I know of someone that works for a bearing company.
The have part numbers for extremely expensive helicopter bearings.
The also have part numbers for inexpensive general purpose bearings that
cross reference to the exact same part.
On paper it is a liability thing. Try buying an individually wrapped washer
from Beech and figure the cost.

Mike

"Stuart Fields" wrote in message
.. .
An ad on ebay has a set (2) pitch links for a Bell 412 listed as a buy it
now for $8,000!! They further state that the Bell list price for these two
little links is $30,000!!! I just finished making a set for my Safari
helicopter, and my set looks functionally very similar, and I couldn't
find
$400. in them even if I charged myself $100/hr for the labor. Does Bell
make these out of Unobtanium? Or do they manufacture these in Zero G at
the
Space Lab? Why do I fly an experimental helicopter when I could buy a
used Bell 47 for the same price as my kit???? A friend recently purchased
a
Bell 47 and had to replace just part of the balance beam on the rotor
head:
$1200!!! These prices greatly exceed one-of-a-kind custom prices that you
could get in a red hot machine shop.