[JackM]

The rings are usually cast. To CNC a ring would be horribly expensive. We have a good customer here who is a jeweler. He has all of the equipment and know-how to cast bronze rings, but even that was going to be too expensive. We take these parts prices from the manufacturer for granted. For as complex as these parts are, they are amazingly cheap. There is no way to make these parts for the same price as the manufacturer unless someone were to order several hundred or thousand of them at a time. Spider gears for the DSM trannies come to mind. A few of us got together to have a run of over 500 gears made. It still quoted out to cost more for those gears with a lot of 500 made than it was to buy the factory $169.00 kit for only a pair of them...

There are some rings floating around that were made in China that look like they fit our trannies, but they grind or shift like crap. If you find someone that can do it for cheap, like in China, you get a cheap part that doesn't work. You have to pay when it comes to that stuff, and with a car like the 3S that is getting older and is acquiring more owners that are not willing to pay for the correct parts, you have more people less interested in making parts for them.

Jack