Question for Blue Thunder products experts

[FElony]

Pretty sure it’s Art’s kid.

So Art's kid is micromachining parts he claims he's been buying from BT for 30 years?

[jayb]

Art's son is Michael Francis.  I spoke with him about a year ago when I was starting to make valve covers.  He asked me why I was doing valve covers that were similar to his, and I told him because nobody could get his covers LOL.  Same with his FE heads, FE intakes, etc.  He said he is working on getting that pipeline filled, but that it would probably be a 3 year effort.  I think they do a lot more business in small block and 429-460 parts, so that probably gets most of their attention.

[427Fastback]

Interesting thread...I bought some FE covers from Holman Moody a few years ago.They sure looked like Blue Thunders stuff..Next time I was on the phone with Mr. Holman I asked him in a polite way and he said Blue Thunder casts them for him....

[Drew Pojedinec]

I wasn’t sure it was a real name.

Kinda a dick move to block you guys from buying stuff.
If you are willing to pay retail, why would it matter?

[Barry_R]

Spoke with A. T. for a few minutes yesterday.  He sounded pretty good on the phone.
He says he has some of his non-FE stuff in stock (Y block and Cleveland intakes), and that he has a run of dual quad intakes in process.

He also said that the "ebay guy" purchases a bunch of stuff at a time and then sits on it until the supply dries up - then sells it on ebay at a high price.
No idea at all how to react to that, and still don't know who it really is.
I just tell potential customers to purchase the stuff from ebay directly these days...

[Drew Pojedinec]

Easy person to buy from.  Only thing that I took issue with years ago was that they would list the parts as if it were their own creation.

[cammerfe]

I attempted to have a discussion with the guy in the BT booth at Columbus about 15 years ago. Simply polite, rather general questions. I ran into such a wall of indifferent hostility that I simply walked away. He may have been having a bad day, but taking it out on a polite customer isn't the way to do business.

I simply wrote him off.

I've been told that Jim Dove was a hard guy to do business with. I found him to be somewhat opinionated, but always a gentleman. The rule, as I observed, was that he didn't take kindly to aggression.

KS

[TomP]

Buddy Barr make a lot of the aftermarket cast aluminum parts. Lenco cases, Whipple blower housings, they had GM Performance and Mopar intakes on display. I asked them about the 427 HighRiser and TunnelPort intakes. They did cast them, probably have the molds around but Ford would still own them and need to authorize the use of them.