Would You Build an Orphaned Design with No Designer Support

Here's the heart of the story, told without flaming the designer. This is a kit from the 80's, with a known deficiency in the wing structure (delamination of a bond joint with resultant structural failures in flight). The designer is still in business and I've contacted him with the intent of obtaining all service bulletins to incorporate into the build. He writes back that the design was sold, and the buyer has discontinued support. He writes, "you may be interested in the xxxxxx" which is his current plane.

My take is his answer is all BS. He's choosing to orphan his old design in favor of the new, and not to provide the revised engineering done on the old design. I know that revised drawings exist (read it somewhere on the web), but he's not going to provide them to me.

This project still has some attraction to me--it's an attractive design and it's offered at a really cheap price. But, I don't want to engineer a structural fix on my own. I'm pretty confused about my path and I'm mad at the designer for not providing support for his product. I don't want to walk away in my current state of confusion. What I really want to do is to call him and talk it over, to see if there's any way to get the revised engineering bulletins. Think I'll get anywhere? What recourse do I have?