I'm going to be very brief as I'm absolutely livid. My evolve downpipe does not fit.







As you can see the bottom bracket I just finger tightened the bolts and there is no way you can get the flanged to line up. Even if I take if off the bottom bracket and just try to get the flanges to line up it won't as the bottom bracket runs into the frame. Never buy cheap I've learned my lesson. After being slightly disappointed with the welds and driving an hour and a half to my parents to use their garage, I've had a wasted ****ing day. I will be contacting evolve and I want my money back. I don't want another one. I will put the money towards the jb+.

 

Well damn, a bunch of people will be disappointed who got them/will get them on GB.

 

And is that spatter all over i around the o2 bung, bracket, and pipe weld? Did they weld it with flux core?? Did they not clean it up at all? That in itself might sound nit picky but as a welder and a friend of one of the best fabricators I've ever met, that's kinda crappy welding practice on a final production piece that goes out to customers.

 

And the crappy part is, time is money and the seller of a product can't reimberse you for that. You spent a whole day on it because there's no way to know it wouldn't fit until you're in there with it, to find out their product sucked your whole day dry.... thanks for the post/review! Sorry for your anger though. I'd be livid.

 

 

dayam...well, good thing i didn't go out and pay someone to install it already. be interested in seeing what the outcome of this will be, as i have one of their dp's sitting in my dining room right now. =/

 

It's possible, since these are most likely done up by hand by a couple people with jigs or just specs on paper, that his was a fluke. Yours might line up just right, where whoever built his messed up the angle of a bracket a bit.

 

i don't have tools at my disposal, and i don't want to pay someone to find out whether it fits or not. i was going to try to find a guy to sand off some of the beads and stuff and give it a once over, but we'll see.

 

I will say that my WMW catless DP didn't line up super clean either...I couldn't use one of the holes on the flange as it didn't line up.
But I was at least able to get the DP on to the turbo and use 1 of the 2 holes on the flange. But damn, what you have pictured really is no bueno.

I hope you've email Evolve about that!

 

Hmm... I better rethink which dp I eventually get then... I might try VIP customs catless dp for $300

 

My experience has been quite the opposite but a bad one is never good I'm sure they'll take care of you.

 

are you running their dp? or just their tune?

 

UPDATE: so after calming down I wasn't going to let this get the best of me. so i got out a mallet and a piece of wood and started shaping the bracket..... 45 minutes later i fixed the bracket enough to let me get all 3 studs in. i had no chance to get pictures this time because i was racing a thunderstorm creeping up on me. I also got a chance to install my Helix SSK which was the best part of my drive home. it is the perfect reduction in throw in my opinion. only downside is that towards the end of my drive home the very bottom of my shift boot was getting warm. I know that everyone says the heat shield will keep water and dirt out, but i wonder if the added heat exposure will have a negative impact on the like of the plastic bearings inside. I have the cover and might modify it and put it back on. I will say that if you do install any of the SSK, bend a little indent in your heat shield so your linkage doesn't hit it. i hate everything hooked up and then 1st,2nd, and reverse scraped the heat shield. so i had to take it all down and bend the heat shield down.

Performance: I will say i did notice the small reduction in torque but now my car doesn't want to stop pulling. the increase in the mid-high range power is very nice.

Sound: I HATE MY LIFE. i'm running catless downpipe with no resonator and no 2nd cat. just the rear muffler. crusing is great, highway isn't bad, But once i floor it it sounds like i'm making love to a dragon. I want to install a resonator soooo bad. it's probably next on my agenda.

Quality: you can see the welds, you can see the spatter, you can see how my bracket was off. if you go to the evolve sales website you can see many more detailed pictures of the piece itself. I hope that everyone else in the group buy doesn't have the same problem i did. But just be cautious. While i did get it to work it took more effort than it should have and i will probably steer clear from their products from now on. I understand mine might have been a one off mistake, but that's all it takes for me to move elsewhere. Best of luck to you all.

 

Sorry for the issue, we will be bringing this up to our production team and have this issue resolved, I will personally talk to the team and have this issue resolved. OP I will be sending you a pm and do whatever is necessary to resolve this issue as we do not want to send out a product to a customer that we would not put on our own car. We apologize for this issue and we hope to resolve your issue. I will be in contact with you tomorrow.

Alex

 

good customer service

 

OP PM sent..

We do not take stuff like this lightly, we will do whatever it is necessary to resolve these issues and bring the standard of our De-Cats back up. I reassure you all that this will never happen again and many comments such as welding, cleaning and fitment have been brought to the attention of our production team and we will be producing them with all the necessary fixes that should of been in place since day one!

 

Wow. Quickest I've seen a response from a company about something like this. Kudos to Evolve on that. If they get on everything and all gets addressed, I'm impressed.

 

Regardless of the product i received, Alex is amazing. He seems like he is truly taking care of the problem. I will say it again that i hope mine was just a fluke, but he is pulling this entire production and re-doing them which i know cost tons of money. I think i let the intial anger of the situation get to me in my first post and for that I apologize. But Alex is taking care of things and i hope the changes he wants to implement can reconcile this issue for other customers.

 

Glad there is a happy ending to this story. Maybe you should edit the title to [resolved] so people don't just scan and think bad of Evolve?

 

Before changing the title to "RESOLVED", is the issue 100% resolved?

 

haha good choice, currently our main tech has been spending a bit of time installing 1 of 3 de-cats we have in stock, it seems like it was a one unit that came out defective and sadly had to go to Korre. I have been on the phone/skype with our team and we are working on cleaning up welds, and cleaning up the total unit. Like I stated before we do not like to sell products that we do not feel comfortable putting on our car, that is why I am having them test the batch we have now.

I will let Korre put in his two cents, but I am going to do whatever it takes to make this right for him.

 

It truly is resolved. Since I basically beat the crap out of the bracket till it fit I don't really require another one. So Alex has been gracious enough to refund me a portion of my money. I think he's as upset at the quality of the downpipe as I was. He has been nothing but apologetic and adamant in resolving the issue with all of the decat downpipes. From my understanding he has basically recalled the batch that mine came from and is fixing them all. Alex is top notch and he sounds like he isn't going to rest until the production team is up to his standards.

EDIT: Alex beat me to it ^^

 

Well there you go if you are happy then good.

 

As I read your original post a little voice in the back of my head was saying "Dang, that's something that he should give the company a chance to fix and is possibly overreacting."

That voice was overpowered by the extremely loud voice that recalls two weeks ago pulling and putting my dp back in and thinking of what a PIA that process is and how bad it was fitting perfectly and what a pain it would be with one that didn't!

I feel for ya man, but looks like they are a good company and are dealing with it and taking care of you...but yea, I feel that pain. :D

 

Just for future reference for anyone installing a downpipe - The 2 studs where the lower bracket on the downpipe connect are actually mounted on a bracket on the engine themselves. If you're having trouble getting the top flange over all 3 studs on the turbo because you are hitting the 2 lower studs, just loosen those brackets and you won't have to re-shape the bracket on the downpipe.