Just to nip this in the bud ahead of time: I purchased this from 949 Racing. Dan has been super nice to talk to about the whole thing and even took the time to talk to Racing Beat about this issue for me. 949 Racing is awesome. Racing Beat is not.


I recently purchased a Racing Beat Power Pulse Muffler as a luxury purchase, to match the extremely nice Racing Beat header and Racing Beat midpipe i had already. Since i'm building an extremely nice car with extremely nice parts to enjoy for a long time to come, i figured spending $350 for a muffler was maybe worth it.

This is what i received. Joke is on me!


20171010_172344 by concealer404, on Flickr


20171010_172638 by concealer404, on Flickr


20171010_174534 by concealer404, on Flickr


These welds are pretty unacceptable in the context of a $350 muffler. If i wanted questionable quality i would have bought an $89.99 ebay muffler and taken my chances.

I've since been provided with picture examples of what the welds normally look like on these exhausts (as well have seen the weld quality on the two Racing Beat midpipes and headers i have on my cars) and have determined that this is entirely different. We are now paying the same price for a vastly inferior product.

Two examples below:


Mitymazda rb muffler 4 by concealer404, on Flickr


ian rb welds by concealer404, on Flickr

The vendor that i purchased this from reached out to Racing Beat on my behalf, and was told that "Apparently they changed the rod they use, and the welders are not 'used to it' yet.
They didn't say they won't swap it, but admitted that the rest of the batch is the same." What ******* douchebags. (Racing Beat, not the vendor)

Take extreme caution. I would absolute not suggest purchasing this product at anywhere near this price. :unamused:

 

Looks like it was welded in "intro to welding" class in junior high school

.........and by jr high school I mean sweat shop in china.

 

This is what it should look like, after 6 years

 

I had been thinking about ordering one of their new Power Pulse Race mufflers, but might hold off after seeing their recent lack of QC. Looks like even the product photos on their website for the new race muffler include toothpaste-like welds:

 

If you want to keep your sanity in check I would avoide a Racing Beat muffler. It was acceptable with stock piping, but after putting the racing beat manifold and a high flow cat, sound was obnoxious and droney.
I would buy a Magnaflow box and paying a shop to do the welding. The bigger the box = quieter, sane mind.

 

I must recommend the Magma flow as well. Lars made muy bueno welds, too. Molten goodness.

 

I have other options and didn't need to purchase this in the first place, it was just a "well maybe i'll treat the car to a nice thing" purchase. Joke's on me.

This is an FYI and a suggestion to not buy this trash, yourself.

 

so I guess this mean the headers will be the same ? or they are made in different chineese shop?

 

I'm pretty sure it's Taiwan instead of China lol.

 

For what it's worth, I purchased a Racing Beat header through 949 a couple of months ago and it is a thing of beauty. Hopefully they do right by you and exchange your muffler.



​​​

 

This is what happens when good companies start cutting costs and outsource to the cheapest China bidders.

might as well buy ebay China junk at 1/3rd the cost.

I had a racing beat power pulse dual tip muffler on my last miata, it came with the car, so no idea how old it was, but it held up real good, sounded great with a stock car and midpipe.
But i do not remember how the welds looked, never bothered to look at them.

 

I'll give you $150 and get rid of it for you.

 

Yep i have a couple RB headers. They're nice.

 

Nah, 949 has graciously agreed to take this trash back, but i'm still on hook for shipping. Trying to sell it locally quick to minimize loss, otherwise that's what i'm doing.

 

They've realized the young kids these days don't care about the actual quality of what they are buying.

 

Apparently.

FWIW, my midpipe appears to be MIG'd as well, but without spatter EVERYWHERE, contaminated welds, and just generally looks quite nice and uniform, not the bird **** that's on every weld on this muffler.

 

Just to add another data point, recently got the race connecting midpipe from racingbeat europe, took about 4 weeks to get here from the US:



The welds on the curved parts seem much better than the MIG crap on the hangers, but looks solid enough.
Its obvious the resonator was welded somewhere else, based on the difference between the end cap weld and the one connecting to the actual pipe.
Could look much better if it had some nitric acid brushed on afterwards.

 

That looks dirty, but the welds themselves look solid. I'd probably just suck it up and clean mine up if it looked like that.

 

Yeah Im not worried. A quick scrub/polish should get rid of it

Hope the header looks better.

 

.