We are Kooks largest dealer. We sell more Kooks headers in a year, than some brands sell in a year. Now keeping that in mind, also know that I hate warranty claims. Last thing I want is a customer beating on my door a year down the road because something I sold fails. It is just never a good scenerio. I have dropped lines for too many warranty claims.
In 6 years of selling Kooks, I can think of maybe two non road damage related cracked Kooks header warranty claims. That is out of thousands of headers sold. You linked to three threads, two of which are from 2006, or 6 years ago. All deal with Air/EGR tubes cracking, which are not on 5th gen Camaro's, and known as a failure point for all all header brands for the C5. Basically, on the stock cast iron manifold, the AIR/EGR fittings are pretty thick. On a header, it is replaced with thinner stainless tubing welded on the header. Every once an awhile, the stress on the fitting causes it to crack. Very rare..and most people run AIR/EGR delete headers on these cars now and don't even have these fittings.
Now I am not going to insult you, as I am certain you are pretty intelligent, and knowlegable on the issue. However I personally have have the headers we are discussing...and if you somehow think they are better than a premium, US made header, that seriously hurts your credibility. The Chinese headers have had issues with cracking, and warped flanges for years. That is why the Chinese stuff you see now has tubing twice the gauge of a US made header, and has half inch thick flanges. Otherwise the inferior materials tears in the benders, or cracks over time, and the flanges warp. Also, it is not even that scientific. We take both sets to shows so people can see the difference. You don't have to be a weld inspector to see that there is a huge difference in quality between a premium header and some overseas knock off.
As for your claim of half a million entries in google for "cracked kooks headers"...I ran the same search and found one entrie...this thread...
Now I am not 100% against overseas stuff. If a company wants to design their own header, and make it overseas..more power to them. However a low quality product eventually ends up suffering the fate such products do. What I hate is the rampent counterfitting most overseas companies do. Rather than designing their own header, they decide to knock off a known brand and dump cheap copies on ebay. That to me is plain wrong, and not something that should be supported.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Unassailable
|