarket suppliers are also the OE component manufacture.

The lowest price OE component manufacture probably doesn't even compete with an aftermarket component suppler, so these guys can be cheap.

For sure an apples to basketballs comparison.

Having worked for an OEM supplier to GM, I will testify first hand that "meeting specs" is more than a little bit involved. The level of testing and documentation is amazing. Qualification included temperature cycle, vibration, ESD and EMI and corner testing.

We even used Fords DFMA program ( kind of weird because we were told to use it by GM).

That said, we often would know where improvements could be made but you could not get them qualified in time to make the cut off for that model year. If the original design met specs and we were at the cutoff, that was it... You would have to get the changes into the next design cycle.

Any company supplying to OEM's is going to have the similar quality programs in place. There are always exceptions (a redesigned aftermarket part that addresses a problem) but in general, the OEM holds your feet to the fire the hardest. We had regular audits and GM did a lot of testing during development and would often come back asking for improvements.

I've noticed various contracts played out weirdly.
For one application (can't remember what) kyb is the oem shock supplier. However they are not allowed to disclose info or sell to anyone but the dealer. So your stuck.
Monroe is the oem for the s60r struts. They are allowed to disclose to some extent, so you see them on rockauto. Same exact product as dealer but for half price.
Sometimes these oem suppliers also supply the aftermarket. Like Kevin said, you don't know if they are allowed to disclose these specs. If they can,it's obviously cheaper to keep production running then to retool. Hence I'll open a beck arnley or napa box and sometimes find oem.

For example (I don't know who makes shocks for ford, just a hypothetical example). Kyb might have the ford contract, so They make a high spec shock for the Taurus. However due to contract issues they can't disclose, so they sell a similar shock under their brand name. Its no longer an oem spec part, but still decent quality. They in turn also supply fords budget motorcraft line, but have to meet a target price, so They outsource and make a crap shock. All three are made by the oem, two are sold at the dealer, but only one is oem spec. Weird.

I would never trust a parts seller for advice. Kevin, however,is in the know.

Kevin,obviously I would never ask you to disclose anything against your contract obligations. However to satisfy my curiosity can you say if you were supplying plastic parts, metal, rubber, or automotive fluids?

The oem supply chain has been a very fascinating topic for me. However I can't do too much reading on the topic due to the lack of information due to non disclose situations.

It was long enough ago that its not an issue. I worked for an east coast optical encoder company (Dynamics Research) that won a contract with GM. We supplied position sensors for the first generation of GM electronic controlled Diesel injection pumps. Basicly, it was an optical encoder on the pump shaft that ran submerged in fuel. The original design was done by Stanadyne and we ended up with the contract to make the sensors. That was 1992 or so! It was a very demanding application. Fuel, optics, sensors, light sources and electronics all in one package getting vibrated by being mounted directly on a injection pump..

I was just out of school and it was a good learning experience to get involved with. That was pretty much it it for me and direct experience with automotive. What I got was a good appreciation of the process.

Right now, I'm involved in designing plastic parts for printers. Crazy high volumes and accuracy requirements combined with working with overseas vendors.

This above kit IS OEM, i would trust it.

A lot of aftermarket suppliers claim to be OEM suppliers and they may be, and they may have that generic saying in their parts listing for Mitsubishi parts BUT i will say on brand new Mitsubishi Motors made in Japan you see these above brands. You also see; ASCO (old Aisin), Akebono, Diamond, Denso, MHI, Diesel Kiki/Zexel, Mikuni and Asahi

One reason it's hard to find good aftermarket parts for Mitsubishi vehicles is that they actually make most of their own parts or own companies that make the parts. They typically don't build their cars with parts from the lowest bidder, and not because they're better than that but because they don't have to. Most other car companies buy parts or license tech from Mitsubishi, I have personally found Mitsu parts on Ford, GM, Chrysler (obviously), Subaru, Toyota and Nissan that were original equipment.

MMC is one of the few car companies that actually builds the majority of their cars so what you run into with aftermarket parts is that they can be way off in design or tolerances due to the proprietary nature of these fine machines. So while any old part might work on a FoMoCo or GMC (because that's what they're built with) it might only kind of work on a MMC.

Something to look at next time you're scoping out engines in various cars, note the blockyness and generic mating surfaces on most vehicles. Then look over your MItsu and notice how everything fits just a certain way and that things are formed to fit together, how even your Mitsu made parts are perfectly made to conform to their other manufacturer counterpart (radiator core support exactly conforms to your radiator side straps = MMC steel against Denso copper and brass).
It's in these details that tend to muck things up in the aftermarket world, so when the same Mitsu part will fit all 6g74s the aftermarket equivalent might only fit a few of the configurations.

So just remember that even though Mitsubishi Motors is a smaller car company than Ford, GM and Chrysler Mitsubishi itself is much larger than all of the "Big Three" combined. Look up Mitsubishi family of companies and anytime you find a manufacturer name on a part that came with your truck google it and it will likely take you back to the same place.

For extra credit look up some of the "sponsors" on the Mitsubishi Rally livery throughout the years and see who owned them during that era. Very interesting stuff <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Cool, thanks, going to order it. And thanks to Toasty also. I thought "Mitsuboshi" was a typo!