Lol, how crap are Ultrex

[Kimmo]

Ordered a grille and a strut brace from these guys, before I spotted someone here totally dumping on their grilles...

And yeah, what a piece of junk. These turkeys seem pretty happy with a one star review if this is the crap they're flogging off. Currently looking at chopping it up to sit behind the chrome bezel of the standard grille...

And the strut brace, lol. Not sure how close I'd come to stripping the bolts on the ends of the crossbeam in order to clamp the thing hard enough to take the mad slop out of the equation, but I'm not gonna try. The thing needs modification to even do anything.

Boo, Ultrex. You jokers aren't even trying.

[bigBADbenny]

Buys affordable aftermarket parts w/o research.

Whinges about fitment & quality...

I’m fairly sure your car will blow up next, you’ll blame Subaru, but that’s not the real issue.

Anyway if you do want to health check your car to avoid the inevitable Subaru death spiral, I’m happy to help out in Collingwood.

[Kimmo]

Hey come on, there's cheap, and then there's downright nasty.

I don't expect caviar on a budget; this crap is verging on useless junk. It's cheap, bit still manages to be a ripoff. I just expect to get what I pay for, but this ain't it.

Although to be fair, while the crapness of the grille is pretty much irredeemable, the shonkiness of the strut brace worked in its favour - after having to take a file to one of the mounting brackets, the thing sort of fitted, but so badly that the brackets had to bend as I tightened them, and used up all of the big sloppy holes, so it actually turned out quite rigid. Bonus lol: at first I spent five minutes scratching my head and starting to think they sent me the wrong one, since they'd fitted the brackets back to front.

But the grille is just a fucken travesty, no two ways about it. Here's a cosmetic part we'll take a couple of hundred bucks for, but it looks like a squashed turd from anything less than five metres. Here at Ultrex, we take pride in turning the finest raw materials into landfill.

It just would've been nice to know it's a charity for the mentally handicapped, you feel me?

[bigBADbenny]

My offer stands, health check your car. I’ve seen the same chain of events over the years.

[Kimmo]

What, fit Ultrex grille, car explodes?

Thanks for the offer, may take you up on it

[bigBADbenny]

More new owner, sends car to limit, boom!
What is it again? In your post your mods profile?
My07 h6 6mt?

[LibertyTragic]

Did you ask for a refund?

I’m no expert, but If a product fails to meet its advertised function or there are manufacturing defects then you are likely entitled to refund/ replacement under consumer law.

[Kimmo]

More new owner, sends car to limit, boom!
What is it again? In your post your mods profile?
My07 h6 6mt?

It's this one. Almost the same as yours I think, except sedan. What's OBP?

Although the car's got a complete service history (almost 190 on the clock, timing belt done late at 130-odd), given it's got a larger intercooler, BOV and coilovers, it may have had a hard life, and I'm in no hurry to blow it up.

I'm 46 BTW, and until this car, my nicest bike has always been worth more than my car... I was into sub-1000kg cars (hence, older), until this one where I wanted to spend a bit more to find something with rear wheel drive. Looked at MX-5s and MR2s and stuff, but kept getting drawn to WRXs, at 350kg over. I dropped the 1000kg thing to focus on them, and then saw a Mazda6 MPS, which I'd never heard of. The thing pumps 184/330 out of a 2.3 four pot into all four wheels, with a flash leather interior, and this one was $6.5k! I was tempted, but it had 260 on the clock... and I'd never heard of it. Rarity in a car is definitely not a desirable quality for the pragmatic.

Anyway, after being tempted by the 1500kg Mazda, I realised a spicy Liberty would make way more sense, and here I am. My last car was an 03 CE Lancer coupe 1.8MT, which was somewhat amusing with 16s and 45-series rubber, but I got on that bandwagon too late to be able to find any sway bars for it, which it sorely needed. Before that, I had a couple of 85 N12 Exas, which were great fun, except when the open diff helped me park the first one on its roof...

Long story short, older and wiser now

[Kimmo]

Did you ask for a refund?

I’m no expert, but If a product fails to meet its advertised function or there are manufacturing defects then you are likely entitled to refund/ replacement under consumer law.

Yeah nah, haven't bothered as yet. Dunno if I can be arsed... Figure I can do something nice with the chrome bezel from the standard grille; maybe wrap it in tint film and cut up the Ultrex grille to go behind it...

Mmm, tasty.



Check out that mad luxxx surface finish!!1



By the power of Ultrex!

[Kimmo]

Come to think of it, I CBF fixing their shitness. Might bother with trying for a refund after all.

Only reason I'm keeping the strut brace is, I bet it'll be a hell of a lot easier to refit now that it's all bent into shape...

[bigBADbenny]

Obp is obsidian black pearl.
Yeah I’ve had mine since 150k, now 285.
Meaning I’ve had and overcome every issue imaginable bar blown hg’s and or bearings/rings.
As soon as we can have meetups, I’ll do another log n LV day in Collingwood.
The last one, most of the cars had issues that needed immediate attention.
Otherwise just pop over when you have time.

[LibertyTragic]

Don’t the grills usually need to be painted, which often requires a bit of surface prep anyway?

For the strut brace, I’d probably return it or sell it and get a whiteline or other known brand instead. That’s just me though, not a fan of leaving bad quality products on my car after the bad taste had gone.

[bigBADbenny]

Its very common to achieve perfection from any non oem part to bog sand repeat paint.
Less so with brand name jdm parts, eg corazon, liberal et al which even offer paint service.

The strut brace, I’m not sure. I’ve seen the wrong type supplied.
Some non adjustable types eg my genome brace, need to be carefully walked into place over the strut top threads.
The nuts of which are just nipped up over hand tight, eg use a short handled ratchet or driver.

[Kimmo]

I'd consider refinishing the grille, if it wasn't for the fact it was unevenly trimmed along the the most obvious edge against the mesh; I'd either need to build out one part of the edge or trim the whole rest of the edge back, and then bog up this big low spot on that most obvious face... I guess it'd be a bit easier than starting from scratch, but I sure wouldn't call it $180 worth of head start.

As for the strut brace, once I realised the ends were back to front, it was obviously the right one; the cutouts on the strut top brackets matched up with the stuff they had to clear, and the mounting points for the crossbeam were pointing in (roughly) the right direction. The filing I had to do was only on one mounting bracket, to take about a mm off one part of the circle around the round protrusion of the strut tower, plus some stray weld that also poked into that hole. I'm certain it was the right part, just made to the same lousy standard as the grille.

It doesn't have a tough brief to fill; just mount up and be rigid. The brackets look like arse, but the crossbeam itself is a nice bit of polished ally. It'll do.

[bigBADbenny]

Yep, many cut to the chase and cut a stock wings grille, glass n bog the holes and then add mesh or eBay honeycomb.