New SPE oil pan?

[WhiskyThrottle]

SPE customer service is non existent. I won't buy from them ever again. Pray the pan has no issues for you, or you will be on your own.

I bought their DPK back in the day. I'm not an experienced mechanic, and it took me all day to take everything out of the engine bay I needed to so I could install it. Guess what? The part didn't fit. They blamed me, and said no one else has had any issues. I sent them pictures/videos showing how it would not fit. They said they'd send a replacement - they sent the same exact part. I put the truck back together and went with S&S. My diesel mechanic had more horror stories dealing with them as well, and I know our favorite online mechanic PTT Arod will not use them either.

Just my 2 cents.

I had a simular experience dealing with them in the past and didn't want to deal with them again. There was a part I needed more info on recently and gave it another shot. It was a much different experience dealing with SPE customer service YMMV. After reading this post I remembered the 5s from this clip I saw as well.

 

[Dude]

Make sure your talking about the correct SPE out of Pa I’ve had great luck with there products
Having almost all of them
SPE is fighting a Chinese knock off /copy cat that goes by SPE so make sure your buying from the real deal
There’s tons of info avail about the Chinese knock off battle

 

[Kleetus92]

curious and good time to test since the pan is off you can see how far up the FMV may penetrate

You can always trim it flush with the bung. It's not like you're actually holding anything in place, it's not load bearing, you just don't want it falling out. The threads within the bung should be able to handle that.

 

[The Evil Twin]

Make sure your talking about the correct SPE out of Pa I’ve had great luck with there products
Having almost all of them
SPE is fighting a Chinese knock off /copy cat that goes by SPE so make sure your buying from the real deal
There’s tons of info avail about the Chinese knock off battle

Yes! The Chicoms are using SPE Lab, SPE Auto, SPE Performance…… anything they can to confuse people.

 

[WhiskyThrottle]

Make sure your talking about the correct SPE out of Pa I’ve had great luck with there products
Having almost all of them
SPE is fighting a Chinese knock off /copy cat that goes by SPE so make sure your buying from the real deal
There’s tons of info avail about the Chinese knock off battle

I have a handful of there products as well which is why I was pleased to realized they upgraded their customer service. All those SPE knock offs weren't really a thing 3-4 years ago. SPE Motorsports (out of PA) is a good place to deal with again. I only revived this thread because a suddenly have one of those oil pans for sale (new, powder-coated). I drank the Kool-aid and went with the PPE trifecta.

 

[15w 40]

I bought one of them in wrinkle black and it's currently doing a great job holding down my workbench. I plan to actually use it for its intended purpose on my next oil change. The quality is first rate. For starters it's a heavy, thick casting and the machining including the O-ring groove is well done.

I don't need an oil heater in my climate so I'll just fill the holes with the included plugs. As for them coming loose, I worry about that about as much as I worry about one of the factory freeze plugs falling out. That is to say - not at all.

It does add a few quarts of oil which has a dilution benefit and a cost drawback, but that was not my motivation for the purchase.

My interest was in getting rid of the last quart of oil in the factory pan. The way the factory pan is manufactured, it holds about a quart of the last oil you'd want to remain in your engine (the bottom quart and and anything suspended in it) in the pan during oil changes. The SPE pan is made to drain all, not just most, of the old oil out during oil changes and that seems like a good idea to me.

To be fair, I think all of the aftermarket pans for the 6.7 are designed to do this as well but I went with the SPE product because of the O-ring and heavy casting. View attachment 246322

I'm replying to my own post to update that I have installed the oil pan and I'm quite pleased with the product. Installation was simple and I like the o-ring far better than a gasket, or no gasket, and just a smear of sealant. The hardest part of the whole process was removing the old sealant from the upper pan to get a clean mating surface.

As there has been some back and forth on customer service I also have a story to relate. Some time ago I installed an SPE transmission pan. At some point it developed a leak. I initially thought it was from the drain plug but it turned out there was a casting flaw that created a small leak near the drain plug. Based on some of the comments on here I feared the worst.

The complete opposite was what I experienced. Literally the person who answered the phone said that they stand behind their products and if I would send him a couple photos he would send me a replacement and postage to return the old one. I sent the photos and the replacement arrived in three days.

Obviously, a case can be made for better castings or quality control and that may be worth a different discussion but as far as customer service is concerned my experience was a solid win.

In no way do I doubt the poor experiences relayed by folks on this forum but maybe voicing such things on an open forum, good or bad, can remind companies that treating customers poorly has consequences.

 

[Vecman]

My last experience with them was a few years ago, and I was done. Hopefully people have complained enough and maybe they’ve made some in house changes to be better at this. Definitely was not the case a few years ago. Given the more recent stories shared they may have remedied this. Time will tell