New DC header showed up RUSTY???

hb pickup · 10-12-2009

After calling them a couple of times with questions, and actually talking to a live person, I'd ordered this ceramic coated header & a 5Zeigen catback from Hopupracing.com in San Diego. They e-mailed me back that the catback wasn't available any more so I asked just to send the header. I was still checking out catbacks when the header showed up 2 days later & the only shipping option was ground so i figured i'd get it when I got it! When I opened the box up it was in a plastic bag that looked like it'd had moisture in it and rust had formed where it was up against the plastic. It looked like it had rubbed off the ceramic coating even after wiping the rust off. So I took a deep breath & prepared to do battle. I called Hopup & told Steve what it looked like & he said that shoudln't be rusty & could I send pictures. After farting around chargingthe camera battery for another hour I e-mailed him pictures. It seemed like immediately that he called & said DC sez that the "rust" is particles of the primer they coat the bores with and some will migrate bach out & settle in the bag. Steve said they sell a lot of those headers & he'd never seen that before. Anyhow DC said they'll pick 'em up & replace them if I want so I said yes please. So they oughtta be pickingthem up in the next coupla days & when they get 'em they'll ship me a new one.
Anyway my point is I can't belive that customer service like this still exists. A couple other places I was trying to check availbility of the fireballs I had to e-mail. One came back undeliverable (their phone was temporarily out of service)but the next day they e- mailed back fireballs weren't available. The other took 2 days to reply the same thing. And both those still had fireballs on their websites last I checked & Hopup took 'em off theirs by the time they replied to me.

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gearbox · 10-12-2009

well to be honest, the dc header will rust up pretty bad once its on the car for a few months. their ceramic coating is crap. i bought a used one from someone that had it less than a year before selling the car and it was totally rusted all over. i ended up sending it to jet-hot.com to get their coating and its been several years and it still looks almost like new. some of the shine wore off but its still 98% rust free and mostly shiny.

hb pickup · 10-12-2009

Really? Rusted on the exterior? I don't remember seeing that as a gripe in all the ratings I've read. Did yours ever crack? That was the only problem I'd seen a few times. And tons of people mentioned having them without saying bad stuff. Dammit, thought I'd done my homework.

gearbox · 10-12-2009

had mine a few yrs, no cracks that i can see. the welds look good, it just rusts easily like all the other headers that dont use jethot coating. my entire header was covered in rust when i got it, i would not have been able to use it without getting the good coating, cause it would look like crap.