Exhaust
Where to begin. First at one time I had discussed with Anthony getting black tips. I thought they were matte, and looked like the catted pipes, from what I'd seen of the earlier pictures of the exhaust. Anthony took the initiate to have them done in a nice black coating. Not as good as stock, but still it looked kind of cool. I appreciated that. Overall the exhaust looked good, except where they tacked on their logo. That left nasty burn marks on the polished surface, however that side would be facing the car, so no big deal.
Sadly, it did not fit. COBB found that it would not match the stock downpipes, the holes in the flanges are farther apart than stock. Why? This has happened to others and they've had to bore out the holes. But they don't tell you beforehand. If you were doing this on your own and then found you had to go to the hardware store and by a titanium bit in the hopes of drilling it out, it'd be a real pain in the ass. Who in their right mind says "Let's make the flange on our downpipes match the stock fittings, but not our exhaust."? They claim that it is to match the wides possible ranges of products that might be on people's cars already. But it doesn't match stock! Either they are incompetent and screwed up when making their jig, or they're just idiots. There is just no logical reason to make this decision.
COBB chose not to modify the flanges, they figured after the issue with the downpipes that there was some sort of problem with the parts I was sent. Riss was adamant that there was none. So I took it to Stett since they are a BMW shop. They got the downpipes on, then bolted on the exhaust. The fitment was so poor it was laughable, or perhaps sickening is the better word since at that point I was in the hole for a lot of money. The exhaust came off the downpipes and shoved up into the underbody and was making contact with the car in several places, including a suspension bracket, and the tips were way out of alignment. Daniel's suggestion was to heat the exhaust with a torch and bend it down. That much heating and bending would have affected the strength of the steel and was not a reasonable option. Stett's expression when told that was interesting to say the least. He estimated it needed a good $300 worth of labor to be cut and rewelded into an appropriate configuration, which Riss was willing to fit the bill for, but was in my opinion completely inappropriate for a bolt on, especially one with an MSRP of $1400.
In the end Riss tried to get away with only giving me $900 plus shipping for the exhaust. I bought the downpipes and exhaust for $2000, which is 80% of MSRP. I shouldn't lose the package pricing because their fitment is so bad. I expected 80% of $1400 plus shipping plus labor. Anything less than that in my mind is completely and totally unacceptable, especially with the other issues I've encountered. This was the primary reason why I gave up and returned the downpipes to Riss.
The tips were pushing the plastic diffuser out of shape.
In all these pictures if it appears to be touching the under body, I assure you it was. And if you grabbed it and tried to pull down, it wouldn't budge.
