Hi guys. Thought I'd better jump in on this one and give a small heads up.
I've seen these pumps advertised on ebay also and if it was my own engine, personally I would not go near one. It costs us way more than this entire pump just to manufacture a gear set for our pumps.
The gears and backing plates for our pumps are manufactured here in Australia despite what people on forums tell you and the housings are manufactured in Taiwan to keep costs and RRP prices down. I couldn't tell you for sure if the housing from the ebay special is from the same supplier as ours or just another copy. Even though we have spent large amounts of money on moulds for casting and R&Ding / field testing final castings, unfortunately the exclusivity agreements we have in place are at best questionable.
You all know that the most important parts of an oil pump are the gears and some would not be aware of the role the backing plate plays as well. I'll give you a quick rundown on what goes into manufacturing these items on a "proper" performance pump.
First of all gears. Our gears start off as billet EN series steel round bar blanks. 2 blanks from each batch of material we purchase are sent straight off to the metalurgist for composition and hardness testing to ensure the material we have purchased is within specification for acceptable composition for the material. You would be suprised at the amount of raw material we knock back from our suppliers just due to the results from this testing. The blanks are then CNC machined into a shape that resembles the inner and outer gears before they are sent for normalising / stress relieving and nitriding. From here the gears are EDM wire cut to shape and then sent off to be rumbled / polished which provides excellent running surfaces and smooth radiused edges. From here we sacrifice an inner and an outer gear to return back to the metalurgist to be cut up and checked for correct nitriding depth and suface hardness. If all is within our specification then the gears are finished. The EN series steel we use is both an overkill in material and expensive to use but is extremely durable and reliable under all operating conditions which is what we set out to achieve.
We CNC machine our backing plates from billet 7071 series alloy and this is not just done to make the pump look pretty. A lot of people would not be aware of the accosiated issues of a cast alloy backing plate and even though it is not a big problem, we have found further reliabilty can be achieved in this area. A cast backing plate actually flexes during oil pump operation which reduces the stability of oil pressusre delivery. Our billet alloy backing plate actually completely prevents this scenario and provides a consistant oil pressure delivery rate which further enhances the oil pumps performance and your engines reliability. You would notice Nissan has most likely found the same thing and hence added the extra screw towards the middle of their N1 oil pump backing plate. Unfortunately they still went budget on the crappy sintered material gears though.
Each set of gears is measured / toleranced and matched to a housing prior to fitting and is carefully assembled, bluprinted and sealed ready for installation straight onto your engine without need for stripping and cleaning.
So as you can see our pumps are not just something that is bought, badged and resold and definitely in another league to the usual ebay specials. I'll bet the ebay seller can not even tell you with honesty what material the gears are made from. I would also be suprised if the company making them could even answer this question.
Guys, an oil pump is the heart of your engine and so important especially on an RB. Even if you have spent money on just a mild rebuild it is still a lot of money and effort. Why sacrifice that to something just to save a few bucks in the big picture? Save for those extra couple of weeks and get a pump that you won't have to worry about. When an oil pump goes wrong things can REALLY go wrong!
Regards Andrew
Sales Manager
Nitto Performance Engineering
