I installed a Gates kit on my STi. I was only aware of their reputation for quality and didn't look deeper at things. The tensioner failed at 800km and destroyed a rebuilt engine. Broke the piston in the number 4 cylinder. Gates stopped replying after I sent them photos of the tensioner. Unfortunately for me I had purchased the kit over a year earlier. I am now getting ready to install another engine and this one has a factory Subaru tensioner on it.

File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, include a link to this video and we'll see what gates has to say then.

Contact the PA Attorney General's office or perhaps the Federal Trade Commission. Indicating a product originates from one country when it does not is a violation of law. I know this is true about made in USA products, but don't know about others. Either org may know for sure.

BAIT AND SWITCH

Made in China and put in the box in Japan... hmmm

I have done a couple Subaru's with the Aisin Kits. With these kits the tensioners use the same bearings as OEM, the belt is a Mitsuboshi which is also OEM. the water pumps are Aisin brand and are nicer made than OEM, afterall Aisin is a OEM for toyota. Seriously worth checking out if your doing these...

Both customer services gave very bad service I don't know about other parts of the world but where I am info on the packaging is legally required to be accurate. I am an engineer and have had a number of instances where Chinese bearings have been responsible for significant downtime and a huge loss of revenue for my company that far outweighed the cheaper cost and in almost all cases they were passed off as higher quality items from other countries. I will draught a recommendation for group consideration that they cease to use Gates parts immediately. Many thanks Ivan for the heads up.

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. I have used Gates products and Aisen on my Subs....but no more Gates. That is false advertising, and underhanded, and deceptive like you stated in the video. I work on cars all the time and refuse to use Chinese products/parts even though some are decent. Gates get the picture....you lost a customer.

Depending on how long Gates has been doing this, it could very likely be considered fraud; especially if Gates knew or had reason to have known that consumers relied on Gates to provide OE components. This could amount to a class-action suit if Gates purposefully kept making boxes for these kits which continued to have the marking of "made in Japan," although made elsewhere. If this video gets some traction, Gates might start scrambling.

This world is overcrowded by scams and cheats. It's not cool to deal with so many cheats and dishonest lame fools. You did good!

Well done..

As an older guy who is NOT a mechanic I'm impressed with you, as a young man, having the awareness AND more importantly the integrity to refuse to install the parts in question. If it was an alternator belt or a spark plug maybe it wouldn't be as big a deal if there was a failure sometime down the road but with these timing belt related parts the potential damage that could be done could be catastrophic in terms of what that damage might cost to fix AND the length of time the vehicle could be disabled while going through repairs.

im not even mad that its made in china, but what pisses me off is that they wrote on the box where each individual part is made. thats false advertisement.

Aisin FTW! I did SO MUCH research to figure out what brands would be good aftermarket/oem timing belt kits. You helped SO MUCH in making my decision to avoid Gates. I'm sorry you had to go through this and hats off to you for refusing to install questionable parts.

One very important thing that needs to be said about the new Gates kits is regarding the belt tensioner. I have used the old "made in Japan" tensioners and OEM Subaru tensioners. Most of them have had bleed down issues before the engine has even run. We used to install an aluminum wedge to prevent the belt jumping during shipping. It should noted that I have built hundreds of Subaru engines over the last 20 years. For the record, there were more issues with the OEM tensioners than the Gates.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I used to fix my own cars very often. The Gate brand was one of my favor but it won't be anymore.

Thanks for posting this; luckily, I saw this early in my research to replace my timing belt and did more digging. I ended up getting an Aisin kit to avoid any shenanigans.

Great video, thanks for posting... What I have learned from this is that I need to work on my people skills, I think that I would have been rather toxic on the phone, which wouldn't have gotten me any further. I admire your composure.

I always get Aisin kits. A little more but always use the proper NTN/Koyo parts.

Dang, was all set to buy a Gates timing belt kit for my Subaru. Just removed it from my Amazon shopping list. Thanks motoYam82!