Unfortunately, a distasteful part of life here at CAC and other forum web sites are folks like "Jeffvette"...angry juveniles who roam the site, stirring the pot of discontent, spreading rumors, posting inaccurate information and sometimes using the site to carry out vendettas against others.
Several years ago, when Brian Alspaugh's company began selling headers for LT5s, one of the product's first buyers, bought a lot of 10 sets. Ole Jeffvette was a customer of this early buyer, purchasing one of this person's set of ten. I've interviewed Mr. Alspaugh a couple of times in the last several years and one thing he's admitted is that, like many products as complex as headers for LT5s, very early examples had a few quality control issues and apparently, one of these less-than-perfect sets of Alspaugh Headers were in the lot of ten from where Jeffvette's set came.
Even though Jeffvette purchased his headers from a dealer and not direct from Mr. Alspaugh company, Alspaugh went to significant lengths to solve Jeffvette's problem. He sent Jeffvette a new set of headers and, in addition, made him a partial refund in an attempt to rectify the situation. That wasn't enough and it wasn't long before our pal Jeff embarked upon an anti-Alspaugh jihad. For years, he has continued to besmirch both Mr. Alspaugh's product and he personally all over the Internet with statements like "I got ripped-off", "the fit was poor" or "Buy Jeals, they fit perfectly, worth the extra (at the time) 700 bucks" to anyone who will listen.
In reality, what Jeffvette needs, ain't a set of headers. He needs to get a freakin' life.
For crissakes, I've bought my share of problematic parts but confronted with receiving a replacement *and* a partial refund, I'd move on.
(sigh)
But, we can only be so lucky.
One of the great things about a forum site like the Corvette Action Center is even guys like Jeffvette have a place to say, generally, anything they went. While it'd be nice if he'd spread his BS somewhere else, as long as the sites rules aren't violated, Rob Loszewski and the Moderators here at CAC welcome him with open arms, regardless of what verbal diarrhea he might post.
Now...my past statements about Brian Alspaugh's headers. I don't think I was implying that Brian, slaving over an arc welder, at night after working all day at his regular job, made each and every header himself. What I meant was that Mr. Alspaugh saw a need for a set of LT5 headers priced more reasonably than what was out there when he started his header business several years ago. He was personally involved in the prototype process. He then, subcontracted the production, ran the company, oversaw quality control (solving those early QC glitches in the process), made the sales, shipped the parts and handled customer service. Basically, Brian Alspaugh was a hands-on business owner putting a lot of care into his product. At this point in time, Brian Alspaugh's header business, while still existing, is lying low mainly because he wasn't protective enough of his design in the early years and, because of that shortsightedness, others were able to copy the design and undercut him in price. He still sells the LT5 headers--and, if I ever decide to add headers to my ZR-1, Alspaughs are the ones I'll install--but does no advertising and is no longer aggressively pursuing the business.
As for the Fluidyne radiator...
Back in 1999, on a contract basis, I did the product development of the Fluidyne High-Performance radiator for 90-96 Corvettes for Fluidyne's parent company, Thermal Dynamics, inc. Consequently, outside of some people who work at Fluidyne, there are few who know more about that product than myself and that includes the Jeffvettes of the world.
I designed the Fluidyne radiator for late C4s to be a drop-in fit for all 90-96 C4s.
In reality, IS it a drop-in for every single one of those 151,962 cars?
No, it is not. That would be impossible.
I've got anecdotal information that C4s which have sustained moderate to severe front end damage and were then repaired often experience fit problems with the Fluidyne--and many other radiators as well--because the front end underbody structure (which includes the cooling stack) may no longer be of stock dimensions and, when the dimensions of the radiator mounts are no longer the same as they were when the car was made, a radiator designed to fit a stock vehicle may no longer fit.
Secondly, because of a combination of 1) the structural parts of the C4 cooling stack being either plastic or rubber and 2) because the C4 frame was welded-up out of many smaller parts, there was car-to-car variation in frame dimensions. There are a few cars (mainly those with a combination of warped plastic/rubber cooling stack pieces and frames which measure on the low side dimensionally) where the Fluidyne radiator might not be a "drop-in" with a little bit of trimming, squishing or squeezing of parts required to get it to fit. All other aftermarket radiators for late-C4 are subject to the same problems and all other aftermarket radiators for C4, even when everything in the cooling stack is "normal," require some amount of trimming, cutting, other modification or even fabrication of additional parts to get them to fit whereas the Fluidyne does not.
The Fluidyne High-Performance radiator for 90-96 C4 has been in production almost seven years. Cases of radiators which truly did not fit are exceedingly rare and, to my knowledge, there never has been a case where a slight amount of trimming of cooling stack parts didn't remedy the problem.
