As per the forum rules, I have pretty much exhausted all attempts to communicate with member HeavyChevy and have reach the point where it is time to state the facts as I know them and then allow him to state the facts as he knows them and let the matter play out between the two of us until a resolution is found or the dispute is locked. I would appreciate it if no one posted in here with opinions, I would like to keep this factual. If you have dealings related to our transaction please post your facts. If you just wish to comment, please start your own thread and refer back to his one. I do more out of protocol for my case and less out of a hope to actually resolve this issue, that would require HeavyChevy to actually communicate with me which so far he has shown he is unwilling to do.

Instead, this is just a thread which hopefully will be archived and could hopefully benefit others in the future if they have the opportunity to work with either him or me and would like to search for previous history.

The facts as I know them:

I saw a post by HeavyChevy where he indicated he was selling his STS twin turbo kit Link Here. I contacted him via PM, gave him my cell phone number, and soon after spoke with him on the phone. After a series of phone calls and emails concerning the condition of his turbo kit we agreed upon the sale of his kit. I sent him a bank check for the total and included the estimated amount for shipping that I was given, I drew the check on 04/16/2008 and sent it that day or the following day. HeavyChevy confirmed that he received the funds, that was never an issue.

Before I sent the funds, and while we were still communicating via cell/email what he was going to be able to sent me was slowly changed. In his original post he indicated that he was selling a complete kit.

"Will also include boost guage, boost controller and A/F ratio meter and all components that come with the kit (intercooler, plumbing, oil pump etc). Oh yeah and it has the bigger turbos as well."

HeavyChevy told me of the problems he had had with his car, and that he had the turbos replaced at some point. He assured me however that if I purchased the kit he would stand behind the turbos for one year. He then told me that he had a very good reputation on the forums, and so I decided that I was comfortable purchasing his used kit.

After sending my money to him and actually receiving any boxes I learned that I would not receive either the controllers or gauges advertised and more importantly the kit itself was missing many of the components that come with every STS kit. I knew before receiving the kit that the extra components that I bought would not be coming, as HeavyChevy told me he sold the car and didn't get a chance to remove them from it. He later told me that those extra components were never part of the original sale and he was only possibly including them. I told him that I was fine with that, though I disagreed with him at the time about not being part of the original sale. To his credit he offered to pay me to make it right and I accepted $200 from him via paypal. Two major components that I knew he did not have prior to purchasing were the programmer and the injectors that come with the kit, as he was having his built by a shop local to him he did not buy the programmer or the 42# injectors that are normally a part of STS's kit.

Before the shipment arrived I discovered that the two main pipes running through the door sills were not included based on the pictures that I had received. MTI Racing in Atlanta had removed the kit for HeavyChevy and so they contacted STS and I received two replacements so this was not a problem. They actually arrived a week or two before the rest of the kit which was sent by HeavyChevy.

When the shipment arrived I found that the entire kit would need to be professionally cleaned prior to installing. There was oil coating the inside of every air pipe, the intercooler was soaked as well. This was not an issue, I knew the kit was used and planned to clean it up prior to installing it anyway. As I started to work on installing the kit I continued to find that parts were simply missing entirely. I live close enough to STS (~30 minutes) that I was able to drive down and talk directly with STS about the kit and purchase the missing parts directly (essentially everything that goes inside the engine bay with the exception of the wiring harness and oil pump).

At this point, I chalked this up to it being a used kit. Despite the original sale stating that it would contain "all components that come with the kit". During this time I had been leaving email and voicemail with HeavyChevy starting from the day I received the parts to let him know that they came in, that most of the parts were there, and that I had to pick up a number of additional pieces but that I was not worried about it. I continued to eat the expenses as I drove back and forth to STS on five separate occasions to pick up more miscellaneous components.


Here is where the dispute begins.

On my second trip to visit STS while I was perhaps 30-40% finished installing the kit on my car (about a week after receiving it) I was talking with them about the circumstances of how I had purchased the kit as an effort to explain why I kept driving down to pick up more parts. They instantly knew what kit I had purchased. They expressed concern and said I should check out the turbos prior to installing them. Up to that point I knew everything needed a good cleaning, but had been led to believe that the kit came off of a running car and was ready to be installed on mine. I should state that I can turn a wrench and follow instructions, but I'm not a mechanic nor have I ever seen a turbo before. But I felt I was in good hands, as I was constantly talking with STS during my build.

When I brought the turbos in to STS I was told that both turbos were completely shot, that they would both require rebuilding prior to ever considering being used in a vehicle. When I asked them about rebuilding them I was told that they would need to ship them in to the manufacturer for me and that with the extend of the damage it would likely run about $1500 dollars to rebuild them. At that point, out of sympathy I believe, they offered me the chance to purchase two new turbos at their cost. I told them that the seller of the kit told me he would take are of the turbos for the first year and that I would appreciated the offer but I had to get in touch with him.

When I left STS I called HeavyChevy and left him a voicemail telling him how my build was coming along, and asked him to give me a call back. A few days later he did call me and I explained the situation with the turbos. His comment to me at that time was "...give me a few days to decide what to do...". I explained to him that I was going out of town with work and I'd be gone for the next two weeks. But that I would like to have something going soon so I could keep working when I got back. He indicated that he understood.

As my two week project was coming to a close I left a couple emails/voicemessages for HeavyChevy to find out what the plan was going to be, if we would rebuild them, or if I should come up with the difference to just replace them. I never received a response. I continued to work on my kit the following week sending email and leaving voicemessages every day or two. Then the following two weeks I was back on the road, again calling and emailing hoping to be able to move forward when I returned home. I returned home again without any indication from HeavyChevy that he was receiving my messages or attempts to contact him. The entire time I am feeling very frustrated, but now after so many weeks with absolutely no communication from him I am despondent.

I began to search the forums for posts from him to see if I could find anyone who seemed to know him on a personal level. I then sent short PM's asking if these members could contact HeavyChevy and ask him to get in touch with me. I recevied a few responses from the members I sent these requests to but none from HeavyChevy. I then went to the forum listed in his signature and signed up for an account there. I send him PM's on that forum where his status is listed as 'Owner' and his account showed daily activity. Again no response. I then sent PM's to those members of the other forum who appeared to know him on a personal level and again received responses from some members but no response from HeavyChevy.

I even went so far as to phone a neighbor of HeavyChevy, a very nice lady wrote down my name and number and said she would deliver it to his home. Desperate measures indeed, yet the entire time I never indicated to anyone in any way how frustrated I was or how I believed I was a victim of a hit and run.

And then, finally, I received a response from HeavyChevy. Last night (Friday 27th 2008 at 1:30am MST) he sends me an email stating,
"Send me the turbo kit back and I will refund your money." I receive email 24x7 thanks to blackberry, and happened to be awake at the time. I immediately sent him a reply asking him to give me a call, but I assume he must have sent it and then logged off as I did not hear back from him. This morning I sent more email and called his cell phone more times, but have not received any communication from him.

Everytime he would tell me that something else wasn't included after all, or everytime I found that something wasn't shipped and I had to run down and drop more money at STS, I always said to him that I understood because of the problems he had from the builder who worked on his car and how he didn't have possesion of his car etc etc. Now, having my car sit up in the air out of commission while I wait to simply hear some word back on the gaurantee that HeavyChevy gave me when I purchased this kit, I am afraid I don't feel so sorry for him.

In all honesty, last night, his email was the last straw. After I had already told him that the 'only' thing I have left to do with my kit is bolt in the turbos, after I've spent weeks working on my build (I'm slow, but my time is free when I'm home), after I've spent over one thousand dollars to make my kit 'complete' like it was advertised, after all of this... his only response is to offer to buy my kit from me??? I told him flatly that I was not interested in selling my kit, it was not for sale, that I am only interested in claiming the warranty that he promised he would give me on my turbos for the first year.

I really can't imagine what reasons there can be for treating any buyer in this way. And believe me I've tried to make up plenty of excuses for him as I went weeks without any response. I don't have much expectation right now that there will ever be a response to this thread by HeavyChevy, but as per the forum rules I've laid out the facts of this dispute as I know them to be, and I will email this link to HeavyChevy and invite him to state his side.

Unfortunately this will likely cost us both more to resolve it in the end that it should, but at least my pocketbook will rest easier knowing my brother will be able to work on my case for free.

As for my car... how long should I wait before I have to eat this just to have my daily driver back on the road? It's no fun raising a family of 5 kids with only one vehicle...

 

What A Mess

 

Sorry to hear of your problems.

I hope that you have his guarantee in writing. Personally, I would justgo down to small claims court and sue him.

I also remember several post by him along time ago about some of his problems but now I wonder if there was any truth to it.

 

My mind 1st jumps to what you should have done differently. Be then it comes back to what you should do now.

Crap after reading the FOR SALE Thread I would not have touched it. What a bunch of BS

If it was me I would tell him to pay up and then you will remove the system and ship it back.

After all you paid him before he shipped it to you so he should pay you before you ship it back.

I would then try to sell the $1000 in parts you bought to get back as close as you can to even.

In retrospect I would have had the turbos checked out before I did any install whatsoever. As you said STS is close so that would have been simple to do.

Other then that I would have the Turbos rebuilt or upgraded and go after him in small claims court.

Good Luck

 

Bummer!!! Sorry to hear , hope it works out for you!

 

That just plain sucks and I hope he makes this right or your brother gets a good piece of him

 

You've probably already done so, but have you tried to get supporting vendor American_HP@Total Perf to assist resolve this?
He seemed to be friendly with HeavyChevy in the link you provided from the original ad.
Good luck with getting it resolved.

 

Heavy Chevy, man up and make it right. Fix the turbos.

 

Yes, he was one of the members that I PM'd to ask if they could contact HeavyChevy and ask him to contact me. Completely unrelated to my dispute with HeavyChevy I have to say I have not dealt with American_HP before. But after talking with him a few times, I would be very pleased to do business with him in the future, he was very responsive and professional.

 

Going in to this, I really didn't know what I didn't know. Now that I'm at the end of the build and have a great knowledge of what I do not know, I couldn't agree with you more.

And it's a great point, why build it if the kit should have just been returned. I really believed he would stand behind it, as we talked about on the phone before we exchanged money/goods. Because I didn't hear anything contrary until now, when my build is complete (minus the turbos of course) I kept pressing forward anticipating having something worked out by the time I was finished.

 

In the interest of archiving this dispute as per forum rules, I wanted to paste this quote from HeavyChevy. This is from an email today. Unfortunately from his closing remarks it appears he has cut off all direct contact with me, so we'll have to let our representatives work it out from here.

"...if you buy a used item, and it doesn't work, generally you are out of luck. I told you exactly what I meant, I will accept a RETURN on the items if they go bad. I never said anything that would lead you to believe that I would rebuild or buy you new turbos if those went bad."
- email received from HeavyChevy tonight

I have only two responses to his comment.

First, why did he tell me he needed time to decide what to do, and then proceed to ignore me for almost a month. Why did he not immediately say, Oh, well I didn't know they were bad, please send the whole kit right back to me.

And second, how much more illogical can his claim possibly be. According to him, when he said he'd stand behind the turbos, he meant that if they went bad after nine months of driving it around he'd simply refund my money on the entire kit. I could 'simply' uninstall a complete STS kit from my car and ship it back to him and voila I'd be all squared away.

Nevermind that installing an STS kit permanently modify's a C5, the cutting and drilling that I had to do, all four splashguards (ok, so they're plastic and replaceable) drilling the K-members... Nevermind the time it takes to uninstall a kit... Nevermind that there are no instructions on how to reassemble your car after removing a kit... Nevermind that I would only be returning a partial kit meaning only those parts that actuall were shipped to me in the first place, leaving me with a bunch of used kit components. According to him doing something so illogical must have made perfect sense to me, so much so that I went ahead and agreed to take a chance on his kit knowing I could just simply return the whole thing within a year if the turbos went bad. Well, they didn't go bad... they came bad, and there was no mention of returning it until last night.

I took a chance on this kit, despite the issues he'd had with it, only because he said he would stand behind the turbos for a year. The rest I knew I could deal with, I could clean or fix or replace little things, but the turbos to me were everything.

Well, I can't think of anything else to put down here. I hope I've included enough information to be of use to someone else in the future. Hopefully there are lessons to be taken from this.

I still would hope to have HeavyChevy tell his side of the story, I don't doubt it will differ greatly from my own, but it's not fair to judge this issue only hearing one side...

 

Damn, you sent him a bank check.

 

Dang. Best of luck to you. That's gotta be frustrating.

 

Unfortunately any warranty is only as good as the company or person standing behind it.

In this case HeavyChevy has shown his true colors.

I would have them rebuilt at STS. $1500 in the big picture isn't worth the ongoing frustration.

Install and Enjoy.

Then after his A** in small claims court.

 

Just an update on the cost of rebuilding the turbos. I've had a couple folks message me about the cost to rebuild their own turbos, and that perhaps it should only be a couple hundred dollars for a rebuilt kit and that it's simple enough to do myself.

Again, in most car related things I'm purely a purchaser and a monkey with a wrench who can follow directions, this is not my field of expertise. So I can only pass on what I've been told by those who I consider to be experts in their respective fields. In this case, my turbos were inspected by more than one person at STS. As they are the retailers as well as the assemblers of these specific turbos I take their word as gospel.

According to them, because of the 'play' that exist with these particular turbos they have been 'touching down'. When this happens the housings need to be machined, and matched with a new set of blades as well as new bearings (sleeve type bearings, not ball). All of this work equates to rebuilding everything and not just replacing bearings (journal bearings? I can't remember what they called them now).

It may be possible to simply replace the bearings and drive on them for a while without problems. But I'm not in a position of expertise to say, so again I am relying on STS to advise me on their turbos. Since they felt that the wear on the blades and housings was to the point that they would need a complete rebuild they gave me an estimate of about 750 to rebuild each turbo.

Obviously I'm still open to having this resolved, I suppose that character flaw of mine is what got me in this mess in the first place. But as HeavyChevy has informed me that he will not be communicating with me again after his last email and that I would have to have our lawyers talk, I suppose I will have to decide to rebuild or replace these with new turbos at my expense and let the courts decide what to do.

Thanks for all of your comments, I want to stress though that so far you are only hearing one side of this. I wish he had/would take the time to communicate his side so this dispute could be archived properly.

 

I'm not a turbo expert, but if they have play in them they probably have been spun to the extent of messing up the housings. The machine work alone involved with re-boring the housings is where most of the money is at. I wouldn't want to take a chance at a repaired housing either. Like I say, I'm not a turbo expert though. I think I would just rather have a new setup.

As far as this issue, I have been in your shoes before. I bought an engine from a place out in CA and I'm in AL. The machined engine kit turned out to be nothing like what I ordered, and I was extremely disastisfied. It was like pulling teeth to get the thing sent back, and it was very frustrating. I ended up paying the $300 handling charge to get it back to them, and I almost never got my money back from the original purchase. They sent me $1600 in 4 seperate checks amounting to $400 a piece. I didn't even think about looking at the dates when I deposited the checks in the bank, and one was for the day I got them and the other three were post dated in the coming weeks after that.

Shortly after I deposited the checks, I went and wrote another check for another engine here locally. The guy was touchy about trusting a check, and I assured him all was well. So he goes up to the bank the next day with a $2200 check and tries to cash it. They tell him insufficient funds, which resulted in him calling me and he was very Irate. I assured him I would take care of it and drove down to the bank. I had to transfer money off of a credit card to resolve the issue and pay him cash. Talk about a mess.

And if that wasn't enough, I got another surprise. I had bought a 454 engine here locally that had been built from that guy mentioned above and I paid $2200 for it. That was the check I wrote that turned out to have insufficient funds. I heard it run in the car before he pulled it. I got it home and started tearing it apart, and of course... what did I find?? 4 badly damaged crank journals, and 4 spun main bearings. The cam sprocket had been walking up against the front of the block and the whole block was just trash. The crank had already been turned 10/10 and could not really go any further without risking it. Not worth putting the money into if I wanted to take the gamble. That would have been another 1500 for machine shop work. And I was OWNED, because of the simply dotted line where I signed- "as is"....

$2200 down the drain. I still have the valve train assembly, which was the only thing worth salvaging out of the motor. I'm still waiting for a local show so I can pay $100 to reserve a set up at a swap meet and sell the parts for $25

You have to be very careful with used parts, especially performance parts, because they are only on the car for one reason- To make it go harder and faster. Chances are, they aren't gonna me much good.

I hope you get your issue resolved and I would stay after him until he makes good on the deal. Good luck. If my post is out of line with comments and opinions, please excuse it because I didn't mean to get off topic of your Original Post.

 

I also would contact the moderators about him and see what they can do on your behalf.

 

I would strongly urge you to NOT attempt the Turbo rebuild yourself.

These are built to very close tolerances and spin at up to 25000 rpm.

If you screw up and the turbo goes it can take your engine along with it.

Let the pros do it.

 

Actually, it was off topic

lol but I'm really glad you shared it Your story and advice have helped me review my own situation. And having just returned with the family from church, I can't help but feel like I need to take a deep breath, review the life's lesson I have learned from this experience, and move on with my life without worrying about carrying his baggage. God knows I've got enough of my own baggage to worry about all the people out there that I can't control.

I'll wait till I meet with my brother at his office tomorrow to see if it makes sense to pursue this, but I kinda feel like I need to move on and free myself before I get sucked too deeply into the moral mollasses that has been poured in my path.

I also wish you good luck with your greivence, and here's to only ever buying brand new parts from reputable companies who operate in our own hometowns (it's a good thought at least )

 

Two great points, and I have the first now tatoo'd to the inside of my eyelids right next to 'get everything in writing'.

And I think you're correct, there may be no way to actually 'win' in these cases. It's better to move on knowing my integrity is intact.