When I had my FJ Cruiser I put on an AFE cat back high tuck exhaust. Drove that for about 5 years and put about 100k and five winters and it was no where near as bad looking as this. Yes it was rusty looking but just surface scale.
Ems Exhuast (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Afzj80
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Sometimes I want to move to the south west say Flagstaff area. Then I wouldn't have to deal with the road salt.
I've had my EMS "stainless" exhaust on for about 1.5 years now and it looks equally as bad! I live in E. Texas...no snow or salt on the roads down here! The rear most hanger has fallen off the pipe and has taken a silver dollar chunk of the tailpipe with it! I contacted EMS via email almost 2 months ago and still no response. My system looks terrible. It's rusted, pitted, and the welds are falling apart! I have a non-stainless exhaust system on my 20yr. old Chevy diesel that's twice as old and still looks brand new! What the heck! When I dropped $1300+ on a "lifetime exhaust", that's what I thought I was getting. Looks like we were duped! I, too, noticed there is no longer a phone line listed for EMS...they are probably tired of complaints!
Ditto all of the above on my EMS system. Failed at flex joint, no answer to calls (when he had a phone) or e-mails. Funny thing was you could still place an order for the exhaust system on his web site but it is now "Down for Maintenance." I brought it to an exhaust shop and had new flex pipes welded in for $450. Good thing I got the "lifetime" system to save me money over the OEM system. FWIW, I did like the system when it was installed.
Well that sucks. It sounds like it is all just a matter of time for all of us than. EMS is for all intents and purposes out of business. From what I gather he was still running a small drop ship business on the side, but now that looks like it is dead too. There is definitely no large shop any longer. Not pointing fingers, but I think this could just as easily fall back on the shop in Portland that made the exhausts for them. Basically what they did was build one set of say 60/62/80/100 exhausts and then send it out to another company to have them mass produced and shipped back. I was there when hundreds of exhausts would show up. I would bet they were specced as 304 stainless and maybe not what we all recieved looking at these pics.
I will say I was impressed with BaktashT at one point...Upon installation of my EMS exhaust, I had a terrible rumble/ fart sound around 1,750rpm's. The system was also EXTREMELY loud in the cab. You couldnt carry on a conversation at highway speeds without shouting at one another! I did a write up on ih8mud and BaktashT invited me to Austin to get the exhaust fixed. I stopped by with my wife and 8 mo. old with the LX450 completely loaded, trailer and all, for a week long camping trip in NM. On my time table he stopped what the shop was working on, put my LX on the lift and installed 2 high flow baffles in the tail pipe. They also TIG welded on a high flow Moroso muffler I had bought to try and help the sound problem. 2 hours of work and a charge of $0.00. All these additions killed any HP gains with the high flow exhaust, and I'm still not satisfied with the sound. BOO! Yet, it is considerably quieter in the cab and he did the work for free. That was nice.
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Does a magnet stick to that rusty exhaust? That would determine Stainless or not. I can't get a magnet to stick to my EMS. It does not look like that. Hope it never does but signs obviously point to it happening. I know mine was not made in-house.
Yeah I don't know, he told me the shop's name, he was pretty open with me about it as he was kind of closing shop down. He was telling me how many he had to order at a time, what his cost was what the markup was, etc. Maybe it is possible at different times in the production of the exhausts he tried different shops, so maybe we are seeing the people having issues the ones that did get a batch from China. I do know he told me he sold about 800 80 series exhausts so I could see them not all being from the same place or production run. He said he would order them in batches of 100.
Regardless this still sucks and sorry to see it happening to people. It is a pretty expensive exhaust to have look like that in a year!!!
Regardless this still sucks and sorry to see it happening to people. It is a pretty expensive exhaust to have look like that in a year!!!
They stopped using the shop out here years ago, all china.
so, EMS is out... whats the go-to solution for a new exhuast that takes my 97 over the frame? local shops are dicey for me. They cant give me a quote becuase they dont do enough volume in custom work to be confident that they can do it in "X" number of hours.
AFAIK no one makes a high quality stainless exhaust system kit. Only Borla, Bosal, Magnaflow, and Walker (depending on model year) for partial stock position systems you can piece together. I sent an email to Hanksville Hodrods to ask them about designing and making up a system and they said their working on it, but it's now been about a year since I first contacted them. IIRC they've done a pre-96 80 series in house and photos of that are on their website. So maybe if enough people ask about a stainless system for our trucks they might whip something up.
I went with a hybrid of Magnaflow ss y pipe and cat and OEM the rest of the way back. Very happy with the Magnaflow fit and finish, no problem bolting up. I ended up replacing all the factory brackets while in there.
I'm having a hard time envisioning this....
Holy crap my 20 year old factory exhaust looks better than that.
So why don't people buy a borla exhaust? I've had one on my tundra since 2007 and not a spec of rust from kansas winters.
I just googled the part for a cat back and it's about 535. Sounds like a good deal if you don't have to deal with the cats or anything upstream...
I just googled the part for a cat back and it's about 535. Sounds like a good deal if you don't have to deal with the cats or anything upstream...
That's what I did last year (catback). I also got the Magnaflow Y-pipe and cats.
did this approach get the pipe over the frame?
brian
SILVER Star
I have a 1995 FZJ80, I just replaced my cats with Magnaflow down pipe and 2nd cat. They were toast. My down pipe is in good shape, no. one O2 sensor studs need replaced. If a down pipe welded to your cats would put off some misery for a couple years I would be happy to ship to you, in the magnaflow box.
