[frenchfry675]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

What makes no sense to me is FS excuse that the DP is made to fit multiple BMW models so that might be why it fits a little differently. OK, I get that, but all N55 2 series (including the M2 and X) and N55 3 and 4 series cars use the same exact DP and DP mounting bracket.....so......there's no reason why their DP should fit any differently than the stocker. It's called parts bin sharing and cost control.

Why did Steve's OEM DP fit without a hitch and their's did not? Because BMW parts are made to extremely tight tolerances and are designed by a huge R&D group and checked by QA/QC groups whereas a small company like FS has a small team of workers making the parts and won't have near the level of R&D and quality control like a major automaker has. All fingers point to the FS DP being the issue.

It is also incredibly funny that they said don't force it and then later on said force it and bend the bracket. What?

A reputable company would have looked at those pictures and thought that maybe there was a manufacturing defect on their end and trust, but verify what the customer was saying. They could told the customer to ship it back at his cost, they'd inspect it and if there was a flaw, replace the DP and reimburse the shipping costs at the least. I've had to do this before with incorrectly welded exhaust parts.

In this instance, FS choose to tell their client/customer to squeeze on something that clearly wasn't built correctly. Either the bracket is welded wrong or one of the DP pipes are clocked slightly wrong. This is just bad business practice.

FS is very quick to tell everyone when they have a shipment of DPs coming in and get the while they are hot. Like I said earlier, the DPs are apparently hard to come by/manufacturer on their end thus they are apparently resistant to offering to replace them because in their mind, they've built hundreds of the so how could one not fit right and why loose a $1,400 sale? They build these things in a jig which usually alleviates issues like this but sometimes weird things happen. What most likely happened is the bracket was welded at the correct angle in the jig and then the welder took the DP out of the jig before the bracket weld fully cooled and the bracket shifted. It's a very common issue in welding.

Look at their yelp reviews or search some Porsche forums. They shipped out GT4 exhausts with the valves in backwards and told the customers to switch them on their own. It seems to be a pretty common practice for them to promise you world until there's an actual issue with their product. There's a good amount of people that complain about fitment problems And then they say it's been put on the car it can't be returned. Oh and did I mention how long we been in business 20 years and blah blah blah. It's all lip service. I'm not saying things don't go wrong but it's the way they handle their customers that have legitimate problems with their product is the issue. If it's a small amount of people that actually have issues like fabspeed claims wouldn't it be a better business plan to keep them happy and offer an exchange or refund? I get that it's a business but at the end of the day if only one person reads this that was thinking of buying a sport cat and changed his mind now you've lost more then just replacing a product or refunding someone . They could just as easily fixed the downpipe if it was a bad bracket or sell it as a used part on their website and keep op happy while also standing by their products as they say they do.