I ran into Doug this weekend at Rick Case's new Honda dealership. He mentioned that the trial run of the new BILLET units have already been produced. He said I could expect to have one in hand for testing VERY shortly.

Some more informatiion:

The switch from a cast piece to billet was made for several reasons, namely quality. Apparently some "what if" testing Doug did showed that if the hood were to hit the top of the unit hard enough (for whatever reason), the casting could possibly crack causing your motor to ingest pieces of it. Not good. The billet unit is, among other things, much stronger than the cast piece.

The initial parts run was done in natural color only. Anodized pieces will be available in a few colors (I don't have details on WHICH colors) shoftly after the trial run.

I'm awaiting the release of this thing as anxiously as anyone else. Rest assured as soon as I get my hands on one I'll take plenty of pics and get to the dyno for some before/after pulls.
....

Part -II:

I was afraid my initial post would cause some concern that the RES touches the hood. It does not. However, there's already precious little clearance to begin with so, yes, this will make it even tighter. If anything, Doug's testing shows how concerned he is about quality.

The casting process involves forcing liquid metal into molds to obtain a final product. A billet item is "carved" from one piece of material using a highly-precise (and expensive) CNC mill.

Originally posted by AkuraCLS
so whatever happened to MMII??