My Experience With Veilside
 

Backround:
We installed the VS1 kit, and it melted before we got home from the shop, about 45 miles. I kinda thought the customer service would have been better, I had no idea that the rear valance would melt.
Anyway, the following is my e-mail exchange. I am really disappointed in their customer service, and cannot wait to rip the entire kit off the car and put something else on.
The phone call I had with Katsu this afternoon was disappointing as well.
My e-mails are in blue.

Greetings!

I must say, I fell in love with your V1 kit for my 2004 Mazda RX8.
Yesterday, we picked it up from the shop, after investing over $6000 in
modifications. The car looks awesome, and we looked forward to our first
meet and greet, this coming Saturday.
Now, for the very disappointing part, the melting rear valance. I
canot tell you how disappointed we are, after driving the car the 44 miles
home, only to find that the rear valance has melted, I attached a pic
of it as well. It is actually a bit worse now, as we drove 20 more
miles yesterday afternoon, watching heads turn everywhere we went! I can
not express to you, how disappointed we are, as we had/have great
expectations for this car. .
Your kit cost us over $1100, I really expected a quality product. I
found out about your disclaimer after I bought the kit.
We will be visiting shows thru out the tri-state
area this summer.

From Veilside:
Hi Vicki,
I'm sorry to hear about your experience... it's unfortunate, but we cannot manufacture a urethane kit (essentially rubber) that will work with all exhaust systems on the market. It's just an easy material to melt in the heat... and there are way too many exhaust tips on the market that are large compared to what it was designed for.
I cannot offer you any help in regards to replacing your melted products. although I doubt that you would want to change the kit after finally having completed it, BUT IF YOU DO, and you want the D1-GT model instead, please call me. I will offer you 50% off the MSRP. This is the same kit that is used on one of the cars in the new Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift film. You should check out the movie on June 17th if you have the chance. We are featured in the movie quite a bit.

Best regards,
Katsu Azuma
VeilSide USA

From Me:

Hello again!
I was wondering if you could possibly reconsider. I would really like this car in show condition, the valance is now melted beyond repair. The body shop will place heat deflectors on the valance, to prevent meltage...(is meltage a word)?!
I will be seeing and talking to many RX8 owners, wouldn't you rather me saying buy Veilside, than not?
I attached pics of my car, which won best exterior at our first meet and show! Best exterior because of your kit!
Vicki
From Veilside:
Hi Vicky,
I will consider your request. However, we do not believe the fault to be ours, or our product. Although it is a known problem that certain exhaust systems melts the surroundings of the lip spoiler, this is very obvious when installed with the lip, as the exhaust tips will be too close to the lip spoiler. I believe, even with a heat shield, another piece will be subject to heat abuse and will melt. The tip needs to be smaller. As much as a blown motor due to after market turbo system is not the fault of the car dealer, we cannot be responsible for the size of every exhaust tip available on the market.
Congratulations on your achievements, by the way. It is good to hear that our customers' are doing well in shows.
If you have a better offer of how you would like to see things proceed, you may choose to contact me at the office if convenient for you.

Best regards,
Katsu Azuma
VeilSide USA
310.835.5684

Thats BS. There are plenty of aftermarket bumpers that dont melt due to exhaust heat. I understand its possible but a big company like veilside (expensive company at that) should have some more durable equipment. Sorry to hear about this

no pics of the bumper?

aftermarkets do melt... its just the matter if they go up in flames or now. good replicas or real models are made with quality materials while POS ebay stuff are made of materials like rubber that can go up in fire balls. lol @ Veilside.

Can you not buy that other kit for 50% off, sell it on for a small profit and use the money to fix yours?

I can see both sides of the arguement here. There is nothing to say that the kit was fitted correctly with clearance (I'm not suggesting is wasn't just saying how they could see it)

I had a kit on my old car but fitted a small metal plate to deflect the heat before I drove it anywhere :)

I hope you can get it sorted though :)

Here are the first pics, from the day we got her home, after only 45 miles. I will have to crawl under the car to get pics of how it looks now, which is much worse. It's going to go back into the shop, and they are going to see if they can figure out how to repair it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ous/RX8005.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ous/RX8004.jpg

thats one of the reasons i chose the MS rear over the veilside.....there is much more room....still waiting to paint my d1-gt nose

Do bodyshops have any type of high temp paint? Something that can help revent something like that?

Rule of thumb with exhaust and kits. You always want to have a 1" clearance all the way around. Your tips are way to large for that kit, even if they do look cool as sh*t! :D:

Thank You! LOL! It's the greddy! Anyhoo, I would like to think, that if a company like Veilside produces kits that are obviously going to be put on modified vehicles, they could at least produce a quality product.
Hopefully the shop can fix the damage so it is less noticable!

you'll have to think of something to protect it. remember under high heat the exhaust can shake. you don't really have clearance for the shaking and thus that is the outcome. it'll just happen again unless you free up some space.

That is why people of all alike who had a few kits in there life time , always go by the 1" rule. Even the stock exhaust shakes , but without that clearance your asking for problems.

Thats too bad. Your car looks great otherwise! Im not surprised since there is so little space between the spoiler and the tip. Poor design on Veilsides part. What dummy would run a stock exhaust after going the trouble to modify the body kit? Small tips look like crap with kits...

Time

Yeah, Greddy's tips are huge. Probably the biggest in the aftermarket. Sorry to hear that. Looks nice otherwise.

sorry to hear about it

If you can get the bumper fixed you might want to cut the Greddy tips off and have a shop weld on smaller ones. They might be able to attach them like the OEM tips which does lower the temps a bit.

We were actually thinking of doing just that!

I'm sure Veilside made a decent product.. but since that exhaust tip is sitting so close to the part, it's definitely going to melt something. Imagine that exhaust sitting so closely next to a stock bumper, it'll deformed as well. I can see why Veilside would think it's not their problem to solve, so it would be fantastic if they reply and offer some sort of discount to help you out.

It's like me blaming Autobahn Strauss about my front bumper scraping because I had springs lowering the car already.

very good point =P

get some metal exhaust finishers.. paint/powdercoat them to fit the color of your car with some high temp stuff. hopefully they won't absorb so much heat.

you could also get a replica veilside out of fiberglass :) no heat problems there unless you cook the paint off.

you could take their offer of 1/2 off sell that kit and get your bumper remolded with fiberglass or CF inserts as well with the profits...

my stock bumper melted from my hks exhaust. There is about 3/4" of clearance. Any bumper that close to the exhaust is going to melt b/c rotaries run so hot.

hks burnt ur stock exhaust? how weird, no midpipe or anything?

I have the RP Supercat. The exhaust sits very close to the top/side of the bumper. Maybe about an inch.

Thermal barrier ceramic coating. That should work.

http://hpcoatings.com/products/heat.aspx

That and a little more space or some sort of shielding.

hey buddy sorry to hear about your car. i was at the meet that you took your car too. i actually voted for your car( i had a TG with the japanese vanity plates in the front). good luck with your fix. the car still looks great.