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Message: [QUOTE="strokin6L, post: 1349618, member: 842"] Some info Josh from RCD posted a while back on FB... 6.0L Ford Platinum Racing / Black Diamond Gaskets After working with Mahle corporation to produce a higher quality product in early 2012, the President of North American sales for Mahle Clevite Corporation visited me with the Regional Sales rep to unveil the new gaskets for the 6.0L Ford. He brought samples with him and compared them to the Ford units and explained to me that Ford held a manufacturing contract with them and they could not manufacture gaskets to compete against Ford / Navistar utilizing their tooling. Anyone in the manufacturing industry knows that when you have a product outsourced and manufactured you are typically responsible to pay for your "tooling" used in the equipment to manufacture your specialized product. Mahle knew this so they used a gasket built by KP Gasket manufacturing located in Japan to build the original all black part number also known as the "Black Onyx" gasket. I myself actually named the gasket before it was known that Mahle had these available and we began to market these back in 2008. I also applied for and own the US trademark for 'Black Onyx" gaskets. Later, at that time many found them and started selling them as "Black Onyx" Which if I wanted, could go back and SUE everyone for millions of dollars who did this for trademark infringement but I just don't work that way. But anyhow.. Back to my meeting with MAHLE. They took me to lunch explained the issues they had with quality control with the KP gasket and how they addressed this by making their own tooling identical to Ford / Navistar and began using the same material in the same punch press machines yet using the "new" Mahle tooling. Only difference was the fact that they used a black sprayed on sealing ring to make visual identification easy. Again, Same material. Just a different dye. They left me with as quoted "The first ones released to anyone" and at which time I placed a order. We then sat around and joked in my office with what they were going to call them. Black Onyx, Black Diamond etc was all spoke about along with a few other names but no sure pricing structure or "name" of the part. A few days later we received a Bulk order of them and started to sell them under the name of "Platinum" Which we also have the trademark for. With no standardized pricing being set we sold them for $199 a set and highly discounted them if you purchased a set of ARP 250-4202 studs with them at the same time. Since that time, Mahle released a name and has marketed these gaskets. Something they never had done before with any specific gasket for this engine. With that being said at this time. We will be selling these as the Black Diamond units, in the black diamond packaging. There will also be a price decrease because we will no longer need to sort, label and package these bulk units we were selling before. [/QUOTE]