Purchased a Cobb charge pipe last Wednesday (9/23) afternoon with 2 day shipping and it finally arrived Monday (9/28) afternoon.
THE REVIEW:
Upon receiving the charge pipe I inspected the outside, looks nice - good grey color. I wanted Cobb because of the color and didn’t really care about lack of meth bung. Fit and finish looked good, the couplers looked good. I've blown two stock CPs.
Upon inspecting the inside lip I noticed some weird stuff going on…Not really ideal for what I thought would be a quality product….owell lets give it a go.
First things first, I cleaned the throttle body lip with brake cleaner and then reapplied a thin coat of oil to aid in fit. I gave the charge pipe a push…nothing. I have installed VRSF and BMS charge pipes on friend’s cars so this isn’t my first rodeo. I kept struggling….nothing… No force on heaven was getting it on there, the intake flexed a little and the engine shifted under my force, but Mr. Cobb charge pipe kept resisting my best efforts.
So I took sandpaper to it. I figured it had some uneven section or maybe this black sh** on the inside of the lip was giving me issues.
After many sanding and test fits later, it still wasn’t going on, it was getting closer but no matter how many times I cursed Cobb it wasn’t going on. So I thought maybe I’m being crazy, so I took my stock charge pipe with the crack and pushed it on the throttle body. This took the effort I had been expecting, so I knew I wasn’t crazy.
I called Cobb 30minutes before closing time. Matt answered. I explained my ordeal and frustration. He would like me to take some images and send them to him, “they were closing soon, but he was staying late and would get back to me” I send the images with my phone # after I cleaned up some at 5min till closing. Not super quick turnaround but not bad for me having to do this dumb stuff. I wait. Wait. Wait. No answer no response, I call, hey they are closed and when they close calls go straight to VM….. FANTANSTIC…. I receive no call back the entire night. In fact, Matt emails me the NEXT morning saying “Thanks for sending this info over! Let me confer with my colleagues and I'll be in touch shortly!”
So I decided to up my game, I got my dremel out and started really sanding it down. Test fitting, sanding more test fit and so on… after bouts of dremel action it got 400grit then 800grit sand paper and wet sanded.
After removing all the powder coat overspray on the inside, which had some pitting even, and smoothing it down, I finally, after 3hrs was able to get it to slide on... holy mother of god a 20min project took 3hrs. My hands and arms are busted up from trying to fit this damn thing, the charge pipe got scratched up after I gave up trying to protect the finish after the 15th test fitting and decided my arms needed more focus to stop the bleeding.
The reason it took so long is I didn’t want to over sand it and create some area that would leak boost…All in all I test fitted that dumb pipe maybe…. 30 times.
Pros:
· Color
· It works like a charge pipe after it brings you close to a mental breakdown.
Cons:
· It’s a Japanese made POS and it fits like trash. Garbage.
· It takes wayyy to long to install.
· COBB has the worst customer support I have ever seen.
· It’s a turd in a shiny wrapper
I had to get my car running again and wasn’t going to wait another week for a new one. I have a half mile race this Saturday so I need to get my ducks in order. I suggest people really consider other charge pipes before cobb, this isn’t their first bad review(google it) on a charge pipe. I’m sure an ebay charge pipe no name would fit better and get to you faster.
Shipping: 2day air means 3 days. What is comical is I ordered some filters off ebay with free shipping Thursday, and they arrived Monday morning before an item I ordered the day before and paid for faster shipping….Anyway. Cobb has a very small disclaimer nowhere near the shipping options saying they don’t do weekend deliveries. When I emailed them Friday morning asking why it was coming Monday instead of Saturday, I didn’t get a response till Tuesday morning (9/29). Basically blaming me for not creating a user account with them and saying how they are great at shipping (an email oozing with sarcasm).
TLDR: Cobb charge pipe fit like garbage, had to go mad scientist on it, customer support was nonexistent. 1/10 with rice.
Side note: the oring in the CP is the same as the oring on the oil filter.
I've emailed them in-depth on this and their response was don't like it? Return it. So they don't really stand behind their products. No offer to ship new one and me return this one after I get a one they cleaned up or anything just tough luck. In fact he suggested if I was worried about the seal I should do a smoke test...you know cause their brand new CP needs a smoke test to make sure its not leaking.....ffs
Charge Pipe From Hell Review - Cobb
