I ordered parts in early June for my '88 244GL for inspection and finally suspension upgrades. I noted on the internet sale that I needed the parts asap for inspection and if they would mail the parts without the back ordered adj. pannard rod. 5 weeks went by and no parts. I called them and they acknowledge the mistake. The order picker ignored or missed my note. They shipped it that day and it arrived when promised. My car is now out of inspection and I wanted to install the downtube, cat and high flow exhaust for it to pass. I opened the box and examined the parts only to discover the Starla downtube was welded so SH__TY (the welds wern't complete around the bungs and there was splatters ALL OVER the downtube). It looked like a kid had welded with a sparkler. I won't install it just to have the egr plugged bungs leak or fail in a year. So now what do I do? Do I send it back and wait a min. of 10 days and pray for a "good" downtube or just intall it? I am the second owner of this car and until last year it was my daily driver. Now it's my Sunday car with many upgrades. I haven't gone cheap on this car before and I won't now.
I have to park my car on the street and it must be inspected. To avert any tickets I went to my local police dept. and explained the situation in mid June. They were wery understanding (turns out the officer I talked to was a fellow Volvo driver) I don't want to create any problems and my time is running out. Can I get from a local supplier a good downtube and just return IPD's? What manufacturer should I request? BTW: The adj pannard rod is now backordered initially from July 1st to now hopefully Aug. 15. I fell IPD has really dropped the ball lately. I have ordered parts for my other cars before with no problems. This time I spent $1200. and they totally screwed the pooch!

I've heard other bricksters complain about the quality comming from IPD and I'm tired of companies not ensuring that quality parts are being sent out. Send it out! It wll look OK from our store. If the order picker had simply taken an extra 30 sec. They would have realized the poor quality of the downtube. Don't they inspect their products? Don't they do quality control to protect their reputation and their customers? Do they think they are the only game in town? Take it or leave it? They know that us Bricksters keep our cars for a long time and we want good parts not patches so we can sell the car on fleabay?

I ordered from them because I THOUGHT they were reputable. Now I have to find another source. A recent post has helped me with that.

I know that they will square it away but they should have done it in the first place not after the customer is teed-off!!