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EDIT...Just want to say this has been resolved. Spoke at length with Guy at K&N. The absolutely do sale replacement parts and went out of his way to help make the situation right.
K&N does not sell replacement parts for their kits!
Not exactly related to a thirdgen build but none the less a warning regarding there terrible customer service that I experienced yesterday!
A little background, I have sold auto parts in chain stores, dealerships and even worked on performance vehicles for my customers in my own shop in various ways since 2004. In that time I have used, recomeended and sold hundreds of K&N and Spectre filters, parts and complete intake kits.
I am working on my 1997 Express van that is in good shape and I just put a fresh 383 under the hood. The factory GM airbox basically crumbled and not looking to stick a generic cone filter on it and have it bouncing around under the hood while drawing hot Texas summer air off the radiator.
I looked on GM Parts and its discontinued. Tried the local treasure yard and found several in the same shape or worse than mine. Looked at an 01+ and picked one up. Would not clear the fan shroud. Tried to find an aftermarket CAI kit. I have found NONE on the market.
Now enter the negative K&N customer service part of the story. In my searching I discovered K&N makes a kit for a Kodiak 4500 with the 6.6 diesel that shares the same firewall as the van. Called K&N to try to buy just the heatshield and the filter from them. The woman on the phone was absolutely not helpful at all and rude to boot. Seems the only way you could get the part even if you already had the kit and needed a replacement part would be to buy the whole kit again. She suggested I look at Spectre for something "universal" despite making the product I need and wanted to buy with debit card in hand. Never will buy or suggest K&N or Spectre parts again after having run their filters in all my vehicles over the past 18 years and suggesting and selling hundreds of K&N and Spectre products to customers. Their current customer service was that bad and I have zero faith I could get a replacement part for my customer short of buying the whole $350+ kit again. Its ashame because they already make the perfect shaped heatshield and perfect sized filters for the 96+ Express vans. The filter is even a 3.5" like my OEM MAF. Could literally fabricate some mounts in about 30 minutes and bolt it in. Still scratching my head as to why one of the most common vans ever built does not have a K&N CAI kit made for it anyway yet a limited production run of Kodiaks built for only a year or two does! Absolutely zero chance of me paying $350 for a stamped metal heatshield, a few bolts and nuts and a cone filter even though it would fit and look great. Even more puzzling is that K&N builds an intake kit for an Econoline van with the modular V8s. I see 3-4 Express/Savanna vans for every Econoline on the road and GM has had a much longer run than Ford.
So be warned if you ever buy a kit from K&N for your vehicle regardless the make and need to replace only a portion of it that becomes damaged or lost you will have to buy the whole kit again!!! I have stripped a MAF screw hole on a Volant and Volant sent me a replacement intake tube the stripped grommet was built into free of charge. I have lost a T-clamp on a HPS post MAF intake tube set on my Infiniti and HPS sent me the clamp free of charge. K&N will not even sell you the item!!!!
This stamped metal heatshield and air filter must be made of unobtanium and plated in gold at K&N to only sell it as part of a $350+ kit! Keep in mind the intake tube and other hardware is worthless to me since they failed to create the application specific kit in the first place and would rather pawn you off on generic Spectre junk.
The company has a good reputation, and good products. But one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. Hopefully their internal quality monitoring will weed this person out eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later. Company policy may not allow them to sell individual parts, but there's no reason for the agent to be rude about it.
The company has a good reputation, and good products. But one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. Hopefully their internal quality monitoring will weed this person out eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later. Company policy may not allow them to sell individual parts, but there's no reason for the agent to be rude about it.
Yea I work for a company where great customer service is a core belief and kinda spoiled to it, expecting other companies to be the same.
The woman acted annoyed that I would even make a request for something that was not vehicle specific to my application. She honestly did not sound like she even wanted to be at work to help customers at all.
If their company policy is to not sell parts, seems to me like they should investigate the business they are losing from that policy with all the engine swaps now days. I know I would go to a company that will sell a replacement component should one be needed before I would a company that does not sell replacement components. In the real world parts fail and become damaged. I would hate to be footing the bill for another $300+ kit to replace a single damaged or missing component.
Maybe call back and try again. I do that sometimes to get somebody else and it often works. Just did that yesterday in fact and got somebody that was 5x smarter.
06-02-2021, 10:03 PM
