Phil,
I do not mean to tarnish your reputation. I have nothing but respect for your differentials and the testing you have done. I even may end up with one in my car someday (still on my stock unit).

However, if you read the Magnuson-Moss act, you will see that Tie-In sales applies to "any article or service (other than article or service provided without charge under the terms of the warranty) which is identified by brand, trade, or corporate name..."

You are identifying a product by brand and corporate name. Doesn't have to be DTE lube. The law was setup to prevent deals such as Redline giving you free lube in exchange for requiring Redline in your diffs to meet warranty claims to protect the consumer. This is the same act that prevents GM from requiring us to use Mobil 1 in our cars. They can't tie warranty to a brand name either.

That said, I respect that you recommend Redline in your diffs and I don't think I've jumped on any of your threads with a link to AMSOILs synthetic gear lubes.

However, I felt justified in letting a forum member who appeared to be running all over the place looking for Redline, that per the Magnuson-Moss act, he doens't have to, but he sure can if he wants to.

Peace.

 

Understood and point taken.

However, you are comparing a small business with low product volume like DTE, to a huge corporate, multi-billion dollar entity like General Motors and that is certainly NOT the same thing. Nor is Redline "giving" DTE anything for free, no matter how much we wish that was the case...

We require the lubricant we do for our differentials because we *KNOW* what works with our product to insure long-term durability and performance for our customers. Those differential lube requirements are placed there to protect the customer's investment, as well as DTE's reputation, by supporting the product's performance (differential) and to maintain a sizable warranty coverage like we offer.

We have done the thorough R&D over the years to know what lubricants will last in our products and what will not; therefore, we've already done the homework for the customer so they don't have to always second-guess themselves if they are putting in the right lubricant or not in that may damage their Corvette in some way.

If we let everyone put whatever was the "cheapest" lube they could find or what they "think" might work in our differentials based on their limited knowledge of the internal build specs of our differentials compared to DTE who builds them everyday, our product would prematurely fail from the incorrect lubricant being used and the customer would ultimately hold DTE responsible for not properly informing them on the right lubricant to use in the first place.

There would be no way we could attach a warranty with our product if we had no idea what lubricant was going to be used in it for the future, especially since we've tested over and over again to find Redline has performed the best for us to date.

I seriously doubt that anyone would want to buy an expensive driveline product like this if there was no warranty coverage and as you probably already know, there is a *HUGE* difference in the quality of lubricants on the market these days.

Our goal is to continually provide the customer with the absolute best C5/C6 differentials money can purchase, at a competitive price point so that their Corvette performs as they desire and we will continue to do that. Using a required lubricant such as Redline is not meant to "tie-in" sales to anyone or any company...it's meant to provide long-term durability with our differentials during the warranty period. If the customer wants to switch to *water* for lubricant in their differential after the warranty term has expired, that's fine...it's their choice, but at least we as a company have met our obligation to our customers to its completion as we stated would would when our warranty terms are follwed and respected. We also want to be treated fairly just like every single person does on this board does...


Phil- DTE

 

Phil,
Dropping you a PM.