Yeah, I know it was a lot of info to get through, but I appreciate you taking the time to read through it. I sometimes second guess myself as well now.


Thanks man, I agree. Had I known I would have had these issues, I would have explored other options as well.


Thank you, but I feel like that ship has sailed with them even reimbursing me anything at this point. That final email to CJ was sent on 5/1/15 and it's no the 26th and there has been no response back to me.


Thanks man.

I mean I can understand things may happen, but when they do, as the company selling these products you need to step up your game and do whatever it takes to make things right. Anyone can deal through a little adversity, but how a company handles it really defines them.


The 85mm pulley had some damage to the teeth. When the bolt sheared in half, the belt attached to the pulley caused it to slap around shearing the teeth as well as marking up the other pulleys in the assembly. So as a precaution, they replaced all the pulleys, hub adapter, new belt, and included a new bottle of oil just in case anything got into the system.


Nik2k who reached out to me, has the 81 blower with this bolt issue and he has broken like 3-4 of them now I believe. My issue was the first I heard of this bolt breaking and Nico is the second, so I'm curious to see who else you have found that had this same issue. My SC unit came the same way when it was originally shipped in the kit. The second time around, Kraftwerks installed the new adapter and hub bolt. I'm not sure how many miles Nico has put on his car before the first bolt failed, but mine failed while on the dyno after maybe a 15 mile drive from the install shop to the dyno with NO boosting during the drive.


Nice man, good luck with your setup!


Thanks Mike, yeah that last part really set me off. Like after basically a month of waiting, slow shipping back and forth, then I pay EXTRA money to get it to my installer faster, only to receive it in the same condition I sent it out in?! How the hell does that even happen??

I'm curious to know of the other threads you have come across too with people having this issue. When this happened to me on April 4th, I was searching all over the place and couldn't find one single person that had an issue like this. And I was searching S2000 forums as well as other forums to try and find someone with a similar issue and came up empty handed.

Overall I'm still happy with the power output, the car drives fantastic, and the kit itself isn't horrible, but my main gripe is just how things were handled. I just pray I don't have any other issues, because after my last email was ignored and this thread, I'm sure reaching out to anyone over there should something else arise is going to be a nightmare.

 

Damn Chip...glad you decided to share. A post like this would have saved you a ton of headaches had you read it prior.

 

Well, I guess I'll cross them off my list of potential sc kits. I just can't deal with people/businesses that offer such poor customer service and outright lack of concern. Sorry about your experience but I appreciate the post.

 

We are a kraftwerks dealer and installer, I don't like to see this kinda of thing and I believe it maybe just mishandled . We have installed and tuned 14 S2000 kits in the last 8 months with no issues, I must admit their instructions are not the clearest if you've never done one before ,but they are quality kits.

The first 2 kits we installed didn't have the extra pulley that's now standard, Kraftwerks sent us the extra pulley and belt for both kits and asked us to upgrade them as a precaution.

We have also found on a few kits the idler pulley is installed backwards on the spacer causing it to not spin free when torqued, We let Kraftwerks know any issues we see so they can correct for the future. This is still a new kit and there's always a few growing pains go along with it. I think it's still the best power producing quality kit that just works. One of customers has 37,000 miles on the kit we installed and is heavy on the car.

I would have no problem recommending this kit to our customers, but I would recommend you have the kit installed and tuned by a trusted shop and let them handle any potential issues.

 

The broken bolt is an indicator of some serious issues and shows there is a definitive lack of quality control/quality assurance. I understand mistakes happen, however this was the primary issue of the return and an oversight here is akin to changing a flat tire, and then putting that same flat tire back on. Or that was a colossal act of passive aggression. Either of these scenarios are inexcusable.

The lack of contrition on the vendor's part is telling as well. You should have been refunded the 42.00 This appears to be plain callous insensitivity to its customers.

I'm vortech sc'd, and was considering going to a quieter setup. I can't support a company whose vision is fiscally myopic, inconsistent, and inconsiderate.

Thank you for sharing your experience

 

When I had a c38 blower seize up on my M3, I called the vendor, they gave me an RMA#, I shipped it off to Miami and had a replacement unit back within I think a week. Rotrex confirmed that there was bearing damage and it must have gotten hot and seized up. All I had to do was buy new oil lines, cooler and the traction fluid. On top of all that, this was a kit I bought second hand! The way your issue was handled by KW is so unfortunate.

 

Everyone - Aside from being noted as an 'Engineer' this information appears to be a direct copy/paste of the email correspondence. No bs, white smoke, mirrors, etc.

The customer had a bolt failure due to an unknown cause.

The failure itself, which appears to be noted as a few individuals on here is not something commonly found with the setup and design. We've sold 100s of FRS/BRZ kits (C30 and C38 variants), nearing the figure with S2000 both -81 and -91 as well as the NC Miata using the same Hub Adapter / Cogged Pulley Setup. With the same 'few' number of failures noted. This is being looked into by R&D to assess where the issue actually lies.

The warranty policy and procedure noted is exactly what I send to each and every customer who calls and/or emails up as those most concise way of explaining how the process works should the claim need to be escalated to Rotrex for inspection as it is their product and only they can truly assess the warranty on it.

In this case, we were able to swap the components over without escalating to Rotrex being the Rotrex unit was and is still functioning properly. Myself and Dr. Charles (Shop Tech with Group-A / Skunk2 for the last 9-10 Years) inspected the unit to ensure the unit was functioning as it should short of opening the unit and voiding the warranty for the customer. The unit is then given back to the kitting staff to re-install and assemble where one of the issues arose in that it was packaged up promptly after having forgot to remove the bolt and re-install a new hub adapter and bolt. Admittedly at the fault of our own which is why the shipping was upgraded out of our pocket as it was our own mistake which held the process up the extra 3 days.

I'm not sure what companies cover overnight shipping on warranty cases whether it be their product or one they sell from another mfg but I've yet to find them personally. Each warranty case or RMA I've ever entered, again personally, has succumb to ground shipping which as a consumer I assumed was the standard. With any warranty cases involving shipping, we do offer the expedited rate should the customer require the product quicker at a discounted, difference in value against the ground service we offer. The problem noted with overnight shipping or receiving a new unit overnight, etc.... specifically noted from that post is that that was from 2009. We're a vastly different company than we were back when JR/Group-A were the team that brought you KW which launches an entirely new conversation but most notably... things have changed and quite honestly, for the better.

To bring us back to the OP, I have every intention of reimbursing the shipping charges although again, not the 'norm' nor the standard by any means but the task admittedly fell to the bottom of my personal growing pile of work and was set aside.

As always, my information has been posted numerous times in numerous posts for those to reach out to my directly to voice any concerns, recommendations or issues, etc. and I will do my best to answer as quickly as I can.

E: cjweidl@group-a-eng.com

OP - I will be sending you an email shortly to resolve the matter of freight reimbursement.

- CJ

 

Sorry to hear about your troubles, OP. It's really unfortunate. This is why I chose SOS. Unbeatable customer service. Also, its nice to see Kraftwerks reply with their above post^, at least they are coming through at the end. However, I feel like its because OP has publicized this ordeal. As stated by OP, its been about 25 days since his last email to kraftwerks and NOW they say they will send an email, only after this thread was created. Any form of reply should have been done weeks ago. Also, I just personally feel that saying "the task admittedly fell to the bottom of my personal growing pile of work and was set aside." as a explanation to why a follow-up email was not sent out is a bit unprofessional for a large company. Just my .02 cents.

 

Please create a thread or post here if problems are identified and fixes/revisions are performed. Otherwise people are driving around with ticking time bombs. Some of us like to keep up on TSB's and revised parts to ensure the highest reliability.

 

Other then accidentally sending the SC back with the old bolt in there, I don't really see where KW did anything wrong here.
They were incurring the costs of an almost certainly unnecessary shipping and inspection of the blower.

This could have been resolved in just a few days by just getting the damaged parts replaced. Good on them for not just saying, "Set the tension properly and don't overspin it." and charging you for those parts.