The full story with photos is on my website here:

http://reverendsgarage.net/index.php?conte...t=news/news.php

Here's the basic text:
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I've dumped about $3,000 into JIC/Zeal USA's business so far. I purchased coilovers from them last year for around $1,700 only to find the spring rates were way too soft and the car had huge amounts of body roll with this setup (7k front/8k rear). They would not credit me at all for the useless springs, but were more than happy to sell me a set of 12k springs and a pair of helper springs for the rear. They assured me the dampers would have no trouble keeping up with these spring rates, although that turned out not to be the case so much. They also charged me for corner balancing and aligning the car, but I later corner balanced it myself and found they were around 150 lbs off on the cross weights - about as good as if they had just set everything level and not balanced it at all. The visit to Zeal for springs, corner balancing, and alignment cost me around $500.

I later purchased a 505ST exhaust from them. I can't remember exactly what I paid, but it was nearly $1,000. It's a beautiful-looking exhaust with stainless piping and a titanium muffler. The whole system weighs a mere 12 lbs.

About two months ago, I noticed my suspension was getting a little bouncy, so I popped the hood to crank up the dampers a click. Both front adjustments were rusted and seized. One of the adjusters finally freed up, the other broke when I tried to free it. So I took the dampers off the car the next day to bring them to Zeal. While removing them, I noticed the hanger that wraps around the titanium muffler of my JIC exhaust was tearing and about to break completely free. So I removed that as well and brought everything to Zeal.

Rather than looking at everything, apologizing and taking care of it, they told me my coilovers look dirty and that's probably why they broke. I was shocked - I actually felt that for something that is directly exposed to road grime all day long, my coilovers were exceptionally clean. And since when is that an excuse for the adjusters at the top to break? They offered to "clean them" for a mere $100/coilover. Ummm... how about no? They told me they would need to get in touch with the retailer I purchased them through before they could authorize any warranty service (even though I picked everything up directly from Zeal when I made my purchases). They hinted that they may have to charge me for the broken adjustment knob, but they might recharge all the dampers with nitrogen for free. This seemed backwards to me since the broken knob seemed like a clear defect/warranty issue and recharging with nitrogen seemed like more of a normal wear and tear deal... but I reluctantly went along. As for the band used to attach the hanger to the muffler, they said they would re-weld it for me. I told them it looked like it had broken because the hanger was improperly welded to the band in the first place and the metal probably would just break again if re-welded the same way. The only option they would give me was to purchase a new hanger for $45 and wait a couple months for it to ship from Japan. I told them to go ahead and weld it, but if it broke again, I would expect them to replace it for free. They told me everything would be ready to pick up in a week.

A week went by and they had not touched the parts I dropped off. Meanwhile, my car sat in the garage, unusable, on jack stands. They finally had everything ready for me to pick up two weeks after I dropped it all off. They never marked where my perches were set, so I can only hope they didn't mess up my corner-balancing.

Recently, I noticed an exhaust leak that was getting progressively worse. I thought it was just a leak between the catalytic converter and the JIC exhaust (which has no gasket). I drove out to Riverside thinking I would clean the surfaces, re-tighten everything, and be back on the road in half an hour. Once I got under the car, I discovered the hanger that attaches to the resonator had broken off and torn a sizeable hole right out of the resonator. That explained why my car sounded like a lawnmower. I called JIC and told them what happened. They offered to have me drop the exhaust off for them to re-weld it sometime in the next week, or leave the piping and they would order a new pipe from Japan (which would arrive in approximately 2 months). I asked them why they couldn't just take a pipe off their shelf and let me trade for that. They answered only that it was against their policy and they wouldn't do it. Also, they said they were very busy getting ready for a race that weekend and had no time to work on anything that day. I told them I was in a bind and willing to meet them halfway. I offered to drive out to Downy, perform the install myself in their parking lot with my own tools, as long as they could trade me piping the same day. They declined. I planned on suing the following Monday.

Fortunately, Danny Huseman came to the rescue. He re-welded the broken piece to the resonator and added reinforcements to each side to ensure it would not break again in the future. His work is impeccable and I am grateful he was able to help me out on such short notice. He noted the breakage resulted from them not bending the hanger around the resonator to provide a larger surface area to adhere and from not back-gassing the weld.

Anyway, that's my story so far with JIC. If you examine the quality and workmanship of their products, about 90% of each product is great quality for the money. But the 10% bad quality/workmanship in each product basically spoils the whole. I will never buy JIC products in the future and do not recommend them.

 

Reverand 1 , JIC 0. I'll shy away from buying from them.

 

Customer service has been progressively going to crap over the last 10 years or so and I think that we are currently at an all-time low. I guess I can add JIC/Zeal to the list of places to never buy from, thanks. The worst part is that for the minority of people who actually take the time to post things like this, there is a majority of people (myself included) that are so fed up/used to it that we don't bother and even more people get taken. So thanks for taking the time to write this up.

 

Just to add fuel to the fire, here is another customer that is dissatisfied with JIC:

http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...0&highlight=JIC

 

Aren't JIC and Zeal two entirely different manufacturers? While its possible that they are distributed in the US by the same company, I thought Zeal/Endless was an entirely different company. Am I way off base here?

After all the Japanese JIC Website seems to only mention the FLT series of coil overs and not the Zeal Function B6, etc....

Anyone more familiar with these two companies want to clear this up? I always thought of the Zeal / Endless products being of top notch quality.

????

 

Issues w/ them on honda-tech too. Group buy went bad. People payed extra for custom valving and didn`t receive it. Shock dyno don`t lie

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Ryan

 

not the 1st time i have read negatively bout them. stay away from jic.

 

Zeal is the US distributor for JIC products.

I'm generally not one to bad-mouth, but I've had ridulous problems with their products and their customer service is about the worst I've every heard of for such expensive merchandise.

Slick Rick has also had a lot of trouble with them.

Again, I'm not a bitch and moan type, but they've burned me repeatedly.

 

i local shop here had problems with jic product he used for his own car and he says he will never ever order anyting from them even if a customer really wanted it.

 

Not a truely "technical" thread. Moving to "S2000 Talk".