Pedders Xa coil over shock leaking oil

[G8Firehawk17]

Don't feel too bad. I've got the BC coilover kit on with about 24k miles and I had the passenger rear shock blow oil about 3 weeks ago. BC overnighted a replacement and now the driver side rear is leaking a lot and the new one on the rear passenger side is starting to leak with about 800 miles on it. This kit has never been worth a damn since I've had it on the car...makes me think it's bee defective all along since the car has bounced like a superball the whole time. BC even had me upgrade the springs from 7k/9k to 9k/12k to help with the issue back in March and now I'm leaking like the Valdez. I'm asking for a refund, but they want to send me a redesigned kit w/ bigger pistons and heavier dampening. I feel like I'd be an idiot to pay to install another one of their products. They haven't once mentioned helping pay for the labor on reinstalling their defective product.

good luck with yours!

[texn884]

All this is making me want to stay with the stock set up. My car just turned 87,002 miles and rides real good yet. Will Pedders or BC hold out that long in just over a year?

[solty]

Thanks for sharing G8Firehawk17! That is just wrong. You got to hand it to them for sending you replacement shocks back to back. I can understand one defective part in a million produced, but three defective shocks with the same customer???? You are definitely more patient that I am. I would have demanded a full refund (parts + labbor) and looked somewhere else. There is something that they clearly don't understand about their product and its implementation on the G8 if they are suggesting different spring stiffnesses and dampening????? When a company uses its customers for Beta tester, the least they could do is pay their customer for the labor as they go throught the learnings.
I am sorry, I know a lot of you out there things that this is how it is with aftermarket products, if it works you are lucky, if it does not work then count your blessings, but I disagree, there are many top quality aftermarket companies out there with products far more superior than OEM components, and Pedders is one of them. I don't mind paying more for a quality product that has been setup and tuned for my car, but if that product fails prematurely I expect the company to step forward and act professionaly and send replacement parts and cover the labor to regain my faith in their product, and to show the rest of the world that Pedders is putting out a quality product out there and the company stands behind it. It does not get any more clean cut than that, black on white, no room for interpretation......so far Pedders has completed step one of two by sending replacement units, I am counting on their professionalism to complete step two of two and cover the labor for these defective parts....

[G8Firehawk17]

All this is making me want to stay with the stock set up. My car just turned 87,002 miles and rides real good yet. Will Pedders or BC hold out that long in just over a year?

I've almost got 36k miles on the car. I put the BC's on right at 10k miles and they've never been right. I know others have been ok with them so maybe I just got a bad batch. However 3 failing in 3 weeks makes me think otherwise. The limited options available for the G8 seems like a crap shoot for what will work for each individual. I'm shopping the GXP struts/shocks with the SLP springs that came on the car, or the Lovells right now. I'm gunshy on coilovers after this.

Thanks for sharing G8Firehawk17! That is just wrong. You got to hand it to them for sending you replacement shocks back to back. I can understand one defective part in a million produced, but three defective shocks with the same customer???? You are definitely more patient that I am. I would have demanded a full refund (parts + labbor) and looked somewhere else. There is something that they clearly don't understand about their product and its implementation on the G8 if they are suggesting different spring stiffnesses and dampening????? When a company uses its customers for Beta tester, the least they could do is pay their customer for the labor as they go throught the learnings.
I am sorry, I know a lot of you out there things that this is how it is with aftermarket products, if it works you are lucky, if it does not work then count your blessings, but I disagree, there are many top quality aftermarket companies out there with products far more superior than OEM components, and Pedders is one of them. I don't mind paying more for a quality product that has been setup and tuned for my car, but if that product fails prematurely I expect the company to step forward and act professionaly and send replacement parts and cover the labor to regain my faith in their product, and to show the rest of the world that Pedders is putting out a quality product out there and the company stands behind it. It does not get any more clean cut than that, black on white, no room for interpretation......so far Pedders has completed step one of two by sending replacement units, I am counting on their professionalism to complete step two of two and cover the labor for these defective parts....

I did leave out that I had to pay for the overnight, just to get out of a rental car sooner and get the car back on the road. I had heard that some of the cheaper Pedders kits were rebranded BC's...is that true?

[texn884]

That had to be a big overnight bill.

[GT Drew]

There warranty is 2 years or 24,691 mile (40,000 km). Great customer service they are covering the part that is out of warranty by time but not mileage. Now if the shop will give you a break on the install, you should be good.

[solty]

I look at the warranty as a formality, when a failure like this one occurs around the warranty timeframe . No one in their right state of mind, if they care about their name or reputation would use the warranty card on an early failure like this. There is a serious problem here. A suspension item failure like this one is a problem. a serious problem, and the customer should not be burdened by parts and labor cost any more than they have been burdened with the initial purchase and instalation. Sometime I am thinking some of you are just making these coments to instigate things........
Pedders has not mentioned anything about what they will do concerning the labor, they are sending parts but they have not commented on my request to have them cover labbor. So anything I say untill they make a decision is purely speculative on my part, but why in the world would I spend another peny on labor to instal a product they sold me that turned out to be defective and failed after a low 20,000 miles????? I am not the smartest guy out there, but I tent to learn my leassons once. And if Pedders does not cover the labor I will not be good with it. I would have lost faith in their quality, in their product and I would want nothing to do with it now and in the future. I would take that whole Xa's kit off my car and gladdly send it back and aks them to re-imburse me for it.
Again these are purelly speculative comments on my part, and I have faith that Pedders will come through with it, not only because they know this is not right for the customer but because they know that they have a quality product and that they have to stand behind it. This is an isolated incident, a serious one but still an incident, I have no indication that other Pedders Xa's owners have add this low mileage failure so again I see no reasons for a company like Pedders to want to upset one of their supporter and hurt their reputation. I am a straight shooter, and when I make a mistake, or put someone in a bad situation by mistake, I make sure to correct that and I make sure that I have not burddened that someone, that's just pure logic and the right thing to do and I expect others to do the same.

[SLA]

I can kinda see you point with covering the cost of labor, but if the failure wasn't caused by the labor then they shouldn't be liable to cover the cost of labor for the new install. The labor wasn't defective the part was. But now from a business point of view I personally would choose cover the cost of labor just to keep the customer happy.

[solty]

I agree with your logic as far as what caused the failure, but here is my take on this, the parts are defective and to fix the problem the parts needs to be replaced and re-installed. The maker of the defective parts should cover the cost of labor+ part. The owner of the vehicle or the installer should not be burdened by the defective part......
Thanks for your support though and professionalism

[GT Drew]

If they are that generous and pay for the labour, great. Expecting an aftermarket parts maker to give warranty coverage the same as GM, is a high expectation. If a header, muffler, or intake fails. warranty is for the part alone.