I'm not quite sure what's going on with them. It doesn't make sense they would have people trolling this site for comments about their products, but they can't send me a reply email for something. This looks really bad on their end of things.

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I feel bad for the dude with the messed up parts.

 

We are subscribed to this thread (that is originally from 2009) and we got a notification that a customer had responded, citing a problem with ALTA. Whether it be public or private, we always try to respond to questions, comments, and complaints.

I wish we'd been given the chance to respond to your emails before a public complaint was made on the forum. I feel it could have been rectified quickly and without causing any headaches. You have to remember, we've not argued with you about fitment, performance, or the fact you didn't like the intake system. It comes down to your request for your shipping to be covered both ways. I think you'll be happy with the email we'll send you regarding your refund, we hope this will smooth things out.

Getting into the "Does this product work?" conversation may be for another thread, at another time. We have proven the gains on many different cars over the years, with and without tunes, and we absolutely stand behind it. The thing is, the gains may not be felt by customers because it's about 10 WHP. We have made a blog post showing this information HERE.

Fields, again, we're really sorry it came down to this. We really feel we were doing to best thing for you. Keep an eye out from an email from me.

 

Still nothing for the guy showing photo and video proof that your silicone products rub against things they shouldn't, collapse under pressure, and fit poorly? More than the claims of performance gains(when multiple customers, with your or other brand of over priced filters and elbows all complain of a loss in low end torque and any power being gained being so high in the RPM range, it's unusable), I'm concerned with the quality and fitment more. SO MANY claims popping up. Not just 1 guy, but multiple people. Either your intake, if not used with the hard pipe, mounts in such a way it stresses the intake tube, or the silicone couplers and hoses either not being of the right size/shape to fit correctly, or not cause wear by rubbing on everything around them. I'm far more concerned, when it comes to researching who's products I buy, with QUALITY. It honestly looks, from all the accounts on here, that you settled with MINIMAL testing, MINIMAL fitting, and "good enough" being good enough. Especially with the 2011+ people being told your intake products fit/work, clearly without actually doing any testing to prove so, just assuming it will.

Once again, and someone new from Alta this time, comes in to answer the guy who wants a refund, but ignores all the other questions, concerns, and even the post showing how **** poor the product is.... Maybe this should be it's own thread, but since the questions were posted here, I'd kinda like to see the answers.

 

InjectedGT,
We actually have our Q&A thread exactly for that reason. It is a central place for customers to come, and its a thread we are always looking at. We must have missed the customers above response or we would have answered. This was from a year ago, so not sure who was keeping track of these threads then. I personally didn't get a notification on this, as the last time it was in 09. Christina (not new,7 years in sales) took over looking at NAM and helping customers out and found this thread.

COLD SIDE BOOST TUBE (old known problem)
Looking back, this part (Cold side boost tube) was discontinued sometime in 09. It was discontinued for a few reasons, one being that our vendor was terrible with the trimming aspect (the cause of most all the problems) and there was a variance in the plastic firewall in the car that caused problems with some . These two things made the hose close to the valve cover and sometimes created a hole (never breaking through) or slice. We made a prototype of a smaller hose, it only made a couple of HP, so we decided this didn't fit with our "performance" parts and would only be a dress up part. The cost of the part was too high to be considered for this and with the public problems we had we stopped selling it.

We never had collapsing issues (impossible as this is a boost tube and NEVER sees vacuum).

We don't hide things, and we don't leave customers hanging with problems. This specific part and problem was explained to our customers publicly on NAM in other threads, on the phone, as well as put on on our Q&A thread.

R56 COLD AIR INTAKE
We have fit this to 2011 and 2012 cars and actually re-dynoed them again. We did this with and without a tune, and even stock exhaust. It does make the HP we claim, it causes ZERO change the low end, no CEL's and AFR's are exactly the same (because of how the ECU fuels the car). The fitment was no different compared to other cars we installed this on. So we said it fit. We know that there are different levels of DIY'ers and not everyone can install a part. We don't call out customers when these things pop, as we either just help them or we sometimes just take the part back.

NOT THE RIGHT THREAD, BUT...
Again, customers need to call us with issues. This is how we improve things over the life of the part. If a part isn't fitting the way we say it should, then call us. Don't sit there and stew about it, lets fix it!

Defaulting to think we just blew off customers that had a issue is absurd! We wouldn't still be around and selling more MINI parts than ever if we treated customers like this. If a customer purchased a part as new and had a problem, we expect him to contact us so we can take care of it. Even with this discontinued Cold Side Boost Tube, we have ways to help a customer out. I never understood why customers don't call us when things pop up. Everyone just defaults to the forums to bash, instead of fix things. Very frustrating from our point of view.

We are not perfect. For every part that we discontinue, we have 50 times more parts that sell great, are trouble free, and customers love. This is exactly why we dealt with the intake system the way we did. We sell hundreds of these with virtually no calls or complaints and it wasn't worth upsetting a customer trying to prove that it did make power or fix the "fitment" issue or deal with the sound aspect he mentioned. I made the call to say "no problem, lets get you taken care of!". Since I am the one who designed this part, it was hard to do this, but that is what customer service is all about. It was kind of a let down to hear we may have lost a customer because of something simple we missed during the return process.

Lets get the thread back on track. If you have a question about the cold side boost tube ask away (even though it's disco'ed and its a thread about another brand). If you have a question about the intake, call me or hit us up on the Q&A thread.

 

I guess you can say "we fitted it and it didn't cause any issues" but I've seen multiple people on here now say the Alta intake attaches in such a way, it puts additional stress on the intake tube on the car and causes it to crack or fail. I guess you can chalk that up to all of them, how did you put it, being of a DIY level that is unable to install a part?

 

InjectedGT,
The ALTA CAI moves the inlet hose over to the left of the car. It always has and never caused a problem. We had our first customer last month that had an very high milage car with a cracked inlet hose. This customer said it was fine until he installed our intake system. This actually did spark a conversation amongst us about this exact thing as now that we are seeing atmospheric conditions cause the OEM rubber hoses become harder and harder. In the past I have seen the OEM part fail while customers were installing filter and other "normal" maintenance items. We ended up selling the customer our inlet hose and chalk it up to the customer being a bit too aggressive during installation.

Our options we discussed were, change the intake, include the inlet hose, push the inlet hose as a maintenance item, or educate customers about this. Since we have only had this one, and your "multiple people", this is a new growing concern. I think this may be all three things that need to be done. Either way, from our seat, its a rare issue that does pose a future problem we need to be aware of.

We have plenty of 100K milage cars with them on there with ZERO problems, but most likely its because it was installed while the rubber wasn't hard. I know of about 5 guys that track the hell out of their car (extreme heat) and have no issues with the rubber hose. Same goes for a couple of JCW customers (plastic inlet hose). For 100% this part is perfectly fine to install and causes no issues on a new car or a car that has a rather new rubber inlet hose. Its now determining how to figure out what year/milage customers should be concerned.

You are quick to jump to the ALTA CAI is the problem. In fact this "brittle" inlet hose problem will be an issue for anyone installing any intake or as we had seen before even a panel filter. If you look at other aftermarket intakes, most of them move the OEM inlet hose over at least as far as ours. Some include the actual inlet hose, which eliminates this problem altogether.

I do look forward to improving customer awareness of this future problem. Look for future developments on this very soon.

 

Umm... there are 3 people mentioned in this one thread that Chris himself had replied in:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ke-notice.html

The OP, the OP's service guy(who clearly doesn't know how to install parts), and one reply.

 

You are correct! I do remember Chris saying this, but this appears to be the first time this came up and we may have treated this as a random event. Being reasonable, we don't go nuts and change everything in the world when we here about something one time.

Either way, after seeing all this, I feel that this is just the start of ALL OEM "rubber" hoses failing. As I mentioned it will be an issue for EVERY customer regardless of stock intake, ALTA CAI or other brands. This is a great awakening for everyone if this is starting to happen. We are on top of coming up with a solution!

 

I read about cracked hoses from the Alta intake about 4 months ago, but on the 07-10 model. Apparently, it has been happening for a while. I know that MINI/BMW changed the hoses to the ABS plastic stuff, on the N18 engine.

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With the N18 inlet change, I agree that MINI knew about this long before forums and way before we took notice!