There's that "competition" word again. There are very few (five major ones I believe) Delorean vendors out there and they get most of the major parts from Houston. Whether Houston sells to a customer or another D vendor they make money....period (as James Espey says). If they were to "branch out" and sell/offer the engine upgrades to other D vendors I think they would sell alot more. Not allot of people have the time to drive their car down to Houston, spend a week down there, afford to have their car shipped there, cost of flying down there...ect. If the opprotunity was there that they could go to the nearest Delorean vendor and have the mods performed...then I think more people would do it....in return Houston makes more money. Now getting back to the Buissness 101 you mentioned, if Houston on the other hand says no, and other vendors get requests to do something like this then that vendor would probably have no other choice but to go off on their own and design their own upgrades....in return Houston dosen't make a dime on it. Now you have competition and people are going to hesitate in having anything done until they see results of the different mods that are being offered. I know I would before I put that much money down. Now Houston isn't going to make their money back as fast as they would have hoped to. You never know, someone could come up with a better mod for less money and allot more powerfull....which one would you go for? So here's the run down...sell/offer the parts to D vendors ONLY to perform the mods for people who don't want to make that big trip.etc..ect...and MAKE money or don't sell/offer the mods to a D vendor ONLY and have the other D vendors come up with their own solution and make NO money from that sale. Hmmmmmm....all that green that they invested could be made back in no time. BTW, all that money in labor....someone has to pay the mechanic Hourly to do it...and I am sure they aren't paying him minimum wage either to do it. Basic engine modifications aren't big "Trade Secret" especially when it comes down to just Porting and polishing the heads, replacing the cams, reworking the exhaust system and other engine tuning, just common knowledge. Any compitent engine builder can come up with that to squeeze the extra 70HP from an already air starving/exhaust constricted engine. What you are refering to as "trade secrets" in engine building is building an engine from the ground up, starting from scratch with raw materials with your own formulas and calculations not basic modifications. It's not always true that you have to pay a large sum of money to go fast...it has been proven. Never assume that because a firm does work for F1's that the headers are Mandrel bent. With all that said, I am not posting in anyway to "bash" Houston or put them down in anyway, they are a good company. I am sure the engine delivers some really good results for the Delorean. I have not driven a Delorean that has had the mods and have only heard by "word of mouth" from people who have actually sat in it and drove the car themselves. From what I understand (someone please correct me if I wrong) someone told me that the mods were worth doing on a Manual tranny and are not worth doing on an automatic. I was told that the automatic felt like it had the same power as a regular stock engine, manual transmission Delorean? --- In dmcnews@xxxx, fjk143@xxxx wrote: <SNIP> The actual mods have been designed by a UK firm that also does F1 work so I am certain that the headers are mandrel bent, polished, etc. as per good hot rodding technique as described by Jim. <SNIP> > > As far as giving his proprietary information to his competitors I think he'd be a fool to do so and I'm certain he won't. He has spent alot of green getting Stage 1 first-time engineering and I'm sure alot of his recovery is in labor to perform the mods. To give it away to competitor is against Business 101. > > Bottom line is: If you want to go fast, you have to pay, period. That has been the rule since day one. > > Oh yeah, when I get my car back eventually Steve provides it with a 6 month, 6,000 mile warranty and actually prefers me to fly to Houston, stay a week, drive the car, hang around, and have minor corrections made per my liking as we are also lowering and balancing the car. <SNIP> > Fred > 6894