Further degradation of the 3800 scene.

[SnowFlake]

Last night on the facebook page 'grand prix gtp owners club' one 'Aaron Carey' I believe, posted pictures of his new 'wbodystore headers'.
I thought it was kind of funny at first like ha ha guys my SSAC/SD headers are wbodystore, lolz.

But he was dead serious.

After sufficient debate, I conceded that what he bought were indeed 'wbodystore' headers. However, it raised an even bigger issue.
Below is a quote from the wbodystore page regarding their headers.

A project 6 months in the making! 6 months! That's like half a year soo you know it's good! Our new headers are full T304 stainless steel and include a bolt-in downpipe. They are absolutely the most comprehensive kit at the best price you'll find. In fact, our headers include a higher quality V-band clamp than our competion and come in a full $250 less than their kit price.

Sounds good right? Seems like a big project with tons of R&D to finally come up with the end all of header purchases which justifies the $600 price tag.
Wrong.

What Aaron received were SLIGHTLY modified SSAC/SD headers that originated from a chinese parts supplier.
I emailed this parts supplier regarding a bulk order of said parts (part number SDO-6802) and was quoted $80 USD per unit if purchased in bulk.
Shipped.

These illustrious wbodystore headers that took a half year of R&D to PERFECT are $80 china steel with a slightly modded down pipe and two piece x-over.
1 hour labor and a jig... tops.

Then you pay $600 for them.
The real kicker was that when I brought this fact to light on the facebook page, I was attacked and subsequently removed from the page... just for trying to warn people what they obviously were not aware of.
Ya'll know how much I like being removed from pages

So what I'm looking to do here is spread the word. Buyer beware... the big money headers from wbodystore are nothing more than slightly modded china crap.

/rant

[SnowFlake]

http://so.succeedauto.com/Home/index...ue/show?id=238

[Jomamma]

He was joking around that his wbody stores were modified sd's or you were?

[SnowFlake]

I thought he was joking but he was dead serious.
you could tell someone took the time to mod the downpipe, but they were 100% from the Chinese supplier.

and I don't really care if you're selling china headers... Ssac and SD do it, quite successfully. Just don't act like your headers are the next best thing when you're just rebranding the same crap everyone else is... At 300% mark up over their prices.

[Jomamma]

I'm glad I scored a set of zzp headers at a good price.

[Turbocharged400sbc]

to be fair the workmanship of the crappy chinese headers is all over the place...one set ive had to grind the trans case

mike k modifying em and "fixing" them is value added to many people without the tools/skills or desire to deal with that chinese horse****

zzp headers can be annoying but are nice pieces...thankfully the price came down on those

**** tog's....slp are ok but **** em too since neither will clear an 80e

personally i love the PS headers with a few mods...clears the 80e and cheap

[Jomamma]

I would watch the racial slurs.

[SnowFlake]

to be fair the workmanship of the chink headers is all over the place...one set ive had to grind the trans case

mike k modifying em and "fixing" them is value added to many people without the tools/skills or desire to deal with chink horse****

zzp headers can be annoying but are nice pieces...thankfully the price came down on those

**** tog's....slp are ok but **** em too since neither will clear an 80e

personally i love the PS headers with a few mods...clears the 80e and cheap

No doubt that fixing the Chinese headers adds value.
I agree with you 100%.

However the picture on the website isn't even close to what people are receiving, and the headers are cleverly branded as being fully developed over a 6 month period by WBS.
Though he never says it, he leads people to believe they are of superior quality to the ebay headers... when in reality, they ARE ebay headers.

It's disingenuous at best. And I can guarantee you that anyone who knew the trick prior to spending $600 on these headers would never have spent $600...

[Turbocharged400sbc]

....its possible that he found the one chinese crap junk **** manufacturer out of hundreds that can at least provide headers that fit consistently

your probably right now but i remember when he first released those but the set i saw did look like that pic.

its possible he sent back fixed sets and got the factory to build it correctly...in that case bravo...it ****in sucks working with some of em....half our machine shop work is repair/reworking of chinese junk....sometimes they get a clue and we loose something to rework...to be replaced with the next junk headache

i see your point but id not draw a direct line between the ebay QC rejects and the wbs junk lol

chink is just a mashup of chinese & junk

[16MustangVet]

Doesn't W BodyStore = ZZP anyways ???

Why is anyone surprised???

[Turbocharged400sbc]

not completely but i know some stuff he subs to them

wbs ic>zzp ic

the wbs core you can modify...

[stealthee]

Stuff like this happens in just about every scene. There is one vendor in the 3/S scene that do supply a wide variety of parts, however a lot of the aftermarket stuff is Chinese sourced. They always try to talk about the innovation and whatnot that went into the development, but another vendor might have the same part they developed themselves and sell for $200 cheaper.

There is another guy who sells parts and he likes to buy ideas/parts from other people then claim them as his own development.

[Slick2500]

Lol that is too funny.

Snowflake what constitutes as a bulk order? 50? 100?

[ItHurtz]

bulk order + group buy = super headers

[SnowFlake]

Their English is really bad, I'm trying to obtain more information.

[Explicit_Spade]

Snowflake,
You should order a set of those chinese headers and get some specs, or see if the company can e-mail you some sort of spec sheet/ diagram.

[SnowFlake]

I'm waiting on them to get back to me. They're slow and terrible with Engrish.
Anyhow, I thought about this more and it's pissing me off even worse.
Had Mike come out and been like, hey guys, you know those headers everyone is buying up on ebay? Well I'm going to take those headers and fix everything that's wrong with them and sell them to you. This would have been the honorable/respected thing to do.

No... he took the china crap, hacked them up a little and then branded them as "WBS" best headers ever.
They're the SAME SH*T!!!

You can probably buy 20-50 units at ~$50 a pop possibly even less.
I get that a lot of businesses are successful when they buy crap from China and mark up the price, it's a lot of whats wrong with this country. But here in our little community you would think that one of the people who WAS of the most respected would have held himself to a higher standard.

Maybe that's why WBS never actually took hold of the market. The owner is a businessman who lacks the ability to do anything other than buy and sell someone else's crap. I run my own business and I'd be damned if I ever took someone elses work and sold it as my own. Everything I do is wholly mine. It's what's right... if your sh*t isn't good enough go work somewhere else.
/rant2

[blueguy]

Hmmm.

I know Mike is a member here.

I wonder when/if he'll toss up his side in here.

[REDCRAPGP]

< grabs popcorn

[ericspecullaas]

snowflake thanks for the heads up.