Im looking at getting a rear diffuser off ali express and was wondering if anyone has bought one and what the fit was like, or could offer up some pictures of them fitted.

 

b

 

dont be a cheapsake buy a nice one from shine auto

 

Dont bother with cheap replicas. Getting sucked into the incredible savings of lower quality stuff can and will backfire. Spend the money and buy quality parts. As contradictory as it sounds, shine makes high quality replicas of stuff. Its a little pricey but when it comes to body parts "you get what you pay for" holds VERY true.

 

+1 for shine.
i can speak from experience here, didnt buy a diffuser but bought a spoiler off ali express. and believe me it was not as advertised and was a headache getting my money back.
quality was poor and fitment was even worse. stay away haha

 

The company name just sounds like you'd have issue IMO

 

i have an ali express "re street" style sitting in my living room. will let you know.

I mean, the number one problem is that it's white FRP, which means Ill have to paint it and it will bad chipped.

 

Do you mean RE style?

Anyways, its not like a diffuser is immediately noticeable and im not gonna lie its more for cosmetic purposes than true functionality. If it were something that needed good machining for tight tolerances and good reliability like a wastegate or a blow of valve or something then yeah i would definitely buy genuine

 

........but you want something that fits your car, don't you ?

 

My favorite part of the discussion.

Although I tend to agree, the Shine also has that part on the rear bumper that just doesn't fit correctly. So even the "good stuff" has some to be desired.

 

so anyway, does anyone actually have a rear diffuser from ali express or are all the replies just hearsay?

 

l o l

 

They're only an $11bn dollar company handling $120bn in online sales....

Basically the chinese ebay.

 

Fair Enough. That's a lot of Dollas, no doubt about it.

 

Indeed. Would not surprise me if they start to get a more global presence in due course. No-one thus far has been anywhere near challenging eBay's dominance of the online auction market.

 

Basically, the original poster is asking "what do you guys think of the Chinese eBay diffusers?".

Ali Express has a number of vendors so not everything is 1:1... but you get it.

 

I've been buying and selling on ebay for 10+ years and have been buying on Aliexpress for 4-5 years. Aliexpress is like Ebay but in China. Most of the stuff on Ebay is sold from China, from Chinese sellers, or comes from China now. So it's all the same no matter where you buy stuff.

Quality:
I've bought a lot of stuff from many different seller son Aliexpress. Not car stuff but some big orders. Sometimes you get a good shipment and other times you get a bad shipment despite what the sellers say about their quality. Quality is usually the worst around Christmas and Chinese New Year.

Shipping:
I prefer DHL. It's cheap, fast (3-4 business days), and nothing's ever been damaged. Aliexpress sellers mark their declared value at about 5%-10% of the actual value so my DHL duty bills are $20-$40 for very large orders. Every seller does this.

EMS is good too but can take up to three weeks (usually two weeks).

China post is slow (5-6 weeks) and they lose many things. I have bought some smaller personal things that were shipped with China Post. About half of them were lost and never arrived.

I don't think that you'll have much to worry about with an RE style diffuser. It bolts up under the car, and is barely visible. It's not like the dimensions have to be millimeter perfect.

 

Ive ordered stuff off alibaba which is basically the parent to ali express. They deal with more business to business orders as they are looking to sell in bulk.

Anyways I ordered a carbon fiber trunk for my e90.

Quality
The overall quality of the trunk was pretty good for the price compared to what they were being sold for in the states. There was a couple small imperfections but most are really unnoticeable.

Fitment
Surprisingly good! Im sure if i measure the gap between the trunk and the bumper there would be a difference but without actually taking the time to look and measure, you don't notice it. Also due to the nature of the material, the slots for the license plate light needed to be thinned out. Dremel helped big time with this. The trunk also seal perfectly, there is no leaking into the trunk when is rains or when i wash it.

Durability
Ive had the trunk for about a year now and so far the finish has held up well to all the elements.

Notes
-I do know that some people who bought the carbon fiber trunks from companies stateside (who claimed that they made them) had similar issues with the license plate lights.
-Never ordered from ali express but through alibaba you talk with one of the company rep (whatever they would be) so i was able to get a feel for them and was able to get regular updates throughout the process of the trunk being made.
-It took a little more than a month to receive the part from the time that i ordered it. Out of that month roughly a 1 1/2 weeks were them making the trunk.

It's really a hit or miss when ordering from a site like ali express or alibaba. You really have to weight the pros and cons and ask questions if possible since returning something can be a nightmare.

Hope this helps some

 

There is a 'performance' parts shop here in nz that basically sell rebranded ali express goods under their own brand, and the diffuser that im looking at uses the same image on their website as it does on ali express, but they want over 500 nzd for the diffuser where as i could get it for 150 on ali express lol.
Tbh i think that is the case a lot of the time

 

I would be inclined to agree with you. funny thing is when i was looking for this trunk locally, one of the sales people from a shop that claimed it was there trunk and they make it, stated that there supplier increased the price of manufacturing, so they would have to raise there price as well and don't have any in stock. hmmmm but i though you made the trunks smh.

 

finally getting around to this lol.

I've been working on it for a few hours, mostly trimming to accommodate my tanabe medallion touring muffler, which is bigger that the average fart can.

But it looks like it doesn't fit too badly. Still a bit of sanding and dremmelling the edges to do. but it doesn't look like any serious surgery will be required to make it fit.

If one was going for "drift fitment", I'd say this thing was pretty much ready to go except for the color.

I'm pretty fussy and I like to work slowly, but I could see this getting done today.

Once I paint it flat black, I think that's going to cover up a lot of sins.

 

At the end of the day they are all replicas. So buy if you're on a budget.
Anyway im pretty sure you're mistaken about the price.
Remember that RE diffusers come with several additional parts.
Standard its around $200 just for the diffuser. You have to pay extra for the bowtech fins and side addons. Thats what my supplier told me, i get most of my parts from him.
Also remember these things are huge, so shipping will be high and customs will charge more. Do the complete math before buying.

 

You are correct. There is a possibility it could be even 3 spots. Just keep in mind we did replicate off an original Re-Amemiya version as well, which also is subject to the same problem.

The areas most people note are the transition points of where the diffuser comes from the inside and wraps around to the outside (sides of the bumper). Is it an unnatural transition. There are 2 points which do this. I believe I mentioned this in our thread. We leave a lil extra material, so the installer can hand sand to spec (40 to 100 grit sand paper), which would take no more than 1 min per side. The problem is if we over trim as we're grinding these pieces, it could come up short and leave a gap. It's always best to leave a lil than just try to take it all out. The only way to get these spots correct is while installing on a car, so you can see which part to level off.

The other section is the part which sits right about the muffler tip. You have to drill a self-tapping screw through the diffuser and into the bumper at that very location as there are no OEM mounting holes. If you don't do this, that area will indeed sag. Doesn't matter what brand it is.

 

Both the chinese-made replica and our diffuser in FRP will need paint. Although, our parts do come black, it is not a finish coat. It is actually a black sandable primer coat we use in all our FRP parts. We use this versus a traditional gel coat, which is much more common in fiberglass parts as we believe it is easier for paint shops to work with. Easier to sand. Primer also adheres better to primer than primer to gel coat (gel coat needs more prepping for proper adhesion.)

So technically, if you don't want paint to chip off from the chinese-made diffuser, you have to sand it, primer it, sand it, and then paint it (proper paint or spray can paint.)

With our diffuser, you can simply just sand it and paint it, and paint will stick. You can skip the primering process. For a quality job, you always want to primer to cover up scratches, pinholes, etc... before painting. For a diffuser, which often sees debris, I can understand if one wants to do a quickie and just spray paint. If that is the case, ours will at least save you a step. How much is your time worth is really up to you to decide.


Labor rate in China, is perhaps $4 a day (correct me if I am wrong as this was a few years ago)? Labor rate in our U.S facility is anywhere from $10-20/hour at various steps of the process. Our laminators are skilled and they earn $18 an hour. So cost-wise, we obviously cannot compete with the prices chinese-made parts are coming at. However, I do believe we do have access to better quality materials, which result in products which are stronger, and thus last longer. Our skilled laminators can also produce a lighter weight part as well. It is really up to the consumer to decide what matters.

What boggles me is how the product can ship from China inexpensively? All said and done, it can't possibly be more than $100 difference between our product and theirs.

 

Ours does need work, but not more than a few min of work if that matters. Judging from the pics you posted, the chinese version does indeed need more work than ours, but I can't imagine it being more than 30 min of trimming and fitting. It is close enough. The question remains to the potential buyer... how much is your time worth to you?