F
This is a horror story, those with weak constitutions or any SJWs in the audience should leave the room now, I'll wait . . .
I first ordered my Evo exhaust through SxS Blog on Dec 15th. It took nearly 4 weeks to arrive, but with the holidays and the advertised 2 week lead time on exhaust orders, this wasn't a problem. The problems we did have were no shipping notification (I'm one of those dicks that likes to know in advance when hundreds of dollars in junk is gonna be left sitting on my porch), and the heat shield was black instead of the red I specified.
A quick email to Rick at SxS Blog and he sets the Evo wheels in motion to get the proper heat shield out to me. About a week or 10 days later, I now have the proper colored heat shield, unfortunately the whole passing along some tracking info thing escaped them. Yes, it's the right color, but it's for a different exhaust. This is starting to get old. This time I call Evo directly and ask if I could pretty-please get what I had ordered 7 or 8 weeks ago. It appears that I can, finally, and I start to install the exhaust after the third try.
Now, imagine a circle, now bash that circle against something like concrete until it is D shaped, then shove that fawked up POS into a box before anybody sees you. That is what I received. This damage had to occur before shipping as the box is in surprisingly good condition and the excellent foam packing used did it's job well, ensuring the dicked exhaust system arrived in 100% factory (damaged) fresh condition. The end of the exhaust mid-pipe joint, along with the included heavy duty clamp, could not slip over the pipe leading to the engine. It appears that Evo anticipated the exhaust pipe possibly getting damaged, for they taped the stout clamp over the end to make it that much harder for the shaved apes in the back of the warehouse to bend the crap out of it. But, they were up to the challenge, dug deep, and came through! Since it's a Saturday, and I don't feel like waiting another week and a half to get this 1 hour install completed, I turned to those fine purveyors of quality tools for decades, Harbor Freight. I picked up a $20 exhaust pipe expander and got the clamp and pipe back into something resembling round that would now slip over the other piece of pipe. In my irritation and desire to hopefully finish the install, I unfortunately failed to get a photo.
The Talon exhaust hangers are marvels of engineering, designed to last for decades or more. The hanger brackets are held onto the exhaust can with three 8mm dia bolts, sturdy bolts with a large head to carry the load. Nuts are welded to the Honda exhaust to attach these serious fasteners. The unfortunate Evo solution is to use low quality bolts roughly half that diameter in an attempt to increase their margin of error in matching the simple triangle bolt pattern. This wee hardware is merely threaded into the drilled & tapped sheet metal of the Evo exhaust bracket instead of nice solid nuts. Despite the increased play allowed by the teensy-weensy hardware choice, they still barely managed to hit the mark. While I at least didn't have to drill the holes out any larger to get the cute li'l bolts in, I did have to struggle with the 3rd one due to Evo induced mis-alignment at both ends. On the bright side, the Evo hardware is so small that some of the hole for the nicely sized Honda bolt is peeking around the edge even after using the included Evo HO scale washers.
Oh, and despite skimping on the bolt size and quality in order to get a few more mm of play, they still managed to have the Honda hanger interfere with the Evo exhaust bracket. If the hanger doesn't sit flat against the bracket, then it won't go on the machine correctly. Good thing I have a grinder and some spare time, removing hunks of metal should be part of any install of a "quality" component!
Individually, none of these issues would really concern me other than the piss-poor, tiny, baby hardware Evo selected. But, taken in totality, these issues scream out "Run away! Run away!" as if we were in a Monty Python movie. For what this "Made in 'Merica" exhaust cost me, I would expect an offer of oral gratification, or at least a blow-up doll in the box. Instead I get fit and finish and engineering design choices on par with the worst of stuff made in China two decades ago. Sad.
On the bright side, the exhaust does look good and sounds better than stocker.
I first ordered my Evo exhaust through SxS Blog on Dec 15th. It took nearly 4 weeks to arrive, but with the holidays and the advertised 2 week lead time on exhaust orders, this wasn't a problem. The problems we did have were no shipping notification (I'm one of those dicks that likes to know in advance when hundreds of dollars in junk is gonna be left sitting on my porch), and the heat shield was black instead of the red I specified.
A quick email to Rick at SxS Blog and he sets the Evo wheels in motion to get the proper heat shield out to me. About a week or 10 days later, I now have the proper colored heat shield, unfortunately the whole passing along some tracking info thing escaped them. Yes, it's the right color, but it's for a different exhaust. This is starting to get old. This time I call Evo directly and ask if I could pretty-please get what I had ordered 7 or 8 weeks ago. It appears that I can, finally, and I start to install the exhaust after the third try.
Now, imagine a circle, now bash that circle against something like concrete until it is D shaped, then shove that fawked up POS into a box before anybody sees you. That is what I received. This damage had to occur before shipping as the box is in surprisingly good condition and the excellent foam packing used did it's job well, ensuring the dicked exhaust system arrived in 100% factory (damaged) fresh condition. The end of the exhaust mid-pipe joint, along with the included heavy duty clamp, could not slip over the pipe leading to the engine. It appears that Evo anticipated the exhaust pipe possibly getting damaged, for they taped the stout clamp over the end to make it that much harder for the shaved apes in the back of the warehouse to bend the crap out of it. But, they were up to the challenge, dug deep, and came through! Since it's a Saturday, and I don't feel like waiting another week and a half to get this 1 hour install completed, I turned to those fine purveyors of quality tools for decades, Harbor Freight. I picked up a $20 exhaust pipe expander and got the clamp and pipe back into something resembling round that would now slip over the other piece of pipe. In my irritation and desire to hopefully finish the install, I unfortunately failed to get a photo.
The Talon exhaust hangers are marvels of engineering, designed to last for decades or more. The hanger brackets are held onto the exhaust can with three 8mm dia bolts, sturdy bolts with a large head to carry the load. Nuts are welded to the Honda exhaust to attach these serious fasteners. The unfortunate Evo solution is to use low quality bolts roughly half that diameter in an attempt to increase their margin of error in matching the simple triangle bolt pattern. This wee hardware is merely threaded into the drilled & tapped sheet metal of the Evo exhaust bracket instead of nice solid nuts. Despite the increased play allowed by the teensy-weensy hardware choice, they still barely managed to hit the mark. While I at least didn't have to drill the holes out any larger to get the cute li'l bolts in, I did have to struggle with the 3rd one due to Evo induced mis-alignment at both ends. On the bright side, the Evo hardware is so small that some of the hole for the nicely sized Honda bolt is peeking around the edge even after using the included Evo HO scale washers.
Oh, and despite skimping on the bolt size and quality in order to get a few more mm of play, they still managed to have the Honda hanger interfere with the Evo exhaust bracket. If the hanger doesn't sit flat against the bracket, then it won't go on the machine correctly. Good thing I have a grinder and some spare time, removing hunks of metal should be part of any install of a "quality" component!
Individually, none of these issues would really concern me other than the piss-poor, tiny, baby hardware Evo selected. But, taken in totality, these issues scream out "Run away! Run away!" as if we were in a Monty Python movie. For what this "Made in 'Merica" exhaust cost me, I would expect an offer of oral gratification, or at least a blow-up doll in the box. Instead I get fit and finish and engineering design choices on par with the worst of stuff made in China two decades ago. Sad.
On the bright side, the exhaust does look good and sounds better than stocker.
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