My car sounded strange for a couple of days and I finally got the chance to look under the car. I started the car up only to find a loose hanger. The HKS weld broke off on one of the left hangers. I'm hoping if this can be rewelded?

 

It can be rewelded....

is that the mid pipe section? How long have you had the exhuast for?

 

yeah, had the same thing happen to me. the exhaust has a 4 year warranty. HKS will simply weld it up for you.

Due to the up and down motion of the exhaust, it causes a moment in the tube. The tube will eventially fatugue out on you.

I was told that I was the only one who was able to bust this.

If you have questions, pm me.

 

It is the mid section. I've had it for about a year now. It happened during a trip I took from Houston to Austin. I had a local muffler shop weld it back on and all is good now. Sounds like normal again.

I didn't want to mail the thing in for something that can be easily fixed here. It was a 5 min job pretty much. Thanks though. Now both of us seem to have busted these things.

 

here is the thing, by welding up the exhaust yourself you have now voided your HKS warranty. They will no longer honor the 4 year warranty. Anyone out there, do not, do not repair it yourself.

With HKS, you must go through the dealer you purchased it from. They must get you an RJ number. With the RJ number, you can have HKS perform the warranty work then.

 

that sucks..

 

Damn... sounds like a big PITA to me.

 

Oh well, I don't really care about the warranty. I didn't want to take the thing off, ship it, and then wait for it to come back. That would've been a PITA to do. It's just not worth the time for me.

 

+1,
it is just too much work to mail that damn thing and takes a very long lead time too...

 

That type of warranty on a part like an exhaust is worthless IMO. What are you supposed to do? Pay for a full removal of the HKS exhaust and the reinstall of your stock system while you wait for them to weld a broken bracket on? The cost of the installs and shipping would far exceed the cost of the repair. Makes no sense at all.

 

You are absolutely correct!

HKS said that they needed me to remove the entire exhaust system and have it shipped to their facility in LA. Its off the 105 near LAX.

Then I had to install my stock exhaust while they fixed exhaust. The reason they do this is because they want to make sure that the bottom of the exhaust is not all scrapped up because your car is lowered.

I agree with HKS here. There is a simply solution to fix the problem.

I am in no way telling you to do this!!!! THis is only a recommendation.

The problem lies in the way the load is distrubuted in the tube. The weld goes fwd/aft of the car. As the pipe is subjected to a up/down load it fatigues the thin tubing. After a while it will fatique and fail. (This is my assumption, along with a fatique expert I work with.)

If you were to remove the post and replace it with a saddle clamp then the load would be more equally distrubted. Just my 2 cents.

I think people need to let HKS know that the exhaust is failing. They told me that they sold 1000's of these exhaust and I am the only person know to fail it. I guess people just have been fixing it themselves.

This really is a bad solution, because HKS will think that the exhaust failure is a fluke, rather than a bad design.

You should call the HKS customer support number and voice your issues. They will tell you to go back to the place you bought it and you will have to deal with them. That is fine! If you live in LA, just drop it off and you will have to wait. I just hope that you have better luck than I did with the shop I purchased my stuff from.

I will not say where I purchased my exhaust from, but let just say that I work with a lot of people with money and tuner type cars. I have told each and everyone about my experiences. All being engineers, they agree I got jerked around.

It takes 10 atta boys, to offset one oh no! I told roughly 200 people and they have started to spread the word. so 200 * 10 = 2000 people.

Finding a good speed shop to deal with is difficult, because they are your buddies until things go bad and they have to do a little customer service.

One should pay a little extra for good customer service. Its a hard leason to learn.

It took my 1 month from complaining to the speed shop, to dealing with HKS to getting my exhaust back.

The folks at HKS are really cool, so don't give them a hard time. Its the responsiblity of the place you purchased your exhaust from to deal with this issue.

 

I would think an inspection of the exhaust by an authorized HKS dealer to determine the failure was not due to misuse would be enough. Then they could authorize the repair or supply a new pipe, with the old one returned to them at their expense. That is true customer service. What you experienced is not. Glad I didn't purchase this exhaust.

 

spread the word.

what type of exhaust did you end up with and why?

 

I ended up on the group buy for the SVRT 2.5 dual that does not use test pipes. I got it because:
Larger diameter than the HKS or the Injen Ti duals
Ended up liking the elimination of the test pipes - but that is not for everyone.

However, there were some problems with it that had to be rectified.
I will be post a review in the future, tried to do a sound video file but my video camera did a very bad job of recording the sound for some reason.

 

Hey Gringott......I can't really tell from the pics, but is the exhaust angled or straight? Looks good though.

 

There is an angle to the mufflers, not as much as others I have seen, but there is some. Diameter of the exit pipe is slightly smaller than NISMO tips.

 

Which section of piping is this, the middle section of piping? If so they should have created a triangle (like they did with the muffler hangers) and have two attachment points. OR have the hanger bent in a fashion where it would cradle the pipe, like stock hangers are welded on.

I am just about to put mine on and was wondering if I should fix this right now.

Another concern is the square tab sticking up on one of the mufflers. I don't know what attaches to this but it doesn't look promising.

I will keep you guys updated, I used to be a certified welder, so this would be easy to modify.

 

It's near the end of the midsection (Driver side) or close to the side of the differential. I think you'll be fine without any modifications, but keep us updated.

 

to tell you the truth, in my opinion I feel that this is a more common problem then one tends to believe. If people keep getting their exhausts welded up, then HKS will not know. If you want to be sure one could leave the post and have a saddle clamp, tension type put on to pick up another location. Unfortunately you would need to weld it on the car. I do not recommend doing any type of modifications to your exhaust with out HKS performing the work. This will lead to the warranty being voided.

Some may say I am ****, but its not like I don't know what I am talking about. Also my friend is a fatique expert and has concured with my findings.

But I guess people will do what they want. Its a great exhaust, and you will not see alot of people have them because of the price.

If you have anymore questions, pm me.

 

That's for the safety strap or whatever they call the braided line that runs between the exhaust and the chassis. You'll find it on your current exhaust when you do the swap. I initially thought this was for grounding, but that didn't make any sense to me. I am assuming it is some safety requirement for exhausts in case it rusts out and gives way you'll drag it rather than dropping it in the middle of a highway in rush hour.