Very Dissatisfied With My Two Brothers Carbon Fiber Exhaust Pipe

[TylerBKK]

I changed the exhaust pipe recently on my Honda CBR250R with a Two Brothers carbon Fiber Black Series slip-on pipe. It cost nearly US$500 (around 15,000 Baht) and I had someone hand carry it over from the states where the company is. So not an inexpensive part to begin with. If you bought it in Thailand with the import duties you would probably pay close to double that price for the same pipe.

Meanwhile, I had heard of other people complaining of Two Brothers Carbon Fiber pipes starting to turn yellow/brown after a while, but I didn't think much of it at the time.

After driving only about 1,200 kilometers on the bike with the new Two Brothers pipe installed, the carbon fiber started turning brown at the end where it connects to stainless steel section of the pipe as seen in the attached photos. In fact, the stainless steel section of the Two Brothers assembly also turned from silver to completely gold as you can see here too.

Before buying the pipe I had also read on the Two Brothers web site that after a period of use the pipe might need to be repacked to avoid the browning. Honestly, I have never seen this problem even occur with other brands like Yoshimura and others to begin with.

Anyway, I didn't expect my pipe to start having problems after such a short period of time or need to be repacked right away so I wrote to Two Brothers when the pip started turning brown suggesting that pipe might be defective.

Their response was:

"We do recomend customers to repack the muffler. Change in color of the muffler is a clear sign that the muffler must be repacked. Muffler durability is linked to driver's riding style and varies depending on many factors."

So I reiterated that I had only driven about 600 miles with the pipe installed before this started happening and again I thought it was defective. Their response again was:

"No defect. The packing material will be used as you use the muffler and it is pert of the maintenance to repack it as need it."

This tells me their pipes are very poor quality to begin with since I do not drive my bike hard or anything. And the fact that they are not willing to resume any responsibility at all after I paid a lot of money for the part, means their customer service is quite bad too.

At this point I am not going to bother to spend more money to repack it. It is already ruined anyway. The attached photos were taken about 2 months ago and the pipe has even more discoloration now. I will just leave it as is and eventually replace it with another brand and be finished with it.

Lesson learned not to buy Two Brothers ever again, full stop.

[JonnyF]

I've heard lots of complaints about two bros and personally I think they look cheap out of the box. I paid about the same for an Area P full system from the states for my Ninja 250R and it sounds awesome and looks as good as the day I bought it around 3 years ago.

Do Area P make systems for the CBr250? They're great exhausts, my only complaint was they got a bit uptight when I asked them them to label it as a gift when a simple No would have sufficed but the quality of product is great IMO.

Maybe you can get a local firm to repair the two bros but it might be better to cut your losses and buy something else.

[karlos]

The colour of the stainless pipe is perfectly normal. If the carbon gets too hot the resin will brown but for it to happen under street conditions and so quickly is a little worrying

[Rickster]

I've never experienced this before and i've had many different brands of carbon pipe, Yoshi, D&D, Micron, Remus to name a few.... seems like a manufacturing fault to me....

[KRS1]

Wrong resin

[rizla]

You were warned, only joking and sorry for your misfortune...

I`ve seen this happen and read about it lots , the two bros is just cheaply made...scorpion all the way and no repacking or no issues of the rivets falling out...

But i`m sure a certain person will be along to dispute this yet again...

Push for your money back mate....

[TylerBKK]

Not sure how many different brands are making pipes for the CBR250, but I think Yoshi does for sure.

Akrapovic makes really nice pipes too. The one for my bike does look nice as well:

Anyway there is also a good change I will just live with it. As long as the pipe keeps on working there is probably no point in throwing any more money at this bike. If it were a bigger more expensive bike I might consider another pipe change.

Sadly seeing how awful the Two Brothers customer service is, and probably having so many complaints like mine all the time, it seems like a dead end with them getting any warranty coverage.

Frankly speaking, a garbage pipe and a garbage company from my experience with them up until now and the pictures speak for themselves.

[dave_boo]

Ironically, your lack of riding hard could have contributed to the demise of your end can. Less air flowing over the exhaust, combined with stop and go traffic may have exacerbated the underlying condition. Do you have any fuel controller on the bike? If the bike is even more lean than the stock 250R that would have hurt it too.

I'm not defending Two Brothers, just pointing out some possiblities.

BTW, I have a carbon triangular DBS on my Ninja; don't really have that many miles on it yet, but I'll report back if there's any issues as above...for 9K THB my pocket won't be as hurt as yours was.

[KarlHatton]

I've just ordered a pair of the Black series slip-ons from the USA (couriered to a colleague in HK) - the total came to around THB 25k, a bit pricey much less than the THB42K that a certain shop in Bkk quoted me! .

Two things: 1) is it the clearcoat (is there any?) on the muffler that is defective ? if so (and I know you should not really have to) but a remedy could be to rub back the existing clearcoat and apply more suitable stuff and 2) hope I don't have the same problems....

[TylerBKK]

Dave, thanks. When I said I don't ride it hard I meant I don't race the bike. I also rarely drive it in the sun, during the day, or in traffic at all. I normally take it out late a night only in Bangkok when it is cooler and hardly any stop and go. I also ride it to outer provinces occasionally, but I again always depart at sunrise when it's cool and am on the road never longer than 2 hours.

Also the rest of the bike is completely stock. I've only done an ECU reset on it.

The point though is, regardless of how I ride, this shouldn't happen so quickly on a pipe after only 1,200 km.

The fact that it did happen so soon either means it is defective, has junk build quality, or both.

[TylerBKK]

Karl - I feel bad for you. You have laid down a lot of money and could end up with the same problem as me. I also don't think it is a clear coat issue. As I said I think most likely just junk build quality.

What makes me say this is that when I was over at the mechanics shop having the pipe installed a couple of months ago there was a guy there with a CBR 1,000 and he had a Two Brothers carbon fiber pipe on his bike too. He saw my pipe being out on and he said he like the sound of the pipe, but that his turned yellow and brown and he showed me his. I figured at the time he was either riding too hard or the pipe was just old. Now I know it was probably neither of those issues. Just a bad quality pipe brand to begin with if it happens so easily and quickly on a bike like mine which is only 1 cylinder.

[TylerBKK]

I just did a quick Google search on "Two Brothers Exhaust Turning Brown" and I was surprised how many threads came up on other forums about it being a problem. One guy even wrote on the Motorcycle Superstore site how on his GSXR it started happening the first day he put the pipe on the bike.

I wish I had known about this problem before and I would have for sure bought another brand instead.

I might make some effort to post more about this problem on other forums too so that other people don't continue to go down the same very wrong road I did.

It hurts the pocket and the eyes when you look down at the exhaust you just added onto your new bike and you see something like this happening.

Then it's an even bigger slap in the face when the manufacturer tries to blame it on you for not repacking the pipe was it is practically brand new.

Has anyone ever had to repack another brand of carbon fiber pipe at all? I think not.

[BigBikeBKK]

TWO BROS definitely seems to have some serious problems with their carbon fiber pipe for the EX650. Friend just had his fall apart at BIRA a couple days ago- the rivets ripped through the carbon fiber and the can went bouncing down the track. It was nearly new. Unbelievable for such an expensive product to fail like that.

In contrast, I've been using aluminum TWO BROS cans on road and track bikes for YEARS without any problems whatsoever...

I think it best to avoid TWO BROS Carbon Fiber for EX650 until they get their quality issues sorted out once and for all.

[BigBikeBKK]

Pics of the failed TWO BROS carbon fiber pipe on ER6n:

I told my friend he should send these pics to TWO BROS and demand a replacement in Aluminum or Titanium.

[TylerBKK]

Seeing how Two Brothers tried to blame the problem on me to avoid having to take responsibility at all for giving any warranty coverage makes me wonder if they will take responsibility for what happened to your friends pipe either.

They will probably say you didn't install it correctly or something like that.

My guess is from what I have been reading on other sites is that they simply have a no warranty coverage policy even though they pretend to offer a warranty.

Plus if you are here and the company is in the states the postal charges and import duties when the replacement pipe arrives will get expensive too.

I think your friend should just buy another brand of pipe and walk away.

And what has he done for the time being? Put the stock pipe back on?

[TongueThaied]

The repacking issue is a big reason I bought a Scorpion; it's packed with

stainless steel. No repacking.

I have also seen people report on the forums that the Two Brothers pops rivets -- no personal knowlege about this, but it chased me away. Living here, one of my biggest issues with anything I buy is reliability. It's a big pain to try to find a fix with the language barrier.

[karlos]

I read on another forum that TWo Brothers have declared there's no warranty given with there carbon exhausts??

It could just be a pi55ed of owner telling porkie pies, but either way something needs to be done, are you listening Two Bro's???

[BigBikeBKK]

Seeing how Two Brothers tried to blame the problem on me to avoid having to take responsibility at all for giving any warranty coverage makes me wonder if they will take responsibility for what happened to your friends pipe either.

They will probably say you didn't install it correctly or something like that.

My guess is from what I have been reading on other sites is that they simply have a no warranty coverage policy even though they pretend to offer a warranty.

Plus if you are here and the company is in the states the postal charges and import duties when the replacement pipe arrives will get expensive too.

I think your friend should just buy another brand of pipe and walk away.

And what has he done for the time being? Put the stock pipe back on?

If you do a search on kawiforums for TWO BROS problems you'll find that in a lot of cases TWO BROS does send a replacement pipe for ones that have failed so I still think there's a chance my friend's pipe will be replaced. But like you say, with the hassle and expense of international shipping and tax it's still a pain in the arse and if they replace with another carbon fiber can I imagine the chances are high that it will fail just like the first one did. I'll tell him to try and get a replacement in aluminum or titanium as I've never heard of anyone having problems with those. What's he doing now? I honestly don't know- he shipped the bike to BIRA and I'm guessing once he lost the can that was the end of his track day... Serious buzz kill!

[TylerBKK]

I wish him luck with it. If Two Brothers was around the corner it would be another story to pursue it with them. Sadly they aren't. And then if you did ship it back your probably looking at 6 weeks or more without a pipe or your old pipe being out back on the bike. Too much arsing around.

I also had considered the titanium pipe at the time, but the color looked dull in the Two Brothers photos and everyone said go Carbon for a black colored bike. I was also worried the titanium might discolor too.

Yes, plus if they send him a new carbon pipe the same thing could happen again as you said or it could start browning like mine. Bottom line is their carbon pipes are poor quality and should be avoided. If they would give him a titanium one instead that would seem like a better choice or at least the lesser of two evils.

Unless mine actually physically falls apart I'll just probably grin and bear it with the discoloration. As I said, I don't have enough invested in the bike to keep throwing 15,000 Baht pipes at it.

If I ever modify another bike though Two Brothers will never make the short list again.

Looking forward to seeing what new bikes are going to come out this year at the Bangkok Motor show at the end of March.

There are rumors of a CBR600 to be made in Thailand. Let's see.