Latest / After-Hours with Faction! Motorsports / UNDER THE HOOD Ep. 3: Tomei USA/JAPAN

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UNDER THE HOOD Ep. 3: Tomei USA/JAPAN · After-Hours with Faction! Motorsports

• 0:09
  Welcome back to Under the Hood episode three with your host,
• 0:12
  Frankie. And Malcolm?
• 0:15
  Today we are going to be talking about the brand Tomei.
• 0:23
  What can you tell us about the brand?
• 0:24
  Malcolm? Malcolm doesn't know anything
• 0:26
  about any of this, so he informed me of that right before
• 0:28
  this started. Hey.
• 0:30
  Man, I tell him what we were talking about.
• 0:31
  He goes, I know nothing about any of this.
• 0:36
  I was like, OK. I'm here to just hype you up.
• 0:39
  Yeah, OK. I know there's a Tomei Japan and
• 0:42
  a Tomei USA. OK, so you know something.
• 0:45
  Yeah, something. That most people don't even
• 0:47
  know. Damn.
• 0:49
  Yeah, this is some underground stuff right here.
• 0:52
  This is like the deep cuts of the JDM knowledge, if you will,
• 0:56
  rope. We're getting under the hood.
• 0:59
  Exactly. We're getting under the hood
• 1:00
  today. So yeah, as Malcolm said,
• 1:03
  there's a Tomei Japan and then there's a Tomei USA.
• 1:07
  Well that's what we called it on the streets if you will, Tomei
• 1:11
  Japan, Tomei USA, this is the actual name.
• 1:14
  So I I tried to do some last minute just organizing to see
• 1:19
  see what comes up when you search because the the the
• 1:23
  correct name is Tomei Powered that is the company name right?
• 1:28
  OK. Like, even though the Japan one.
• 1:30
  That's the thing. So if you look up Tomei Powered,
• 1:33
  you'll see the first one is Tomei Powered USA.
• 1:37
  That's the name of the site. Tomei Powered USA Inc looks to
• 1:41
  be the name of the company. Then you have Tomei Powered Inc
• 1:47
  with no USA. So there are two companies.
• 1:54
  The original Tomei Powered, Inc was founded in 1968.
• 1:58
  Damn, Can you believe that shit? What the fuck?
• 2:01
  Yeah. There's a lot of brands like
• 2:03
  that like HKS and other brands like that 68, they go so far
• 2:07
  back like. Way back.
• 2:10
  Like, they might have built, you know, some Imperial Japan plane.
• 2:15
  Like, I don't know, they might if they go back far, dude.
• 2:18
  So here's the deal. Eventually, or at some point,
• 2:26
  Tomei Powered Inc from Japan came over to America.
• 2:30
  They started selling parts. Now, I don't know how this was
• 2:32
  done. I don't know if this was a
• 2:35
  partnership with an American or if they literally brought their
• 2:39
  company over here and started doing work.
• 2:41
  If I had to take a guess, it was a partnership.
• 2:44
  I don't know if it was with an American person or if you know,
• 2:46
  depending on what the situation was, But I think there was a
• 2:49
  partnership and what happened was this partnership fell apart.
• 2:54
  This is just all speculation. This isn't 100% speculation.
• 2:58
  Some of this is fact. Let me the only The only thing
• 3:00
  we don't really know is basically the people involved.
• 3:06
  But there's plenty of information written on this.
• 3:09
  I'm trying to go through my notes right now.
• 3:10
  I'm sorry, people. All right, I found what I was
• 3:15
  looking for here. There's.
• 3:17
  So basically what happens is you you go try to find information
• 3:20
  on it. This is how it goes.
• 3:21
  Someone tells you one day, oh, yo, what cams you got?
• 3:25
  Oh, I got tomei cams. Yeah.
• 3:27
  You sure about that? And then like, what do you mean?
• 3:30
  Where'd you buy? Them.
• 3:30
  Where'd you get them from? In Juku or some shit?
• 3:33
  Yeah, those are from Taiwan. Oh shit.
• 3:38
  Those are from Taiwan. Those are from China.
• 3:41
  Yikes. And you start questioning it.
• 3:44
  What what are you talking about? And then you do a little Google
• 3:47
  search and you find some thread, you know from whenever on
• 3:51
  whatever fucking website, Nismo club some shit.
• 3:56
  And you start seeing the rumors and all this before we get into
• 4:00
  the details. All of this is basically like
• 4:04
  you said. Speculation.
• 4:06
  Speculation. There's no way for us to know
• 4:08
  because none of us are related to anyone or know anyone that is
• 4:13
  involved with these companies. I believe I have spoken to some
• 4:18
  people that told me USA before about this like and passing like
• 4:21
  trying to just like get information but you can only say
• 4:25
  so much without seeming like an asshole.
• 4:29
  So it's really hard to get any information.
• 4:32
  But basically the gist of it that you get from the Internet
• 4:35
  is that is that Tomi USA was buying parts from Japan at some
• 4:41
  point. Like Tomi USA is is legitimately
• 4:45
  a separate entity from Tomi Japan.
• 4:50
  They buy, they were buying parts from Tomei Japan, then they're
• 4:53
  selling them in the US That makes sense.
• 4:55
  That's what a lot of companies do.
• 4:59
  I don't know the details on if most companies are completely
• 5:01
  separate, but I would say they are because it's a completely
• 5:03
  different country. So they usually like, like
• 5:06
  HKSUSA is probably not directly connected to HKS Japan, it's
• 5:11
  just they're getting all their parts from them.
• 5:15
  So technically they're not the same, but they are because
• 5:19
  they're selling the same shit. OK.
• 5:21
  Eventually there was a lawsuit between the USA and Japan
• 5:26
  divisions and they broke the companies up.
• 5:29
  They're like, well, we don't want to work with you anymore.
• 5:31
  I don't know what it was about, but they didn't want to work
• 5:33
  with them anymore, so they cut ties.
• 5:34
  Well, here's the thing. When you're working with someone
• 5:37
  for that long, you know one where they get everything like
• 5:41
  so, so now tell my USA, if you look at their products and you
• 5:46
  look at the Japan products, they're pretty much the same.
• 5:50
  It it's honestly extremely hard to tell the difference on some
• 5:53
  of them, to the point where I think they're made in the same
• 5:57
  place, still depending on what they are.
• 6:00
  OK. Yeah.
• 6:01
  So like, I'm reading a thread right now on FT86 Club and it's
• 6:07
  funny because this is from like 2019 and this information was
• 6:10
  definitely this, this this whole thing happened before 2019.
• 6:14
  I'm pretty sure like this was already a thing, but you'll see
• 6:17
  like these new threads come up and they're still talking about
• 6:20
  it. Like it happened yesterday,
• 6:21
  like, Oh yeah, did you guys hear Tomei Japan and and Tomei USA
• 6:24
  broke up? It's like, yeah, that's old
• 6:26
  news, old news. Dude, take those cams out of
• 6:28
  your car. No, but so this this guy says,
• 6:34
  you know, Tomei USA gaskets, same as Japan, both made in
• 6:40
  Taiwan. Tomei manifolds I guess exhaust
• 6:45
  manifolds same as Japan, both made in Taiwan which I 100%
• 6:50
  believe Tomei USA titanium exhausts same as Japan, both
• 6:55
  made in China. I still believe that when you
• 6:59
  start getting to the hard parts like manifolds and gasket and
• 7:02
  exhausts, titanium exhaust, I start to feel like there is a
• 7:08
  difference. Because we've seen, we've seen
• 7:11
  tomei exhausts for RB26 in here like down pipes and they are
• 7:16
  fucking nice, like really, really nice like HKS stuff.
• 7:22
  And then you'll see like, I don't know, actually I got a
• 7:26
  great example, you'll see that's homemade SR20 exhaust manifold
• 7:31
  come in and you're like, yeah, this looks OK and then you go to
• 7:35
  put the turbo on it and the flange isn't straight.
• 7:39
  I literally got to take it to a belt Sander so that it won't
• 7:42
  blow the gaskets out. So now could that be the same
• 7:47
  stuff? It could be, but we don't get
• 7:50
  enough Tomei Japan parts here to really know for certain if
• 7:54
  there's a big difference, A big difference.
• 7:57
  So another thing he mentioned in that thread was Tomei Japan cams
• 8:01
  are made in Japan. Tomei USA cams are sourced from
• 8:05
  Taiwan or China. I 100% agree with that too.
• 8:08
  And why do you believe that? That's a good question.
• 8:12
  Why do I believe that? OK guys, what you heard there
• 8:14
  was a little excerpt from our Patreon Only podcast.
• 8:17
  These podcasts share industry info and other things we got
• 8:20
  going on here at the shop. We have two tiers right now over
• 8:23
  on our Patreon. Check them out, see which one
• 8:25
  fits your budget. Enjoy the content and thank you
• 8:28
  for supporting.