So you've decided to yell at the car in Spanish? :rofl2:

manifold could not be repaired, and this was attempted by someone who does welding/fabrication for a living and has built countless exhaust/cages for race cars.

GTM charged me for a new manifold, they only have a 1 year warranty on parts

Ok. I remembered it wrong. :tiphat:

This ^, had to replace the manifold that came with my used kit as it was far from a weld repair. A shiny new $+450 mani was the only option... :shakes head:

I really hope the new manifold will eliminate the crack issue or else whats the point? :\\

After disassembly, I found my RH exh manfold had a thin crack. I never felt a loss or heard it. I don't think it mattered to the performance at that stage. However to sell the kit I simply purchased a new one and considered that part of the cost of selling it. (Which must have helped the sale.)

Certainly not a good design. Bracing may help? Not sure what the cause of the crack, it may have been excess load from a turbo's weight, or it may have not had enough room for expansion?

Well crap my thing is since they don't give a shiat about their exhaust manifold cracking if I buy another it will just do the same thing and do nothing but get worse over time. Call me crazy but I may give tony a call at FI to see if he could sell me only the parts I need with his TT kit and just go with that..

I am considering the same thing. Maybe we can reuse our GTM intercooler and and buy just piping, manifolds, downpipes and misc items from Tony? Piping to IC would have to be modified but how hard can that be?

That's a good idea. Maybe just the manifolds? Maybe the turbos too

Maybe the whole kit to call it FI turbo kit :D

You'd have to get the turbos as well. They're v-band housings if I remember correctly. You'd be better off having new manifolds fabbed up.

Didn't gtm come out with the new housings that can be upgraded with the stage 2 kit?

:rofl2:

They made a thread about them. I'm sure they'll take your money for them. As far as when you'll get them, who knows. :roflpuke2:

No I don't think you need to change the turbos if youre upgrading to V3 manifolds

I spoke with Sam about about this and all we need is

V3 Manifold
New housing from Garret (T25 Plus)
New Downpipes
New intercooler pipes
New two piece intercooler (optional)

Sounds like a good upgrade but then, if the crack keeps coming I see no reason to upgrade. I strongly demand that Sam@GTM beat the **** out of the test car with the new manifold on track for 14 days in raw then check and see if there is crack or not then improve from there.

Would suck to do all that just to have the manifolds still crack.
So we're just stuck with this problem

Not yet. only time will tell. Im talking about V3 manifolds.
So basically we're not sure if we are stuck or not LOL

What I can't believe is spending almost 10k and just after a year later having FAILED parts from a FAILING company.. If they had any dignity or respect for what they do you would think they would do the right thing and atleast send us new manifolds. I want to post my findings on the group buy thread but I know the admins would only protect gtm.... Gotta love politics.

had the same idea but Tony said it's a no go, which is understandable given they are atill working on fulfilling orders. I'm pretty confident it won't crack again with this support, but if it ever cracks to the point of a leak I'll just get my shop to build me a set

Hey man where have you been? Thanks for the input, we really should not even be going through this crap after spending so much money... I'm sure sam would come up with some kind of excuse for his exhaust manifolds CRACKING....

GTM you suck @SS!!!!!!!!!!! And if the moderators do read this I speak of experience. They should be banned from selling anything from this site so others that are thinking of using them won't..

Time to take a few shots and calm down again.. It kinda hard not to get really pissed after walking into the garage and seeing that...

Exhaust leaks from cracks, however small they may be, pre-turbo or even near is a big NO NO. Good luck solving the problem!!! Those FI manifolds are sex and V-Bands are king!

What happened?

its pretty typical of cast iron turbo manifolds to crack, even factory ones where the turbos are often supported. However, your crack is coming at extremely low mileage, much earlier than I would say should be expected.

I dont know if I think supporting the turbos is the fix. I suspect it has more to do with the stresses of the part expanding differently in different locations based on the mass in that area, and the heat applied to it. I wonder if longer runner cast manifolds might go longer from having more space for expansion before the next "node" if you will. I am not familiar enough with different metallurgy to know if the same design would be more durable if it were thicker or higher quality casting. Perhaps making it thicker could make it worse?

I know that the greddy manifolds crack too. And factory turbo cars I work on often have cracked manifolds.

I am not defending a manifold cracking in 5000 miles though.

This just feels bad. I'm set on building my block. Ordered parts. This is the 4th manifold I've read going bad. I'm certain mine will be no good. Mine has 12k miles on out at 12lbs. I can't believe yours went bad with only few thousand miles.

Wonder where George from gtm is at now. Maybe he can chime in here our options. He was chiming in everywhere a week ago

Damage control for a week caused more damage than they think

Sent with TapAhoe

He has commented on it before, typical blame the customer approach....5000miles to crack a manifold, Cosmo, you running a 3" drop airbag hydraulic HERRAflush setup? According to that guy, you probably are.

George has been idle for a week or two, I sure hope they are paying him, he is at least putting in a good effort. After those refunds are issued!:stirthepot::stirthepot:

Lets put together a tequila fund for cosmo...might need a case or two before this is all said and done my friend! Best wishes!

I don't agree with George about what he said in that quotation.
I know a lot of people who have cracked manifold and they just fix it without speaking to this or that for sake of peace.

Some people are just so patient and fix things without dealing with a company that cant keep up with their orders. (Hint Hint:rolleyes:)

My car does not sit low and I'm sure others will find soon enough that their manifolds have cracked as well if and when they get back in there to inspect. I believe the problem here is there has been no long term r&d on this kit and now us the customer have to pay tp clean up gtm's mess..

Here's a photo of this infamous (and not that uncommon) crack:

http://www.fototime.com/0F4C882B02C5BA6/medium800.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/E4AF81D33A18B73/medium800.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/3E7A604902D0557/medium800.jpg

phunk called it.

Truthfully, the sky is NOT falling. No one is losing boost or exhaust out of that. Had mine not come apart, I'd have never known. Probably been like that for a few thousand miles and would stay like that.

No it's not great, but *what if* you simply put it all back together and ran it? There is all likelihood it would continue working as wished. Just saying.

Coop

Coop do you really think the crack is just going to stop? Yes it may work now and further down the road but eventually it will fail completely. We all paid good money for our kits and now having to deal with this. Gtm should do the right thing and atleast send out new manifolds and warranty them.
I just sent them an email so I will be sure to keep everyone posted if I hear anything back from them.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that the passenger side exhaust manifold?

Looks like it to me since the downpipe is still connected in that last picture

Well if that's the case the problem is not just isolated to the drivers side.
I'll be honest, at this point I'm considering just putting a stock motor back in and selling everything else and going car shopping. :shakes head:

That sucks but completely understand your frustration. If only I had a beater I would pull my motor and swap you, obviously with a little cash coming your way.

I'm surprised the manifold is even capable of cracking right at the spot in the pic above. I mean, the crack is right up at the start of the manifold between sets of bolts that should hold the cracked pieces together fairly rigidly, so there shouldn't be any really huge differential in mechanical stress on the two sides of that crack. I could understand if it was closer to where the turbo mounts at... but that pictured crack would seem very likely be a design fault with the item under heat stress.

it IS a design fault.. They know it will crack if you did not baby it and hell no im not gonna baby my car if I paid 20k$ im sure others think the same.

Now, Im pretty sure that the new manifolds from GTM (V3) will not only have better flow but stronger than ever. What im not so sure about is why it took them so long to finally create a new manifold.

if everyones manifolds are cracking in the same spot then id say its a design issue. if people are having cracks in random spots then it could just be crappy iron. :confused:

where the foundry that casted these manifolds gets its raw material id like to know....

hell didnt GTM mention their first batch of cast manifolds for the new kit had issues?

While I was saying that cracking cast iron turbos manifolds is pretty common... I am not saying it will not effect performance. At first it wont. But it gets worse, and it spreads, and the material gets more brittle pretty fast. Eventually you will see light through the crack.

By the time you can hear it with your head in the engine bay, it has a pretty harsh effect on performance. A lot more than you would think from how minor it looks... more than I can really understand or explain. But I have experienced it and it really does effect performance.

It can be welded by a professional who is familiar with repair welding this type of part for the environment it will see, but it is a temporary fix, and it will crack again along the edge of the weld later (from what I have seen, maybe there are people that can do it better than i have seen).