I have the best girlfriend in the world. She bought me a set of Apexi EL2 Gauges from ebay from a seller called MJC Racing Parts ebay shop
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/mjc-racing-parts
Upon opening them I was really pleased but a little bit startled with the overall build quality of it. I mean I know how much these cost's and to see that I have a set of 3 was in the back of my mind "expensive" but when holding them and looking at them carefully I thought it's not really worth what they are. Course I didn't say it to her but my girlfriend kinda saw it in my facial expressions and asked me what's wrong? In her mind she too thought it wasn't very well made and we thought we'd research online but found very little information but definitive differences which concluded that she had been sold fake Apexi gauges.
First thing we found was this:
I was laughing most of the time but my girlfriend wasn't as she was getting angrier by the minute.
I opened my boost gauge box and compared it to the one in the video and noticed aside from the colour, it's exactly the same.
At this point I couldn't prove it's fake or not so I went to dig around and found very good evidence to compare real the genuine ones and my fake ones and here it is:
These are my fake ones boxed up.
All looks good. Nice box. Small circular Apexi hologram in one corner and a rectangular authentic sticker on the side. But then what came to mind is that that I have bought a boost, oil pressure and oil temp gauge and none of them have any unique numbers or item codes on the boxes. In fact they're all exactly the same.
Next I compared the gauge to the youtube vid:
Aside from the colour it looks exactly the same.
NOTE - the boost sensor is the same one in the video too.
Also the fish tank air line was very cheap.
Also notice the Apexi text is different from the actual printed logo on the boxes.
Real Apexi sensor looks like this:
Notice the logo difference and cable quality?
The manual was crisp but was missing one images and what should had been with the kit was different or missing:
now look at the face and compare the logo position and size:
Then I opened all of them and laid them out together
Compare it to a set of genuine ones
See the difference?
I had very little cables in the fake ones.
The genuine ones had some thicker cables insulated in some places
Boost sensor was different
Fake ones had chunky generic oil pressure sensor and oil temp sensor was the cheap ones with really fragile cables.
Aside from the boost gauge, the other two had installation instructions from the cheap sensors, not an Apexi instruction manual.
Also in all 3 boxes, there where no warranty cards in them.
Now I'm not that bothered if I bought them cheap knowing they're fake but MJC Racing parts are insisting they're genuine but had offered us a refund. However they're still selling them on ebay and ebay isn't doing anything about it.
If you've spent between 5-10K on building an engine, would you trust fitting gauges which will fail you?
Spread this to other forum my friends to save others from being ripped off.