Any updates as to what happened with the head?? I see it is gone, and I was wondering if someone here ended up with it or if the guy just ended the auction???

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Ryan Covalt
62 Plymouth Valiant Race Car 2170# 11.008 @ 117.65 MPH 1/4 Mile Best
72' Dart Swinger Street Car, 4 spd, 3330# 14.061 @96.58 1/4 mile Best

I have to agree about the "turbo thing" My first car was/6 63 Dart.Got me through high school till I got my 69 Road Runner w/383. For the next 35 years every thing has been mopar BB's. The point is with the turbos now available I'm excited over building a slant for the first time in a long time I can't wait to get ahold of my daughters Dart now!

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Bill Jacobs

I had wondered if our discussions here have provoked the seller in some way. That is unfortunate.

I am still interested in buying the head if the seller is reading this.

I was under the impression that retracting a bid or an auction had some negative effect on your feedback or ability to use Ebay in the future? I guess that is not the case since people seem to be retracting both at will with no negative consequences.

When I place a bid, I never retract it and really intend to buy the item for my max bid price if I win the auction.

Hmmm...

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

That's the way to conduct ebay business, Lou. I've made some good deals, and missed out on some, but I stand by my bid.

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"When you find a big kettle of crazy, it's best not to stir it." - Pointy-haired Boss

1964 Valiant V200, 225/Pushbutton 904
BBD, CAI, HEI, LBP, AC, AM/FM/USB, EIEIO

No direct negative consequences but it does show up on your feedback as "So-and-so retracted X number of bids..."

I'm not sure about retracted auctions for sellers.

If the seller was worried about how legit a bid was he could of cancelled the bid or contacted the bidder directly, canceling the auction all together is an extreme.

Didn't someone say this was the guys first time selling? Perhaps hes just overly cautious going through the learning curve.

Anyone watch "Life on the block..." where they chronicle the Barrett-Jackson auctions? I remember one show when a bidder went up to the auctioneer to retract his bid they took his bidding card and walked him out. I can understand why they have retraction ability though in ebay incase there was a legitimate mistake made like one too many zeros entered etc.

I'm done.

Josh, I think your bid retraction had little to do with the seller pulling out.
I've seen an auction end early because someone contacted the seller with an 'buy it now' offer.
Maybe someone messaged the seller with an offer he couldn't refuse.

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Slant Cecil

First, In my opinion, the bid retraction probably did tick off the seller. If I'm not mistaken EBAY asks you to confirm the amount you just bid. If it was done in "error" it should have been caught there. Next, this head should have never existed but it does. It should be considered a piece of nostalgia and who knows what that can do the price. As an example, mopar idiots pay stupid money for the right # carb or millions for a Hemi Cuda. Are they worth it? I'd say not. Lastly, with respect to a new head design and I mean no disrespect to anyone but Doug's design is 10 years old. Why not copy a modern head? Copy the ports from any of today's high performance muscle. Even Toyota's make crazy HP.

Bottom line as far as I'm concerned anyway, is that this head was basically worthless for anything but a conversation piece anyway.

Doug has had a good design for an aluminum head for a lot of years, and still people want him to front all the cost of developement and manufacturing, but want to pay him peanuts for a finished head.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the market is just plain too small for an aluminum head to be profitable. You simply can not get enough people to agree on what they want to actually get anything into production.

Tom is right, put the 2-3K into an iron head and see what you get. Right now there are only 3-5 Slant cars in the whole world that can use more head than you can make with an iron head, and an iron head sucks to start with.

Hell, for the money you'd have to invest in an aluminum head, you can invest the same amount in a turbo-efi setup and make a whole bunch more power.

An aluminum head on a street car would be nothing more than "OOH-AHH" factor anyway.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

Josh, let's be grownups and own up to our behaviour, okay? Your claims of innocence and best intentions just don't hold water, so kindly please knock it off. Others have pointed out the weakness of your claim that your own bids (each of which eBay asked "are you sure?" before you were allowed to commit to them) were too rich for your blood. More than that, your actions contradict your words. You placed two bids on his first auction, and the amounts you bid, in the sequence you bid them, followed by your cancellation, is the behaviour of someone trying to find out the amount of a secret reserve—your claims to the contrary notwithstanding. I have been in touch with the seller all along. I was supposed to go and see it this afternoon. Had an appointment with the seller and everything. Instead, I got to turn around early and drive 6 hours back to Toronto after getting an e-mail from the seller saying that the head was spoken for, but I was welcome to come and see it before it left for its new home. Needless to say, I was shocked and disappointed, and I said so. In his response, as in a previous exchange he and I had a few days ago, he made specific reference to your bid/higher bid/cancel bids behaviour as the impetus for his withdrawing the auction the first and the second time.

The seller's behaviour was dishonourable, greedy, and disingenuous. The buyer's behaviour, whoever he is, was unethical. But your behaviour, Josh, was just as bad, and was one of the direct causes of this head (and the factory prototype turbo/intake/exhaust manifolds set he also had) having fallen into hands unknown. So, from me to you: Thanks heaps, ace. Thanks a lot, y'hear?

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

That guy knows exactly what he's got, and if he didn't before, he sure does now. Because of the specific nature of the item, I'd say there is a high probability that the guy has seen this thread, along with the one over on .com; there are only 2 real slant-specific sites out there, after all...

Also, if Josh wanted to retract his bid, it's his right to do so, for whatever reason that may be. Ebay gives you that option. The thing I don't agree with is the seller repeatedly pulling the auction; it looks like he is trying to manipulate buyers based on bid amounts, which has been a problem on ebay for a while, unfortunately...

Just my .02...

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Abusing that right for nefarious purposes and then hiding behind eBay rules that permit bid retractions...yeah, that's real honourable, stand-up behaviour.

NOT!

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

one thing is the real world runability that this head might have represented. I'm sure you can do wonderful things with $3k (imagine that translated in almost $10 grand in my currency, I can get 2 new old darts, or a full race engine preped and blueprinted by the 2 or 3 slant six racing gurus that are down here, or a custom aluminium head and full roller rockers of my choice...)
Instead of seeing me spending that kind of money, I was about investing it into having it both ways: a cool, sofisticated slant six car wich would yield better performance AND a modern, low weight design for all the slant six folks to share and at the tune of US$1000 per piece ahipped to the states.

I'm sure the seller's a bag of arts, but we were talking about a group effort that got screwed by one man's sickly need for knowing the reserve price and then selfishly care a $#!+ about what we talked here and ultimately depriving us all from the chance of getting on real chances of having a modern head.

It's a sad thing... I know now that we'll never going to see a thing like aluminium heads repoping and/or new from scratch, and that's because we all are drifting in diffrent directions and can't gather up for a single moment

I'm really very dissapointed over how this thing turned up.

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.

I'm done.

we haven't talked about detailed things with Doug. I bet not only DD but many others are kind of "reluctant" to have the head casted down here... well, I can tell you this much: machinists and speed shops are nt only good, but very very good. Top that with the fact that we're a six bangers country, V8's never sticked with the people down here mainly due to the ill concept that V8's "wasted" more fuel than IL6's. I have seen ford's six 221 get aluminium improved design heads, I've seen Chevy's 230's and 250 get not only modern design aluminium heads, but state of the art 12 ports aluminium heads, with matching redesigned manifolds. I've never seen any good racing or improved street setups for /6.

As someone wisely stated here, the ford inline six bangers have a very restrictive head, worse than the slant six head. We're so far so good with this, except for the part where we're screwed up with getting aftermarket improvements for our motors.

Another important fact about the possibility of having a head casted or CNC'd down here is A) we're not complying any environ policies. Our aluminium factories can do pretty much what they want and they get away with lots of stuff that I don't know if you can up there. As "relaxed" as our enviromental control is, small foundries, big foundries as well, can operate as they did up there several years ago, granting a healthy metalworking industry. Not healthy for us, but good for the sake of industrial processes... as you can't get a good car to run fast without loosing mileage, sometimes you just can't be competitive on production costs with all the enviromental control. That's why most of metalworking doesnt take place in the states anymore. Remember brass instruments factories, autoparts manufacturers, etc? they're all in china now! Even Mexico is loosing their industries... B) our currency exchange rate is US$1=AR$3.09... no one would expect a person throwing AR$10.000 for having a custom cast cylinder head... even racers don't do that... (mostly racers wouldn't do that, they have plenty of cast iron heads and they just throw away their heads after one or tops two seasons... I have several race car heads around, in fact, I buy them just for cutting them as a stage 00000001 in my "get a custom cast head" process... I've been wanting a superbly good street head that would allow for staging as edelbrock heads do, say 3 or 4 stages about ports size and shape, same with valves and combustion chambers.

that's all for now... wouldn't go again into the "senseless-beat-josh" thing. Of course this ain't over until Ron wins ... errr... until we exhausted every resource to see if we can have DD's or another head cast or CNC'd. Fe or Al, whatever as long as is a new cast, with improved desing for super street applications with a room for improvements for an all out race car.

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Juan Ignacio Caino

Please use e-mail button istead of PM'ing. I do log in sometimes but I'll be answering quicker thru e-mail.