Some progress, the car is out of Vortex!! Woohooo!!! On its way down to longlife in Carshalton, where a standard exhaust will be going on shortly.
So piecing it together, this is what seems to have happened with this system:
- The pre-cats were gutted, rather than removed. Not sure why, as Kev's intention seems to have been a pre-cat delete.
- The sports cats failed at some point, and these were then gutted too rather than replaced under warranty.
- The vortex boxes (their amazing patented "technology" that is meant to aid gas flow) which are downstream of the cats also failed
- The backboxes are ok
In terms of my dealings with Vortex. Keeping it factual:
- Their initial assessment that components had failed came from knocking them with a hammer and hearing they were hollow. We didn't know at that time that the cats had been messed with, although they later said there were cuts and re-welds (which surely must have been visible?)
- Working on the assumption that the components had failed, they refused to honour their lifetime guarantee. They argued that a) the car had been tracked and remapped, and b) the guarantee does not transfer to the new owner of the car
- Regarding b), this was not mentioned anywhere on their website or on the original receipt. They refused to send over their terms and conditions for the guarantee (although they initially said they would and then delayed it several times), saying they had no obligation to disclose
- They initially wanted £1k to repair the system. After many phonecalls, they agreed to replace the failed components with uprated ones at parts ex. VAT price
- Once they inspected the cats properly, they saw the pre-cats and cats had all been gutted. They said they would not being doing any further work on the car, or release the car until the workshop manager had a look this morning
- Following that discussion yesterday morning, I told them that I will take the car away at the earliest opportunity and did not want a vortex system on there, however they then installed 2 new sports cats! These were cut off this morning when my recovery guys showed up. I don't know if they were expecting me to pay for these, but I had no intention in doing so
- I agreed to pay a minimal labour charge for their time to inspect the cats, and had them cut the vortex system off completely.
So the vortex is where it belongs. In the bin.
So in summary; these guys are cowboys and their product is rubbish, don't take your car anywhere near them!
