Hey all,
This is my first post here and I gotta say I'm enjoying the forums! Apologize for the long post. I Want to share my experience with my headers that I have had installed on my truck for a little over a year now.
So far the MPG gains and the performance gains are amazing! I frequently see 18 mpg city, and 21 highway and find myself going a little farther between fill-ups which is nice. They've woken the engine up and have made it sound like a true V8. All this is good but they're beginning to experience the killer of all cars. RUST!!!
I've attached the Imgur links to the pictures of the rost at the bottom of this post. They've started to rust just over a year of having them installed on my rig. Given the rust isn't too bad but having them rust is still quite a shocker, especially since they're advertised as being stainless steel. They're beginning to rust on the pipes and the flanges. Given I do live in New Jersey and the weather can be unforgiving But as you can see in the provided picture's they're rusting on the top of the headers and not the sides, nor are the bottoms rusted either.
I've been in contact with Dough Thorley and of course in efforts to cover their hides and quite quickly at that, they've stated that Rust caused by weather is not covered under their warranty. They didn't even ask what state I live in. they just responded with "Rust caused by weather is not covered under warranty. Sorry for the inconvenience".
During the production process for my headers, I received an email saying that they were going to be delayed. Curious as to why I called to see what was the reason and the rep that I spoke to said that they were having an issue with the ceramic coating company. He didn't want to go into too much detail as to what the issue was, but he said that they were having an issue of getting them back from the company for some reason. He reassured me that my headers would be fine so I went on with my day. A year later this doesn't seem to be the case. I included this in my email to them and they seem to have brushed right over it.
That being said they have been known to rust, unfortunately. Back in 2019, a post was made by Marfy (I don't know how to tag people
) expressing his issues about these headers as well. at the time the parts that were rusting were the flanges and the air injection tubes. There was an update saying that he spoke to Mike from Doug Thorley headers and the issue has been addressed but it doesn't seem that it has. They still have rusting issues and it seems they have no intention of fixing it.
My main concern now is that these headers won't last as long as they should, and now I have to worry about the pipe's cracking again. It's really disappointing when these headers are advertised by many as a cheaper and more reliable alternative than an OE or an exact OEM replacement exhaust manifold. Take a lesson from me and AVOID THESE HEADERS!!!!! They seem to have a rusting issue that hasn't been fixed or they have an issue with quality control and are not robust as advertised to be. Thanks for reading!
Link to Marfy's post:
**UPDATE** - DT has made right - Buyer Beware - Doug Thorley Headers
Links to pictures:
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
https://imgur.com/bd2736t
EDIT: Thank you all so much for the feedback! this is great information that I can use to find out why this is happening and to try to get them to work with me. But most importantly, This is hopefully a step forward to avoid this scenario from happening to anyone else if Doug Thorley truly cares about their customers and want to work on their quality control. I'll be emailing them again sometime today or tomorrow and will post feedback here. Almost tempted to send them this post directly but might not. One thing for sure is that I'm definitely going to try doing that magnet test sometime to clarify what kind of SS they are made of. I'm doing an oil change tomorrow so I'll do the test then. I'll report the results from that and will definitely update this post as I continue to talk to the kind souls at Doug Thorley headers.
EDIT 6/10/21: Hello again. This past week has been hectic so I haven't had the chance to reach out to them again. this past Monday while changing out the spark plugs, I found out that the secondary air injector on bank 1 is showing signs of rusting and pitting. It looks like the rust began at the flanges and is working it's way up the secondary air injector. Just something else to add to the list I suppose. I'm going to reach out to them tomorrow and will post an update once they get back to me.