I'd like to thank our customer that alerted us to this board and STIRenegade's post which couldn't be further from the truth. We understand that it can be frustrating when someone thinks their car is in good shape and you find out that's not exactly the case, but what was posted is misleading and some of it is totally fasle. That's totally uncalled for, especially considering the great lengths we went to in order to help this customer both by getting the car done quickly/unexpectedly and in terms of what he was billed.
Anyone with any questions or concerns about this particular customer interaction, how they were charged or why they were charged as they were is welcome to contact us. <EDIT:HolyCrapItsFast> Statement considered advertising. You must be a paying vendor to advertise on this form </EDIT> Unfortunately in this case the customer doesn't seem to understand or appreciate what we did for him.
Cliff's notes:
Customer received over $800 in free labor and was charged a total amount less than what customer alleges. The bills also include considerably more than what customer mentioned.
We fixed what we were asked to, but the car still had further issues the customer did not approve us to fix so the car still required repairs after it left. Because of this, the performance of the car wasn't as good as vehicles without damaged engines and other issues.
My staff advised me early on that this customer was trying to take advantage of us and that I should put all work, notes etc. in writing and have customer sign off on things individually, so we did. Customer approved all parts and labor in writing including cost for those parts and labor. Individual notes were written about our findings and were extensively discussed with customer. He also signed off on these notes. We spent several hours detailing everything because of this and of course none of that extra time we had to spend was charged to the customer.
Customer made appointment for tuning only and said car was in perfect mechanical condition - When he arrived here without prior notification he added repairs to the job. We rearranged our schedule, worked late on the car, drove him to and from a hotel, and reviewed all issues and options with customer extensively.
We did not recommend mods to customer, work on, or see this car prior to his one visit to our shop.
Details:
The car was scheduled for a tune only. We had a full day of service work booked on other cars that day.
When Joe (STIRenegade) arrived he said he needed an oil leak fixed and an exhaust leak fixed.
Then we asked him to tell us what mods he had. They included a Blouch 20G XT turbo, but he had stock injectors. We had to inform him that stock injectors can be maxed on a stock turbo if pushed hard enough and a 20G XT would VERY easily max stock ones out. On spring pressure it may even max stock injectors out. We explained that Joe could have these issues fixed back home, upgrade the injectors and return another day for us to just tune the car if he liked. Instead Joe pressured us to jam his car into our schedule and fix those issues and install upgraded injectors which he purchased from us on the spot. He urged us to work on the car immediately because he intended drive this car from our shop straight to Colorado, which was a big surprise to us.
When we popped the hood it was clear that we needed to look it over a little. There were a number of issues immediately in view. Then I connected to the ECU to view learned AFR and knock learning. I found heavy knock learning and the IAM was down to 0.5 from all the knock. Joe said he had been beating on the car with this big turbo upgrade despite not having a tune for it or proper fueling. Needless to say I knew that would have beat the stock engine up.
Between these findings we told the customer that we were going to perform a leakdown test on the engine because I wasn't comfortable with the probable condition of the engine. Leakdown over 5% is out of the normal range and indicates engine damage. I explained that and told Joe if the engine tested 5% or less across all cylinders, we would NOT charge for the engine test and we'd proceed with the repairs and tuning. It would just be for my piece of mind at that point. If the engine had any cylinders over 5% leakdown I told him I wasn't comfortable tuning a beat up engine that had experienced several knock events at high boost while lean due to inadequate injectors and as evidenced by the knock learning.
We performed the engine leakdown test. The results were worse than 5% on 3 of the 4 cylinders. I told Joe I wasn't comfortable tuning the car for full boost as if the engine was OK. He urged us to perform the work on the car and tune it anyway. He said it wasn't our fault if the engine failed and he had to have the car drivable for his trip. We said we could make it drivable, but it would not be 100% until everything was fixed.
A leakdown test is charged as 3 hours labor at the local Subaru dealer. We charged Joe NOTHING for it despite our deal being that he would pay for it if the engine tested higher than 5% leakdown.
We moved onto the oil leak which involved accessing fittings the turbo had to be removed to access. It was a painstaking process to fix the leak because the customer's cheap replacement AVCS/turbo feed line was made so poorly that it was jammed up against and hitting the cylinder head so some of the fittings couldn't be tightened without removing the line, tightening them, then reinstalling the line. Ultimately we charged Joe for HALF the time spent stopping the leak despite all of it being totally justified.
Joe begged me to put a tune on the car for low boost (spring pressure) so he could drive it like this temporarily.
Other issues we diagnosed/repaired on Joe's car include, but aren't limited to:
battery connection intermittent (customer had quick disconnects of sorts on battery which kept coming lose and cutting power to car while it was running. Sometimes connection would only be poor enough to cause misfiring rather than total loss of power. Customer did not approve repairing this so we didn't).
exhaust leak (customer alerted us to this, we replaced gasket)
post MAF air leak (found during UV smoke test of intake we performed for FREE, replaced coupler)
rear o2 sensor not functioning properly (found while trying to tune car. It was causing unusual fuel trimming which stopped when rear o2 sensor was unplugged. Customer did not want it replaced so it was left unplugged to avoid wild fuel trimming temporarily)
Coolant leak (diagnosed via pressure test and fixed by replacing spring clamps with worm gears)
post MAF intake leak #2 - vent hose from inlet to stock EBCS hooked up, EBCS venting to atmosphere. (found during smoke test, capped since EBCS wasn't being used for boost control)
Removed customer's MBC, return to him, and replace with union to keep turbo at spring pressure until further issues with car are resolved.
Joe also had us replace the extremely worn spark plugs that were in the engine. They had aluminum on them from detonation, were speckled and the electrodes were heavily eroded.
Replaced injectors with DW 740s customer purchased from us minus credit DW provides (we gave customer the core amount back on the spot so he didn't have to send his cores in)
Again if anyone has questions or concerns regarding this matter or anything else, please feel free to contact us:
<EDIT>
Contact information not allowed for non paying vendors
</EDIT>
Unless anyone has fist hand knowledge of the shop listed here please refrain from commenting (not including Mods and Admins). No hearsay is allowed. Please do as rek and fugi suggest and provide quantitative details of your experience good or bad. Things like "I heard they suck" or "They are really great" are just going to be deleted.
