FA20Club Up Pipe
 

If you haven't seen my thread on FA20Club's customer service, you can check my post in the vendor review section to see how that goes.

Worth reading, side note:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56141
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55263

Now how about their product.. and fixing it. I brought the up pipe and a few others in to work with me today so I could get started on fixing them.

Here is what I got from Toni at FA20Club:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_064323.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_064332.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_064400.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_064415.jpg

So, obviously these are absolutely terrible welds. You don't need to be a welder to tell that. Somebody even tried to grind the welds, and fucked it away even more. There was one particular weld on the wastegate flange that looked like it was cracked all the way through. Well, good thing part of my job is to inspect cracks..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_074335.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_080705.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...116_080712.jpg

The fluorescent penetrant was applied to the outside of the pipe and let sit for about 20 minutes. The penetrant had made its way thru to the inside (indicating a crack/hole obviously, see pic#3 on the inside). This was so obvious that developer wasn't even needed to pull the penetrant.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...8a43ecf74a.jpg

I bought some weld rod and I rewelded around the wastegate flange to eliminate the hole (yes, hole. it was beyond a crack.) The internal welds were also smoothed out, however they were already contaminated so badly from being so crappily welded before that it wasn't really possible to make them perfect.

The odd part is that one side of the pipe had great welds. The other side looked like somebody gave a monkey a welding machine and a bottle of vodka and told it to go to town. I am assuming there are multiple welders at FA20Club.. and one of them needs to be fired.

The other welds on the whole kit are the same story - hit or miss. Either great or beyond terrible. Ugly welds are one thing.. but welds that don't even penetrate adequately are just unsat. Especially when there is a straight up HOLE in the exhaust like there was here.

This was pretty frustrating because I bought the kit so that I didn't have to spend a bunch of time fabbing, welding, etc. I wanted something that was fitted correctly from the get go. If I would have know I would be spending hours upon hours fixing this shit, I would have just made it all myself.

Anyone else with similar experiences?

Damn man. Those are the first pics I have seen of an FA20Club part that is that bad. I have only seen fitment issues previously. I bet most people would have struggled to find that leak.

did toni recently hire a new welder? yikes.

http://i.imgur.com/5v5nAmu.jpg

Those first pictures are of some HORRIBLE quality welds. It looks like the main flange welds have been boogered in with a MIG, while the others TIG'd.

Man, I'd be embarrassed to have my name on that part if it was going on my own car, not to mention if I had a shop and was selling those parts... Yuck.

holy hell, thats pretty lame. are you gonna take time to inspect every single weld on the kit? if the up pipe has this problem i would inspect everything he sent over.

Thanks for this useful information and pictures.

I sure hope their turbo kits don't have these welds....

that's unacceptable . Sorry, but that's noob diy status.

These are from their turbo kit... I believe @woode runs their uel 60 trim setup.


:confused0068: these would have to be the worst welds I have seen on an automotive part that was a diy

@woode NDI ftw lol

went all out and did a dpi/lpi

Holy Sh*t! I didn't even realize that when I was reading the description. To think I was wanting to get their kit too.....Not if they have welds like this.

I have no personal exp but seems very hit or miss.

Frs300 has no car lexusb3 car runs great

Some kits bolt on no problem and some werent even close

I'm glad FA20club doesn't build airplanes.

Those Borla headers that were all fucked up have better welds than that.

Does FA20Club have any experience before our cars?

wtf is going on with fa20club.....

I dont think they every heard of or implemented anything called Quality Control. I wont feel sorry for anyone that still buys stuff from them, everyone on here has gotten more than enough warning.

Woode im glad you can fix it yourself, I would be scared to send it back because; 1. You probably wont get it back for a couple months and just get excuses and 2. You will probably get it back in the same condition anyway.

Unacceptable.

Yes, I am.
The other one that is pretty bad that I didn't really take good picture of is the one that holds the up pipe together. It had about 50 pretty looking tack welds (why?) with ZERO penetration. The turbo sits atop this pipe and I can't imagine it holding for long. I re welded this as well.
The next weld that I think I am going to have to completely grind off and redo is the driver side exhaust flange on the turbo manifold. It is misaligned and cracked.. I don't think it would even bolt up to the car, and if it did - it would create some airflow issues.


This is precisely why I am just fixing it myself. I wouldn't see a refund or a replacement part for months if I was lucky. I can't even begin to describe how pissed off I am about the whole situation. I feel like I wasted thousands of dollars, but at this point I am just trying to fix it and move on.


To make matters worse, I have a tuning appointment scheduled for Tuesday morning so I am trying to fix everything and install the kit over the weekend.

Damn man. Hope you can make it!!

I hope your tuner tunes better than the guy who made your downpipe welds! ;)

I'd like for just once a project to go as planned. I'm not gonna hold my breath.

this isn't the first pile of shit welds from them...
there were some total shit welds on my fa20 club intake I received awhile back that I got a refund for.

of course I got two v2 ft86 speedfactory catbacks and both had some serious shit welds too.
there is a reason shops like evasive and jdl, rev works etc. do the work on the cars they do.

If he is using Toni p's fre tube that comes with the kit it us about the same quality as the welds. There is a reason the tune is free...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/...c1_RvRCCcRtVQg

You should have seen it at partial throttle in boost... 15-17afr. :x

thank goodness I just placed an order with full blown...

why bother fixing it? especially when half of it is beyond repair.

Send everything back and get a refund. Items not as described, done.

I posted a few times why; he doesn't communicate. It would be MONTHS to get my refund. I am better off just fixing it and moving on. I tried to get a refund twice and gave up.. This is why this is all so frustrating. Hopefully nobody else makes the mistake of doing business with him.

I am having R\T Tuning in Pennsylvania tune the car next week. Nothing but good reviews of them, a friend recently had a good experience with them, and they have been helpful on the phone.

Wow, their reputation is taking a serious pounding right now. I wonder what happened? Could they just not keep up with demand?

It seems like anyone who I've debated ordering from has been having some troubles. First Visconti, and now FA20Club.

I hope they get their stuff together. A reputation is really important to a shop like this.

Definitely not. I was trying to get a base map out of him, but decided to just get it tuned correctly immediately after installing the turbo this weekend.

I don't know what happened, but playing with peoples money like this is like playing with fire. :mad0260:

playing with fire, you say?

so weird. seems lil most locals are having the least issues. i just looked at my kit and def looks better (no holes for sure)

I would bet that he hired a new welder or a new company to contract his welds out to. I can't believe that he would allow his name to go on garbage like this.

My dog has taken shits that look prettier than his welds.

not gonna disagree. those are pretty ugly on mine too, but all the visables (everything that is covered under powder coat option) looks pretty good. yes it's covered, but u'd still notice if it was that uneven. the only defense for it i have is, this is the cheapest kit so i wudnt expect quality of say a perrin product weld that is more expensive (not turbo exclusive obviously)

No one does work like that under contract for more than one shipment.

Business to business is pretty much always on credit and when you ship shit like this you don't get paid. Some asshole did "work" like this for me and I would not even pay shipping. I'd tell him "your shit's on my dock, get it the fuck off before I start charging you storage".

Stainless is easy to weld. I got better (way better) results the first time I picked up a tig torch.

I was going to mention this. When I started fixing the welds, the metal is dumb easy to weld on. It is thick, quality, clean stainless steel. I was effortlessly making quality beads.. I don't understand how he managed to fuck it away so badly.

It looks like someone was welding aluminum before they started that item and got it all messed up until the second half or you got a test piece for when the welder was adjusting temps. Either way thats unacceptable quality. Sorry for your luck but this is a good thread to show how companies run there business.

I got a FA20Club front pipe, the outlet to the midpipe was half crooked oval/half circle. Took 6 weeks and about 14 PMs to get the workable gasket I was promised. In all fairness Toni offered to replace it but yeah, I'm not too surprised. I don't know how anyone could think it should be shipped out.

I like how @King Tut is banned her this thread exists. >.<

This forum is turning into bad vendors... And silenced people. *sigh*

Sorry you've been having such a hard time woode. :(