PMC, Peter Maiden Components - a little story.

I've written this as a dissatisfied former customer of PMC. It relates to my own experience only and should not dissuade you from using them. Their website is here and their telephone number is 07002 999 123.

Monday 7th August 2000 I spoke to the man himself at PMC, Peter Maiden. I explained that I thought that I had been mis sold a 4-1 manifold for my old 1.3 Vauxhall Astra. PMC said that it would help performance, when in fact they should have explained that it would help top end BHP but lose mid range torque. See results. And on top of that I was sent a Nova manifold first and then there was a 3 week delay for the proper one. Also the mail order company that they use is crap in my opinion. I picked up every single package personally from the local depot. There was never any communication or apology for late delivery. Contrast this with Online Autosport (ww.tuning.co.uk) who managed to deliver a lowering kit to me on 2 days notice.

Peter Maiden's response to my points was:

Rolling road curves don't mean anything!

You what? They measure wide open throttle (WOT) torque which is what we're aiming to improve. He then went on to say that feel was more important than a dyno curve. The manifold would help driveability and that was more important.

Thousands of people have bought the 4-1 and are satisfied with it.

Fair enough, but how many people bother to measure the affect of each modification on a rolling road? Most just bolt bits on and then visit at the end. There's no way of telling what's helping and what's not.

I'm a novice and therefore don't know what I'm talking about.

Partially true, but I do know that the PMC manifold offered nothing over the stock manifold and downpipe for my particular engine set up. I now know that 4-1's are better for top end and that 4-2-1's are better for mid range. I didn't a few months ago when I asked the PMC salesman whether a 4-1 would give me anything worth having and he answered yes.

Losing my custom is no big deal.

When I explained that I would no longer buy anything from PMC the response was along the lines of "losing you as a customer is not going to affect us much". Having spent £600 on bits I found this rather disconcerting.

Our conversation went on for about 30 minutes in which time we covered the same points a few times.

It was pointed out to me that adjusting the cam timing with a vernier pulley might have changed the curve. The PMC advice when I bought the cam was that they are generally OK run on the factory setting.

I was told that there was no way that the manifold could be accepted since installed parts will be in a poor condition. True since all of the paint burns off the manifold when first used.

A number of times I was told that I didn't know what I was talking about. This was because I hadn't spent 30 years in the tuning business. This is fair enough, but it might help if PMC gave decent, honest advice in the first place rather than their totally sales orientated approach. Adverts always talk of "outstanding increases in mid range torque" and "high flow", "high power" etc etc. Even if I didn't know what I was talking about then the approach of Peter Maiden might have been a bit more diplomatic! Telling a customer outright that you think they are stupid, repeatedly is not clever.

It was admitted to me that the tuning data sheet sales curve for a 1.4 Nova might have been based on an engine dynamometer (ie: no ancillaries to drain any power).

Originally I had hoped that PMC would take the manifold back with some sort of restocking fee or whatever. I had been told a week earlier that they would take it back. I had wrapped it and delivered it to the local parcel depot. This time I was finally told that there was no way would be taken back.

I could accept that PMC wouldn't take the part back. It was an expensive lesson, but these sort of things happen.. What I had more trouble with was the attitude of PMC boss man Peter Maiden. He wasn't aggressive, but was offhand and somewhat insulting and dismissive. I would have thought that he would value customers rather more than he appeared to when I spoke to him. Maybe he was having a bad day or something...or stupid customers keep wasting his time.

I am in no way suggesting that you will experience any problems with PMC. There's nothing wrong with anything else I bought from them. But I have not been impressed with the service or delivery and found Peter Maiden's attitude lacking. I will buy nothing further from them. There's Regal and Courtenay to try out next and then plenty of general stockists such as Need For Speed, Demon Tweaks, Carnoisseur,Larkspeed etc.