I see that Soaring Eagle also offers one in stainless $1200 and an aluminum for $1100. The Jemali is aluminum for $975 and the Shoreline is stainless for $1600.
You get what you pay for. Can't speak for the Soaring Eagle but Jemali is crap. You'd be better off putting another Paccar box in over the Jemali one. The rivets aren't the same material the rest of the box is made of so the reaction/corrosion due to dissimilar metals will not have the longevity the Shoreline box will. Go to their website and see the breakdown comparison between the two. Shoreline is also an American company and they build their boxes in Michigan. They have good support and customer service was top notch. Jemali was some foreigners in Miami who could barely understand me when I called them with questions about their product.
I agree with the latter, Bean. It prolly wouldn’t have bothered me either, a couple years ago and somethings I can’t control where there manufactured. In this circumstance I’ll buy the ‘Mercian made one. I shouldn’t go belly up over a couple $$$, lord knows I’ll spend that in Copenhagen. I’ll be dam proud to have one that’ll blow colder than the original one. Seen several days this past summer when I’d threw $1500 at man’s face if he was selling them.
My original box was so bad it had literally rusted away. It was held together with Gorilla Tape and Flexseal. Ran it that way for a couple years. The new box is 100 times better. Took me about half a day to do the job. Most of that time was recharging the A/C since I was doing via gravity off a postal scale. As an aside, I figured out why my fan wasn't cycling when the A/C was on. Apparently, somebody put the wrong trinary switch on in the past. I now have the correct one on and it works like a dream. New evaporator core, heater core, trinary switch, expansion valve and blocked/removed the plastic fresh air duct completely too.
Mines rusted out bad too. Put a trinary switch on, drier and expansion valve over a year ago. My biggest problem is air ain’t cold enough and blower doesn’t blow worth crap. The climate control in the dash is also new.