Here is a response from Mark Mainiero, my boss. He's not on the forum so I'm posting it for him.
Cliff's notes- there's something unusual going on with this situation Kelly posted about. We have quite a few UPR k-members out there on Coyote cars with no fitment issues whatsoever.
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First of all I want to say that at UPR, we do not bash our competitors. With that being said, it appears obvious to me that there is much more to this story, from vested interests to altered parts. Furthermore, any claim by someone outside of our company of UPR receiving numerous complaints is fabricated and ludicrous.
Most importantly, we want to share our own findings, as we investigate every concern that customers relate to us. Today (Friday), after speaking to this same individual whom Kelly spoke to, we removed the k-member from our 2011 5.0 Mustang (which fit fine with the EPAS system) and installed that same k-member in our 2013 5.0 Mustang. We used this approach to eliminate any claims that our production tolerances varied, although we use very secure welding jigs and check every finished k-member in yet another jig.
We found that the oil pan was just touching the steering rack. A quick fix would be to raise the engine 1/4 inch, but that created the potential for hood clearance issues and was not considered. We chose to machine the spacers that raise our rack down .200". That gave us adequate clearance and changed the rack angle by less than 1%. And, as has already been posted, the majority of installations are seamless.
As we have sold thousands of our chrome-moly k-members over the last 16 years, we have run into every possible scenario. Usually it is on a Fox Body that has been in an accident or has mixed year components. Very often it is a customer or even a shop that attempts an installation which they are not capable of doing. And there is no doubt that production variances or wear are factors too. But this is the first time we encountered production or assembly variances in an S197. Already, we have a great number of S197 k-members installed without problem, but we will implement the shorter rack spacers in future kits as this accommodates the variances.
We have been building and racing Mustangs since 1968. Our products have a Lifetime Guarantee. And we rely on our own in-house racers as well as our Team UPR racers & customers to develop and refine our parts. This is the first time we've seen someone mangle one of our parts and use that part in an attempt to discredit us. But we won't stoop to that level or engage in forum debates. Our Social Media Manager Sharad Raldiris and our Sales Manager Tony Whetstone are both always available to resolve any issue.
We remain very, very appreciative of all our great customers and racers. We will continue to provide the very best customer service possible at every opportunity. And we will let our products, not our keyboards, do our talking.
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For reference, here's a quick shot of the UPR k-member we installed on our 13 GT, and you can see the rack spacers which we changed from .500" to .300":
