To those who posted in this thread - thanks for the support, guys, I really do appreciate it. Honestly I would have preferred to exchange the product but that was before I invested my time (twice) and money to get this thing installed. Exchanging it now would mean paying two more times to rent a lift to remove it, and then to put a new one on again - plus the time involved. It is interesting thinking about what would have happened if I took it to a mechanic though. I wonder what they would have said, or if they would have forced it like I did, or refused to install it. Honestly that's the main reason I went DIY - I was afraid of paying a couple hundred bucks just to have them say, "we couldn't get it to fit right so we just put the stock DP back on, that'll be $250."
Quote:
Originally Posted by XutvJet
This is a BS response, IMO. How exactly could there be an issue with his car that would cause this fitment issue?
The OEM downpipe fit all the brackets fine. He installed your downpipe and the bracket no longer fit. To claim his car is the issue is total BS.
How exactly do you define "experienced technician"? Sounds again like a BS, pass it off on the customer, response.
The downpipe setup is incredibly simple on these cars. The fact that the OEM downpipe didn't have this issue and there's clearly no damage or bending of the OEM engine to downpipe bracket is telling that your product is the problem.
You should have sent him another one. The company you've subcontracted with to make these DPs has a QA/QC issue with the bracket angle. Simple as that. The fact that you sell hundreds of them is meaningless. I've read of others having fitment issues and they just make it work.
For nearly $1,500, we should expect more.
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Just to put all of the information out there, I bought this car CPO in August of 2017 with about 24K miles - it's a 2014 M235i Coupe - RWD - 8AT. It was originally leased by the first owner. The sport cat is the first and only modification this car has - other than that, it is bone stock with no tune. There has been nothing done to my car that would have changed the way that the DP was supposed to fit.
It is pretty obvious to me (and I would think, also to anyone looking at the pictures) that this is an issue with the bracket on the Sport Cat. The stock DP fit perfectly, and I was able to remove and reinstall it (when the Sport Cat didn't fit), laying on my back with my car like 14" off the ground. Both brackets aligned perfectly. In my last post with images, I specifically took the pictures so that you could see that the FS Sport Cat was clamped to both the turbo and the exhaust pipe. When both the entrance and exit of the sport cat were clamped properly in place, the bracket was off by about 1.5". It's not a very complex problem - you could even tell that was the issue in my original post - the difference was that I didn't have it clamped into place in the first post, I was just holding it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by XutvJet
Exactly. The downpipe is designed to hang in a static position when the engine is off. The midpipe and DP to engine brackets are designed to distribute the weight/load on the DP. Pushing hard on the DP to fit it to the bracket puts stress all over the DP and it's connection points. Now compound that with the fact that the engine moves a lot during driving, especially during hard on/off throttle situations, who's to say this additional torque on the DP isn't going to compromise something?
It's not right to make the customer assume this risk for a shoddy fitting product. What I'm seeing here is a company that has a hard time supplying these downpipes and they don't want to send one out as a replacement. So as long as the customer could get it to fit, then all is well.
God only knows what FS would say if they had one that had a cat fail or the DP bracket broke on one their DPs. It sure seems to me like they'd point the finger at the customer first and claim the customer damaged it or the tune was too lean and caused the cat to overheat and that an "experienced technician" needs to make the call. I'm seeing that they've got a ton of outs/excuses to not warranty their product.
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My fingers are crossed that I won't have an issue. Worst case scenario, the clamp on the turbo snaps and the DP separates from the turbo, while I'm driving at WOT... what happens? Total failure? Permanent damage? Obviously BMW wouldn't touch that so it'd be nice to at least know the risk factor...
Also, I want to be clear, I'm not on here trying to bitch about my experience, I really just want to get this information out there so that others can make informed decisions about their purchases. This forum is the sole reason that I bought the FabSpeed Sport Cat - I read countless threads and reviews and I just want to give back to this community with my experience. I'm not trying to badmouth FabSpeed here either, they did work with me to help and were very courteous each time I talked to them, but I think that there is an important thing they should clarify for others reading this (and myself):
I was told by the guys at Fabspeed that this bracket on the Sport Cat was designed in such a way that it fits all variants of the M235i (AWD/RWD/Coupe/Vert and even the F87 M2) and that because of this, it may need to be bent certain ways to fit each variant and that the bracket location was sort of a happy medium to fit all versions. So either this is true, and that's how I got the part and I bent it to fit, and that's just how it works - or that is not the case and I got a bad part and probably should have returned/exchanged it. To me I think the latter is more likely, since the former does not seem to make sense when there are so many people on this forum that said theirs "fit perfectly." They did say though, that they had others call in with similar issues, so I was not the first, but they also said that they are always able to "resolve" the issue.
My guess is that since these parts are custom fabricated and made by hand (in a custom jig?) there may be some human induced error on some of the DP's. I'm assuming that on the rare occasions that there are issues, they can be dealt with by doing basically what I did - bending the bracket to fit properly.
I do find it a little interesting that the response went from:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabspeed Motorsport
Phil from Fabspeed here.
Please do not force/bend/heat or change the sport cat in any way. We have sent hundreds of these out and not had an issue.
Please give us a call we will figure this out and figure out how to get this on your vehicle.
We have fixed the CEL from the other post and will have no problem helping you out.
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To:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabspeed Motorsport
Hey Stevemg9,
Glad to see you got everything installed!
...
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When it is pretty obvious that I had to
bend and force the Sport Cat to get it to fit...
Overall, with the Sport Cat on my car, I am very pleased with the performance of the part even though the install process left a lot to be desired. The car sounds much better now (I feel like it got louder over the past few days but it could just be me), and I really like the way the car drives now! I would say that, assuming fitment is not an issue, the FabSpeed Sport Cat is worth it. I am aware that I'm assuming a certain amount of risk with the part installed as it is, I just hope it's something I do not regret in the future. If I hear back from Fabspeed or get a lot of outside opinions that the added stress on the turbo is a serious risk factor - I will swap it out.