Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Raceland header rusts and breaks

 
Update at bottom.
On my commute home tonight, my car backfired badly twice on consecutive upshifts. Immediately after the second blast, my car was ear-bleedingly loud. I knew something bad had happened to my header; it had been looking and sounding iffy for a couple weeks. When I got home, I jacked the car up and saw this.

After a trip to Farm & Fleet for a patch kit and a set of jack stands that I would later return, I came home and applied the patch. It worked for about 5 minutes, and quickly became nearly as loud as it was before. I blame my poor patch job and not buying enough patch material. But it's quiet enough to get me to my parents' garage without making me deaf.

I'm going to send the picture above to Raceland and ask for a replacement. T-304 stainless steel shouldn't rust, especially not like this, and not after barely more than a year. For now, I'm driving Amanda's car to work the rest of the week (the university is closed, so she's off work) and I'll apply a more permanent repair.

My original post about the install is here:
http://sentimentalmechanic.blogspot.com/2009/11/var-gajshost-https-document.html


Update: The 2-year warranty was honored, and I'm impressed with their customer service.

2 comments:

  1. This is ridiculous! Do I have your permission to post this on clubroadster so everyone else can beware?

    ReplyDelete
  2. By all means, yes. I'll be sure and post again once I hear back from them on their warranty.

    ReplyDelete

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