Originally Posted by Ape Factory

Honestly, anyone who's been in the manufacturing game and has seen the strides made by overseas countries, especially China, knows there's very little difference if there are strict quality control protocols in place. The same thing was said about Japanese products, then later products from Taiwan and Korea, far more complex products.

We're talking stainless tubing that's robotically TIG welded in many instances. Pretty simple stuff these days that any qualified manufacturer, no matter of country origin, can pull off.

You'll get zero argument from me concerning more complex items like dampers. True JDM, European or US market high end dampers are going to be superior in both materials, engineering, experience and overall damping.

Now springs are a gray area. You see all of the Taiwan/Korean-based dampers using Swifts to "upgrade" the shocks. I can see where metallurgy technology might not have caught up in terms of long-term changes in spring rate/sag and rate consistency over the spring's length.

Obviously there are different grades of stainless and one can question the purity of the stainless being used. But I highly doubt you'll see any major corrosion in a truly stainless exhaust in say three years, even in the rust belt or along the coast, at least not any more than a factory system. So if I had to buy TWO systems in six years, I'd still be ahead by hundreds of dollars (minus the elbow grease to install the system).

These exhausts are mandrel bent, stainless (unclear what grade), thick flanges, decent welds and seem to fit well for the most part minus a bracket or two. I just think making a blanket statement they'll rust out is ill informed and not based on any actual facts. Sorry. But unless you've had the exhaust for three years (like one of the earlier contributors to this thread) there's no knowledge base to make an educated comment on something like that.

We know what it looks like externally. What I don't know is what does it look like internally? Are the perforated cores for the resonators as quality as what comes on the best from Japan? How bout the exhaust packing? Ceramic? Stainless wool not retained well that'll blow out over time? That crossover pipe...are the cuts flush or is the pipe sticking into the exhaust flow? We know these are copies of the HKS design, just how close are they in terms of critical measurements like piping diameter, muffler and resonator chamber length, etc...

The last thing anyone should worry about is it rusting out. Misplaced concern.