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Doing DE at The Glen today. Car running fine. After the second session, pulling into the garage heard what sounded like a large exhaust leak. As you can see, this joint had cracked before, twice. First time, welded small crack. Second time welded another crack and reinforced. Today, complete failure of the welds. First thought was to find a welder but no one was around to weld stainless. Fabspeed Supercup system. 2.5 seasons old.
Thought a little outside the box. Went to Car Quest in town and found an exhaust reducer to fit inside the cracked tube and they were nice enough to use their chop saw to cut the large diameter side to fit flush with the flange.
Drilled thru the tube and inner sleeve and used M5 bolts with double nuts /high temp loctite to hold it all together.
Its mechanically fixed and reinstalled. It is not airtight becuase the sleeve was not exactly a press fit inside the tube so there is a small residual exhaust leak.
But I was back on track this afternoon and will be again tomorrow.
(Obviously will be contacting Fabspeed on Monday to get a new pipe)
Welcome to fabspeed. Products sound great but quality really needs help. Had a little battle with cracked new header from them, only a few hundred mikes on it. Had to argue with them to get them to honor warranty. And of course no compensation for the hundreds of $$ in labor expense ?
Welcome to fabspeed. Products sound great but quality really needs help. Had a little battle with cracked new header from them, only a few hundred mikes on it. Had to argue with them to get them to honor warranty. And of course no compensation for the hundreds of $$ in labor expense ?
Inspect the failed weld to determine if full penetration or so dark which indicates too much heat while wielding.act like you are an expert but ask probinq question which you know the answer to so they try to cover up the poor quality control
Doing DE at The Glen today. Car running fine. After the second session, pulling into the garage heard what sounded like a large exhaust leak. As you can see, this joint had cracked before, twice. First time, welded small crack. Second time welded another crack and reinforced. Today, complete failure of the welds. First thought was to find a welder but no one was around to weld stainless. Fabspeed Supercup system. 2.5 seasons old.
Thought a little outside the box. Went to Car Quest in town and found an exhaust reducer to fit inside the cracked tube and they were nice enough to use their chop saw to cut the large diameter side to fit flush with the flange.
Drilled thru the tube and inner sleeve and used M5 bolts with double nuts /high temp loctite to hold it all together.
Its mechanically fixed and reinstalled. It is not airtight becuase the sleeve was not exactly a press fit inside the tube so there is a small residual exhaust leak.
But I was back on track this afternoon and will be again tomorrow.
(Obviously will be contacting Fabspeed on Monday to get a new pipe)
Hey Scott from Fabspeed
I am very sorry to read about the cracked weld on your system. If you could reach out to me directly we can get this situation handled immediately. 267 742 3049
I would weld it all back up solid and fogetaboutit...
I'm working on a more permanent solution now. I don't think simply welding the area will work because the metal has become very brittle and has already been repaired twice. I'm either going to get a new section of tubing and cut out the old and weld in the new with reinforcements or get a new pipe from fabspeed. They have been very responsive and are checking in to compatibility between their current system and my 2.5 year old parts.
I would weld it all back up solid and fogetaboutit...
I would not. SS is very difficult to weld properly and cracks easily. The location of the failed weld is thin tubing to a thick flange. It is a difficult weld but the preparation of the two dissimilar thickness needs the proper welding engineering and Fabspeed is demonstrating they have a weld engineer on staff. The thick piece is acting like a heat sink. It is difficult to see, is the thin-wall tubing welded to the flange on the exterior side of the flange, not on the gasket side of the flange?
Also, if a true jig setup is not used to mate all the part sections before welding, then excessive stress is put on individual pieces when bolting the sections together on the engine.
Fapspeed could use engineering help and stress analysis to improve the robustness of the design and fabrication
Last edited by T&T Racing; 05-20-2019 at 09:19 PM.
To update this thread, Fabspeed has been very responsive and really tried to make things right. Their new system is not compatible with my 2 year old system so they could not just send me new pipes from their stock. They quickly offered to take the exhaust back to fix it under warranty but between the shipping to / from, it would not have been ready for the WGI race. So they said to have it welded locally then send it to them and they would fix it permanently. They even over-nighted a section of stainless tubing and flanges in case my local fabricator needed it.
After the race, I shipped my entire system to Fabspeed and they welded in new sections of pipe/new flanges on both sides and reinforced the brackets to hang the mufflers.
Overall I have to say Fabspeed honored their warranty with no hesitation. I hope the new tubing/ welds holds up better than the original.
To update this thread, Fabspeed has been very responsive and really tried to make things right. Their new system is not compatible with my 2 year old system so they could not just send me new pipes from their stock. They quickly offered to take the exhaust back to fix it under warranty but between the shipping to / from, it would not have been ready for the WGI race. So they said to have it welded locally then send it to them and they would fix it permanently. They even over-nighted a section of stainless tubing and flanges in case my local fabricator needed it.
After the race, I shipped my entire system to Fabspeed and they welded in new sections of pipe/new flanges on both sides and reinforced the brackets to hang the mufflers.
Overall I have to say Fabspeed honored their warranty with no hesitation. I hope the new tubing/ welds holds up better than the original.
My most recent Fabspeed issue was a broken hangar strap at the WGI club race. I remain skeptical about the quality, but it's on the car so will keep using until it really dies or gets killed somehow.
My most recent Fabspeed issue was a broken hangar strap at the WGI club race. I remain skeptical about the quality, but it's on the car so will keep using until it really dies or gets killed somehow.
05-18-2019, 11:12 PM
Paddock fix for cracked Fabspeed exhaust
