Must have been one of the china copies of the Italian made MOMO or (made in Japan) HKB boss kits. See too many of them at the "specialists auto accessories" shops in shopping centres.
Back when I had the business, we had one customer that came in complaining that he wanted a warranty on a HKB product (we were distributing the brand in the early days) that he had bought from one of our retailers. He was upset that the boss was not at all complete flat and when he had installed the boss kit and his aftermarket steering wheel, he noticed that his steering wheel was at a different angle than the original. He removed the boss kit and placed it on a flat surface only to discover that the boss kit had deformed and was beginning to compress on one side
Once he produced the receipt and boss kit with all the packaging, I began apologising profusely.
Then something caught my eye about the packaging. The HKB logo was actually much smaller than usual on the packaging. On closer inspection, I noticed many issues such as the boss kit not have the place of manufacture on it, the packaging was not the same as the genuine HKS box and the final straw was the splines look like they were already deformed after a one time test install. The customer was getting pretty angry by this stage.
I rang the retailer who promptly denied that they had bought fake HKB copies. However, when the customer decided to get Fair Trading involved (his sister worked there) and the local news the retailer back flipped and admitted that they had been selling fakes. They were approached by a infamous local sly car parts businessman who was the first one in Australia to buy a 20-foot container load of these HKB China copies.
He offered them each boss kit for $8 (no gst/all cash/no receipts/no evidence) if they bought a 1000 of them ($8000 quick money). They were still selling them at normal genuine HKB retail of $60 and above.
The customer got his refund, returned his product and got a genuine HKB off us. He then promptly wrote to most of the major auto parts stores informing them of the fakes and to only use genuine HKB or MOMO boss kits.
Moral of the story - you still have to be very careful of the products coming out of China. Some still have very poor quality control and if it is a essential component that could fail and cost you and others their lives.
