bad tune!!!BLOWN HEAD GASKET!!! first of all they tell me that its going too be $225 for just a supercharger pulley change tune and then they charge me $500! ok not too bad but its should have only took 1 hour 2 max!! took 8 there tuner mike took him three attempted at 1/2 pull to figured the software out?
then once he figured that out he did no even bother too look at the tune i came in with! came in with 30 degree of timing should have look at the tune a stared at reasonable point and start OUT from there. no he just put it on and ran with it. i told them what i had 9.5 compression 15 pound of boost with akly injection in a 1993 corvette i have no one too blame but my self when i saw a newer corvette on the lift and this guy part all over the place the intake manifold on the floor the place was filthy!! i call him and try too resolved the issue but nick one of the owner told me that because i came in with 30 degree of timing! that i should talk too the tuner before him that he was the problem i talk too the tuner before mike and he told that he could have told me these guy were bad news because they still owe him an ecm any way i then baby it home i notice that antifreeze was coming out the back some time between there and here! one more thing he said that Lisa madigan the states attorney for il was going too help him if i drag his name thought the mud and filed a claim in small claims court

 

Sorry about your misfortune You sux at composing though

 

I didnt have good luck with them either.

 

maybe you should burn the building down.

 

WHAT? WHAT?

 

 

Sorry you are having so much trouble with them. Good luck getting the car to run right again.

 

From what I could make out of that paragraph, it doesnt sound good

Good Luck to you!

 

I guess since this hasn't been addressed yet, I'll try to make the point to cover it.

I'll start by stating some of the facts that were stated by the customer in his posts, then go into a few things that were not mentioned.

The car was on our dyno, and I did tune it. I started with the file that was in the car when it arrived which had been a mail order tune by somebody fairley well known in the Midwest. That being said, the orginal file came in with 30 degrees of timing.

The car was also on our dyno all day, and it took a few attempts before we were able to make a full dyno pull. The car did leave our dyno with 30 degrees of timing.

Now here's what was not mentioned in the orginal posters post. Three hours were spent trying to purge the coolant system because coolant was being pushed out through the overflow cap. By the time the car had been backed on to the dyno from it's parking spot, the car was already burping some coolant out the over flow. After adding some coolant and being strapped down, the ECT was also in the 240 degree range while the car was just cruising on the dyno. At this time in the tune, no wide open throttle attempts had been made, and the car had not seen more than 3600rpm. Since the customer was present during this time, he elected to fix this problem on his own (while still being on the dyno) to save the expense of having us fixing it. For three hours, every time the car started up, within 2 to 3 min, the vehicle's ECT would sky rocket past 220 degrees, then start bubbling over again.

Once this was presumedly fixed, I continued to tune the vehicle. I finished the part throttle tuning, and was then ready to do WOT tuning. Timing was changed to 26 degrees for the first pull. It took a few attempts to get the AFR within range without the trans downshifting during the pull, that is why it took so many attempts before we were able to complete a pull. Plugs were checked twice during the WOT tuning, and according to the timing marks on the plugs, and the dyno results, the car saw a noticable gain with the 30 degrees of timing, yet looked well within the safe range on the ground strap. Since the car was now pulley'd for 15lbs of boost, as opposed to 13lbs of boost where it was with the old pulley and tune, I made the judgement to keep 30 degrees of timing in the car, since it responded well to it with no indication of KR.

The customer then called a few days later saying that a head gasket had been blown, and immediately blamed it on the fact that it had 30 degrees of timing in it. I asked him how the plugs looked, he said he had not taken anything apart yet and did not know. I asked him to atleast do that. He called back the next day and said that the plugs looked perfectly fine. Since the plugs are the only thing that we can look at to see how the motor was running, I found it difficult to assume that the a motor with great looking plugs would blow a head gasket.

I asked him if he would send us the plugs so we could look at them, he said that he wouldn't because how would he know if we change them for some other ones. I then offered him two independant parties to send them to in order to have them looked at. He once again refused. I told them that with out inspection of atleast the spark plugs, I couldn't help him any more.

The next day he called, and told me that he had talked to somebody who "practically invented supercharging" and he said that 30 degrees was way to much timing for the car, and asked if I would talk to "his" guy. I was more than happy to talk to this guy, and when I spoke to him, he definitely knew superchargers, but by his own admission was not an "engine" guy and couldn't offer any more help.

At this point, not being able to see or inspect any parts from the car, I told him that we were not going to be able to help him once again. As a company we have no problem in admitting fault when it's our wrong doing, but we are not going to admit blame just because somebody says it's our fault.

One part of our conversations that struck me, was when the customer said that 30 degrees of timing was to much for his car on 15lbs of boost, and that it should be closer to 20 degrees or less in his mind. We then asked him how much timing in his mind should his car see with the old pulley making 13lbs of boost. He said something like no more than 25. So then we responded, the car came in with 30 degrees and 13lbs of boost, how can we be sure nothing happened then? Let alone when the ECT was 240 degrees due to an air bubble in the coolant system.

The customer then brought up the idea that our "tuner" (i.e. me) had no idea of what I was doing, and was "learning" how to do so on his car. The fact is that the software that was being used, TunerCats RTT Pro, is on that has been around for a very long time, having using it for the past three years myself. We itterated the fact that we atleast need to be able to see some of the parts, such as the spark plugs before we could do anything. He once again said that he would not be sending anything to us to inspect and brought up the notion of taking legal actions. At this point we informed him that we will no longer be in communication with him if he feels the need to take legal actions. No other communications have been made by either parties.

Two more points I'll bring up. The customer was very threatening in the last communications, bring up how everybody is going to hear his story and that no body will ever come to Straightline Performance when he's done with what he's going to do. I did ask him if he knew what Slander and Libel are, no mention of Lisa Madigan was ever made.

As far as the difference in the quoted bill and the actual bill. Upon first conversation with the customer I mentioned that I do do WOT only tuning for $250. But after having the car on the dyno for 8hrs that day, and having changed nearly the entire fuel maps due to the fact that the Cat Over Temp Protection was still active on his car, this is no longer a WOT only tune. The customer's bill in fact was only $412. $400 for the dyno tune, and $12 for coolant. $400 is our regular tune price, but a boosted applications are $450.

This will be our only response to this subject matter in any public capacity. If anybody wants any further details, they can contact us privately.

***EDIT***

I was hoping to not to have to make any more comments in this subject matter, but in order to address the proceeding comment I feel that it was neccessary, as far as the three "attempts" were concerned. The "attempts" were:

1) There are two definition files for 93 LT1's. They are $DA2 and $DA3. I either simply over looked this detail, or inadvertedly selected the wrong one. A simple mistake that was quickly rectified.

2) Having the correct definiton file in the car, there was a comport failure. One of the joys of using Vista with older software, is that sometimes the device manager isn't happy. This caused the chip to not right at all, so the previous file was in still in the chip.

3) All issues addressed and was successful, but I was unhappy with the start up AFR so I made another edit to the program.

None of those three "attempts" were "learning" on somebody's car. The are just very common issues that happen while tuning cars. I admit when I'm wrong, and I fix it. Those are just assumptions that the customer is making. Much like the fact that 30 degrees of timing caused the failure. I'm not saying it couldn't have, it is possible, but so is the fact that the car had overheating problems before it ever saw any boost on the dyno. The car was driven to our location with the 15lb pulley and 30 degrees of timing. How can it be determined that it wasn't hurt before hand. When this point was made, the customer said that he "babied" it here. The customer is asking for a lot of taking his word. I have no idea how he drove it hear. I have no idea that the amount of timnig caused the failure. I listed above what I did know.

In no way did we ever say we would not help the customer, but the cause of the failure has to be determined first. I don't think there's a company in the world that would take a customers word in this instance without ever seeing anything that was asked for. The customer is asking for a lot of his word to be taken, especially when there were inherrant issues with the car before it was on the dyno. I do not think that asking to see the car again, or even just asking to see the plugs to determine the failure was too much to ask in this circumstance. I wish we could have resolved this, but we cannot just take a customer's word on what caused a failure.

 

i see you have a little problem with the truth? you could not even figure out how to transfer the bin file to the chip took 3 attempts to figure that out!! like i said you should not be learning on other people cars!!! antifreeze coming out the tail pipe what could that be? dumb ***!!!

 

Thank you for the apology Bob.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c4-s...post1567984078