First off you could not get that pipe and sheild produced in inconel or ti for $1795, if you think it's that easy maybe you should go into business for yourself selling Inconel systems for $1700. I always love posts like yours, you act as if they are producing parts for Fox body 5.0 Mustangs that they are building hundreds or thousands of units to sell in the Summit Racing or Jegs catalog. You forget about all the engineering and R&D that go into something like this. You forget about the half dozen or so prototype units that they probably designed(I'm guessin), built and tested before they got to the final design. It boils down to amortazation, a company like Stainless Works that develops headers for GM and Ford has the same engineering and development costs as Weistec does on a set of headers however Stainless works gets to spread their development costs over 1000 sets of Mustang Cobra headers where Wesitec may only sell 200 sets of SLS headers. Bottom line they are in business to make money, if they were "gouging" customers as you say I doubt they would be in business and growing at the pace they are. Furthermore if somebody could do it for significanly less they would be. Would you rather pay $1500 for these parts from some Johnny come lately fly by night tuning company or $1795 from Wesitec who is proven and built the fastest Mercedes in the world??? I know which way I would go. You want to see "gouging" take a look at Renntech or Brabus' website and price list lol. Are Weistec's parts cheap....nope, but they are not gouging anyone and furthermore the AMG's they build parts for are not cheap either. When I purcahse a Weistec product I know I am getting something that has been well engineered, street, dyno and track tested and proven and I know it is the best product available on the market.

As for you thinkning Weistec would get upset at your comments and have them deleted, they would never do that either. They listen to any and all customer feedback and welcome it. If they had a way to knock their prices down 20% they would gladly do so, having more of their stuff in customers hands and on the street and tracks and people posting the record times using Wesitec products just benefits them.

 

 

****ING HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD! I am extremely dissatisfied with every vendor I have gone through EXCEPT for ARMA. I was told that my down pipe shipped a couple times. The person works on my car is extremely limited with time and I scheduled an appointment assuming my DP had shipped...unfortunately it didn't and I had to pay an extra 150 to have it shipped before saturday. SMH I sell twenty dollar bottles of preworkout supplements and my service is a thousand times better than these companies that charge an arm and a leg for parts.

 

That sounds pretty mean

 

$1795 is too rich for my blood. Not for the results you get. I'll keep waiting for BenzWorks. Same goes for the intake.

 

ya it honestly is like 20% too high for me

 

If the DP isnt here by Friday I am canceling the order.

 

That is saying a lot of praise coming from the "King of M156s."

 

Jrcart,
Metal is metal. Doesn't matter if its being bent for a CLA45 or a Toyota Prius. You act like they are producing parts for a 1954 Ferrari GTO. The cost of the metal and materials doesn't change because of the application its going on. Weistec's metal supplier is not going to charge them additional because its going on an AMG Mercedes. I realize you are in bed with Weistec, so I do not expect anything less, but for you to defend the company that helps with your own personal cars. My point was, $1795 is definitely alot of money for simple downpipes for Mercedes' ENTRY level car. These downpipes are not hard to manufacture, they are not hard to R&D....we are talking 40 inches of metal pipe. Its not rocket surgery, it's just bending pipes.

And yes, once the jigs are made, ordering up Inconel tube and/or titanium tube would be of similar cost to what they are asking for these 304 Stainless.
I'm only knocking on their price, I'm not knocking on their product, as it does look nicely made, and most likely will produce good results.

 

Downpipe goes on tomorrow......

 

so you got yours ? good share all info!

i expect a new thread tomo!

 

So are you saying the customer has to pay for the R&D work and the prototype parts? Have you ever heard the term you have to spend money to make money? Thats all on Wiestec, the customer is simply paying for the product, R&D work plus prototype parts did not come on my DP invoice.

 

Aren't you glad you waited. Post up vids for sound comparison. Also curious if you can feel any difference with the butt dyno

 

weistec can you comment on long this install should take ?

 

They told me 2-1/2 hours for a decent mechanic or non-mech with good skills. No lift required and no cutting required.

 

Oh boy..... So, you don't think that R&D costs gets spread out over X amount of units?

 

So the price is going to go down once that R&D cost is paid off? Doubt it. I wasn't even complaining about the price of this downpipe since I was the first person on the east coast to buy it. Im not cheap and I will pay for quality and service.

I work for a supplement company where we spend tons of money testing products. Once the final product is made we charge the customer for the product. What we spent on R&D is spending money to make money in the future.

 

for a company like weistec - r + d is a FIXED cost that is probably very stable throughout the year. and very predictable year after year. there are already people doing r+d as its built into the business model.

does it affect the price of this SPECIFIC product? no

it affects the price of all weistec products :-)

 

BTW this downpipe will throw a code. CEL just turned on.

 

WTF! Sorry to hear this, very disappointed. Scan it and call them with the code. All I can say is put a spacer on the sensor, IMO that's the only way to work it. Or ghetto rig and crimp the end of the sensor, but you risk the sensor failing if you don't get it right. I never liked their answer that they didn't move it out of flow, they just repositioned it.

Let us know what their response is.

 

R&D is ALWAYS included in the price of any company that would like to stay in business.

You're saying that your supplement company simply marks up the raw materials and does not take R&D cost into consideration when pricing the product? There's no way. You'd go out of business.

 

So much for their R&D.

 

What was the code?

 

cat efficiency

 

Well unlike Weistec we compete with hundreds of other companies selling similar products so we need to keep our prices low. But I really don't want to get this thread too off topic.

I am sure Weistec will help me fix this CEL issue. No worries

The good stuff....

4th Gear Pulls on the highway This ***** pulls all the way to 7k RPMS and does not run out of breath!