The picture that scottly just posted shows that trademark of the orig. Honda roller and it's a good one.
On the 3 rollers I just got from Honda, there isn't any marks like those on any of the parts. There are just the several mold-injection 'nubs' where they were pressure-fed and bled.
That was one of your pics, Mark, that I zoomed in on to high-light the logo, which is on the other side of the "nubs". My original K7 roller has the same logo, but I couldn't get as good a picture as yours.
I just went and looked at the other 2 (of the 3) Honda parts I have: one has a "14" on it opposite the little logo thingie, and the other has a "19", but on both of these two, it is so faint and shallow that it can only be seen under a strong magnifier and side-lighting. The one I posted pix of is a little more defined and can show up if lit just so. I can't even get a picture of the others to show it. One (and just one) of the Honda wheels is a bit harder than the others, and the others seem to be as flexible as the aftermarket one. I don't have more than one of the aftermarket ones to compare with, though, as the other one is in a engine right now.
The aftermarket ones appear to be smoother molds, as the Honda rollers all have little sites of flash on them, right where the center rib meets the wheels. The aftermarket ones have sharp, crisp mold lines with no flash at these sites. All dimensions appear to be as identical as rubber molds typically can be, with the 'hardest' Honda one being slightly smaller OD by about 0.002" or so.
The bearings (ID) of the big wheels all measure the same within 0.0004", and they all have a honed-to-finished-size appearance, as if that was how they were made (probably were?). I suspect this is there to make sure it wears into the pivot bearing, much like rings on bore walls, for a good match.
On both the Honda tensioner arms and the aftermarket ones, the bushing-bearing that fits thru the stamped arm is very tight, and drags right where the notch-punch site is located (due to punch deformation of the arm's bracket). It is important, when these are assembled, that you always file or sand out the arm's pivot hole nearest this notch so this arm can swing freely, or it will not lube the bushing well. If the tensioner keeps falling toward the front of the engine while you're installing the rings, making a nuisance of itself, then you have it right...more than several times I have finally inserted the last 2 ring sets, only to find the tensioner fell forward under the cylinders while I wasn't looking, and I've had to start over.
That's how freely it should swing.
If the arm's pivot is too stiff in this bearing, the tensioner's spring will not take up the slack of the chain. These tensioners started showing up this way in about 2011 (from my earliest non-Honda parts), and at first only the aftermarket ones had this "tight notch" problem. Lately the Honda ones do, too. But, the tooling marks on the steel stamped arm are slightly different between the 2 parts: the Honda ones all have chips and chunks torn out of them on the inside of the 'backbone' or 'spine' of the arm, while the aftermarket ones have 4 little scratch marks on the outside corners at the same area, opposite side. So, they appear to not have been bent on the very same stamp molds, for one?
Besides the little logo, and the different-looking injection port 'nubs' on the rollers (more on the aftermarket than on the Honda ones), I really can't detect any reliable differences. Does anyone else possibly have some of these to further compare? There's an awful lot of them out there.
Oh - and there is this 'gem': I have an original (now 3 years old) Honda tensioner arm, in the bag, on which the little wheel WILL NOT TURN unless forced. I bought it for a rebuild that was pending for 6 months, and by the time I discovered the problem Honda would not take it back. This one would have disintegrated the little roller in mere miles. So, Honda's parts are not always perfect, either...like the bad set of 0.25 rings I got in December for this K6 I am restoring: the oil rings came out of the box with 0.027" gap NEW - which is more than even a stock-bore engine needs (it comes out to 0.020" in that bore, but not round)...this is clearly unacceptable, and the only one in the 4 sets I bought all at once, but Honda would not take them back, either. I have also received other parts bad from Honda over the years, but I usually try to forget them and move on...
