Well, I received the set of US made trim rings and I'm not really impressed with them. I'm going to send them back. They would be OK for a driver I guess, but all of them have scratches on them. The scratches are relatively small area wise, but they are fairly deep, meaning that you couldn't remove them with some metal polish by hand. I could send them off to be re-polished, but I can't see investing roughly another $200 into these rings. Also, the galvanized clip ring extends into the valve stem hole quite a bit more than my older GM ones, which doesn't look good at all.
Some of the scratches on the outer lip look like they were caused by improper packing. The individual rings are just in plastic bags, then they are placed face-to-face in sets of 2. The 2 sets are then taped together. The problem is that the ring faces rub against each other in transit. On mine, the plastic bags were completely worn through in spots, causing the ring faces to rub on each other. What is weird is that each ring appears to have a scratched area in the same spot next to the valve stem opening. Also, each ring has an area that isn't completely smooth. It looks like there is an area of the tooling that may have some surface irregularities.
I image that I would have the same issue if I bought a set directly from GM as well. The only problem is that my dealer says that they are 'special order' and they will not take them back unless they have significant damage. They told me that small scratches/scuffs would be considered "commercially acceptable".
My old GM ones that I have right now still look better IMO. I guess that I'm just too picky. Oh well, I tried.
