I got mine yesterday and just unpacked them. My solenoids look new, but they did a really poor injection molding job on the white parts. I am a former injection molder mechanic. What I see is old molds where the ejector pins are loose and loaded with dirty grease. I also see that they used regrind along with the virgin that lead to a dirty look. You can see the regrind streaks in them. This is a fairly common thing to do to save money, but on white parts it makes them look bad, yet does not impair performance. It also looks like they use mold release spray and haven't cleaned the molds for a very long time.
When the molds get old or you stop producing the part, you sell off the molds to someone. They may have acquired the old Lincoln molds for the solenoids and continued to use them. After market manufacturers often do this since building new molds is fairly expensive, especially for a low volume product. This does not mean that the parts are inherently bad since the actual molded areas don't usually have issues, but the moving parts like the ejector pins often lose tolerance which leads to flash at the pins or dirt in the ejector pin area when they grease them heavily. The other reason that I think that the solenoids are new is examination of the black molded and other parts on them. They are unblemished and have a new finish on them. Black parts with textured surfaces are notorious for holding dirt and losing the new look and fading to dull grey as they age. You can't really fix that in a rebuild.
And yes the packing job was dodgey and cheap, but it was enough to prevent damage considering what they are. I will reserve judgement until I install them. But, would you be willing to pay $300+ each for the same thing from the other vendors?
Bill W
