unitedelements

Hey, I heard through the grapevine that Bill closed up shop, and headed overseas. Anyone know for sure?

tommypenguin

I just was tuned there a couple months ago. He went overseas to the middle east for two weeks to tune cars there but didn't mention a thing about closing up.

5280Racer

Bill has left the country... He was offered a 3 year contract with the same group of guys he was going an seeing once a month so him and his family moved there last week. A new company has taken over the whats left of the shop and Ian who was Bill's protege and very goo dat what he does has taken over the dyno's and the running services. I can vouch along with many others and call up Colorado Speed and Performance ask for Lonnie and talk to him about Ian's abilities. I spent last monday with Ian after work he had come over the my house and we were get my car dialed in. If you want to get in contact with Ian pm me and I will share his contact numbers with you.

tommypenguin

That's a bummer for us that Bill left. Can you pm Ian's info to me?

AZZ-KIKR

I spoke with Bill and yes, it is a loss for us who have used him for his tuning experience. I had been meaning to get with him to finish my e85 tune and I missed out with him now being gone. I am now not sure who to use as there is only a couple guys who had touched my cars tune, him being my first choice.

Wop1

Clint at A.I.R. set my car up w/ E-85 as part of a supercharger build. It works flawlessly, and after a couple of trips to Bandimere that had me running too fast, he dialed it in so I could stay over 11.5 and not need a roll cage. Good luck.

5280Racer

Ian who took over Bill's is a great young fella... I trust him after seeing him work with Bill and see his tuning capabilities and skills.

petsur

Clint are Colorado Performance Unlimited taught Bill, I'd give him a call.

S.U. Vette

Who told you that?

5280Racer

I was thinking the same thing so I emailed Bill yesterday... go the answer I expected.

INFANTRYCPT

To make a long story as short as I can, I am a 100% disabled veteran who was promised by my wife that I could buy my dream car if I could 're-learn to walk after being injured in the line of doing my job. (I am now a medically retired Army Ranger) I used to dream about buying a Vette but it never made sense to buy one and let it sit for the majority of the time. I was used to being "gone" @ 3/4 of the time. I was recently told my engine is blown (2003 Z06) by a dealership under VERY MYSTERIOUS circumstances and want a second opinion from a trusted shop before dropping a good majority of my limited fixed income.
Thank you for your time and help.

CPT (ret) USA
Jacob Humble

AZZ-KIKR

Holy ****, that's funny.. Don't believe everything you hear, bud. That couldn't be further from the truth..



Yea, I can imagine what you were told.. Although I would have liked to hear Bill's response..

AZZ-KIKR

Thank you for your Service, Sir.

Where are you located? Also, what are the details on your Corvette? Did you buy it from a private party, dealer, etc? I would try one of these 2 options.. Where is the car right now?

1. Call Trent with Colorado performance Unlimited. Depending on where the car is, he might be able to talk to you about it or if it is at a dealership he could possibly look at it or talk to a service advisor.

(303) 250-6547

2. Call Purifoy Chevrolet in Ft Lupton, Co. Talk with one of their service advisers, or again, if you can get the car hauled there, etc. They are the most reputable "Corvette" Dealership in Colorado..

(303) 659-8311


Good luck, let us know what you find out..

INFANTRYCPT

I live in Monument, CO. It is a 2003 Z06 that I bought from the original owner, who put money into it but not a ton. It has lots of unique carbon fiber in the interior that I have never seen anywhere else. I will post a few pictures of the car and I later today after I wake up, it has been a very long day. I will also post more specifics about the engine and such as well. Thank you for the info, REALLY. It just seems like some time a shop sees a vette and automatically assumes you have money falling out of your wallet

The car is at Al Serra south. They were NOT my first choice. I had some one back into the front bumper about a year ago at a Panera Bread and it did a number on the front bumper but it was all cosmetic, Abbra auto body did a very nice job fixing it in the promised time frame and matched the paint perfectly. Naturally they were my first choice, but they were not able to do the work, not even at any locations at Denver. After calling around to many places it seemed like my choices were limited and some of the choices seemed more like they just wanted a chance to work on a Z06 instead of really knowing what they were doing. So it SEEMED LIKE the dealership was the best place to go.

I take immaculate care of my car, it is always garaged and driven as much as I can, but I have three kids at home who all have busy schedules, including after school sports and martial arts in the evenings. Being a two seat car, I can only drive it during the day or when I only have one passenger. My wife is willing to ride with me, under the agreement I do not "get on the throttle" or anything else that pins her back in the seat or break the tires loose, etc... My car has been balanced, blueprinted, had a cam installed blah blah blah, I can talk about that later but I have had it on the dyno and it has 502RWHP, nothing spectacular but for me that's plenty.

Here's the full version. On 23 June of this year I was clipped in the right rear side of my car, hard enough for the tub to need repair work done. On this day and at this time my car ran perfectly fine with NO PROBLEMS AT ALL. At first I was told that it would take about three weeks to get it done. I waited patiently for three weeks, without hearing a word from the dealership. After three weeks I called the dealership and asked when I would be able to pick my car up, and was given more of an excuse than an explanation. I was told that the job was complicated and difficult, aluminum is difficult to work with and jobs like this on as nice a car as this couldn't be rushed, so it would be another week to week and a half. So again I waited patiently without calling every few days to check on the progress, trusting them to do the right thing with my car and with their word... Another week and a half passed and I called them again and was told it would still be another two to three weeks. At this point I did become more demanding but did not lose my cool, I told the person I had been dealing with that I needed more communication from them, I retracted "them" from the statement and said "you" to be more specific to the person.

At this point I was very upset, feeling that I had been lead down a path of BS my car had been a side project for them when they had nothing else to do, and contacted my insurance (USAA). USAA now also became more involved requiring daily updates from the dealership. It was only at this point that I started to receive communication in the form of e-mail with pictures of the progress.

@ two weeks later I went and picked it up. It was brought out to me running, but the friend who had given me a ride saw them jump start it, under normal circumstances that is no big deal it only needs to be driven, it has an Optima red top battery. It sounded fine, revved fine and ran fine and I had absolutely NO warning lights on in the dash.

However...I noticed right away that the recently done paint work did not match the rest of the paint on the car. When I insisted to talk to the body shop manager, I was able to talk to him and was told that being a 2003 that it was difficult if not impossible to match the paint with 2014 paint (really???) and that "it was actually USAA's call not to match the paint" and that I would have to take that up with USAA. At this point it was after 1730 and my claim adjuster was not there, so I left her a message and talked to an after hours person. I was told that since I was not satisfied my adjuster would call me back the next day when she got into the office. I was not willing to leave my car there another day anyway.

I spent @ 15 minutes in the parking lot reprogramming my radio sound preferences and preset stations, and still NO WARNING LIGHTS, SOUNDS, NOTHING, ETC.... (for those familiar with Colorado Springs) I left the dealership, made a right onto Academy BLVD, came to the stoplight, stopped to wait for the light to change (still no warning lights) at Airport and Academy and made a left onto Airport. I went down one block where a u-turn is allowed and came to a stop at the light, to wait for the light to turn green (still no warning lights) I waited for the light to change, made a u-turn and came back to Academy on Airport to turn right and head north, the light was red so I had to stop and wait for traffic (still no warning lights).

At this point things get more interesting though, because it just died on me, which is pretty odd. It usually never dies on me under any circumstances, even in the winter when it is cold, she is a cold blooded car, but still doesn't die. I try to restart it and it just clicks like the battery is dead, but I still have some power to roll the window down to wave people past. I kill the radio and a/c and try to restart it, but get the same result. It had NO loss of engine power, made NO odd noises, had NO warning lights come on, NOTHING.

I immediately call the dealership and ask them to come down the three quarters to half a block and help me. Instead of coming to help, they insist on telling me they will call a tow truck, instead of sending some one with jumper cables or coming to help push it out of the way across the intersection. At this point I have had enough of the BS that the person who I had been dealing with up to the point before I came to pick up my car, and I gave him more than an earful, If I could have reached through the phone and choked him out I would have.

Please refer back to the time it is now, it is during rush hour and I am sitting at an intersection on one of the busiest roads in town. I have physical limitations that I just have to accept now and live my life, pushing a car by myself over a small hump is not something I am able to do. Traffic is backing up behind me, I am getting more upset, people are getting more upset at, it would seem to them "this a-hole who would dare block traffic on their road" but one person stops and asks if he can help me push it across the road and I say yes. About a quarter way across it seems like I now have a full team of horses helping and I look back to see there are 3 more people pushing for a total of 5 people, myself included.

Awesome, but one one problem, I can't run and before I can even say anything, I trip and am able to see my car going about 10mph (from upside down) crash into a truck from a quartering angle to the right front bumper. It doesn't seem to do much more than crunch the bumper and and right headlight. The driver of the truck is more concerned about my car than he is his truck, mainly because all it did was leave a tiny smudge of red transfer paint. All the people helping push apologize like crazy and at this point now help finish pushing it into the gas station parking lot.

I sat there for another ten minutes, while I call the police but am told that since the other driver left, my car was the only car damaged and it was my fault technically they don't need to send an officer unless anyone is hurt. I get done with the police and call the insurance to let them know and @ five minutes later the service manager shows up. This is probably only because I just chewed out one of his employees up one side and down the other, he knows nothing about the accident. I make him wait until I am done with the insurance, and the insurance advises me that since this seems to be an issue related to the service it just had at the dealership that it needs to go back to the dealership so they can make it right. The date is 19 AUG.

They call me the next morning to tell me that my car died because the battery had a "bad cell" and ask how old it is. I tell them it is only 6 months old and where I bought it. They get a replacement battery. They call me the next day to tell me that they replaced the battery and "started it up to see if any other lights came on" and that "they heard horrible noises coming from the engine and immediately turned it off, so they called the insurance to "get an authorization to diagnose it further" and the insurance gave them one. So they tell me the scoped the engine through the oil pan and saw "all kinds of metal filings and shavings in the oil, and that the oil was as black as could be." The "odd" thing about it is that, I have proof of when I last changed the oil less than 2000 miles ago and I only run royal purple.

But from the info they obtained by scoping it and the oil, they conclude my engine is blown. I wasn't given any other proof. My car never smoked, it just turned 75k on the odometer, It NEVER had any loss of engine power, never knocked, pinged, squealed or any other funny noise to foretell that anything was going wrong or was wrong.I asked for and had a meeting with the owner along with the managers of the service department and body shop. The day of the meeeting at the time I was given by the owner, I show up on time and ready to talk about why I think the circumstances under which they told me my engine was blown and to get more proof, the owner first makes sure to keep me waiting @ an extra 45 minutes. They had the wagons already circled and would admit that the only thing they did wrong during the entire process was not communicating with me on a more consistent basis. The owner "insisted that they would never treat me wrong or any other veteran." I told him I was a 100% disabled veteran from combat related injuries and I live on a fixed income so I have to make sure of the diagnosis THE OWNER made the comment "well, we all have our own disabilities in one way or the other." The friend who gave me the ride to pick up my car was with me then as well and wanted to choke him out after this comment, we both did. Mainly because we are both disabled veterans and have our own demons to fight, instead of car dealers who could care less about anything other than their bank account.

The service manager has since given me a "quote of $11,400 to rebuild my engine. But this would be through Jasper engines, and he told me they would rebuild it to the same specs as it had "before it was blown." I have since talked to TWO different representatives (it is time to look over their shoulder and fact check every single thing they say) over the phone at Jasper Engines in Indiana and was told by BOTH that as soon as they received the engine from the dealer and cracked it open and saw it had been modified beyond stock they would send it back to the dealer without touching it and they do not rebuild engines to anything other than exact factory specs for that engine and year. For that amount I could buy and have installed a 427 from Blueprint Engines that would be a "drop in upgrade" to 625 HP / 565 FT LBS with the only extra thing would be a different reluctor wheel, and they would reprogram my ECM for free as part of the upgrade. This pretty much would be an @ 50hp upgrade from what I have/had if they are correct.

But there is NO WAY IN HELL I would pay them a single dime to do any engine work. I would rather pay three toddlers with a new set of plastic toy tools and see what they come up with...

My car is still there and was told this morning that it would take another week to a week and a half. I will keep this thread updated as new developments emerge, but I would be extremely interested to hear what anyone thinks or knows.

petsur

Ok, well I guess I'll tell Clint you said he's full of it.

AZZ-KIKR

I don't care if you do.. I know Clint, I think he has had some good success with his business and has a good following and I would wish him nothing but the best.. It is just humorous at times how things get portrayed and stated when there were those of us who were CPU customers, way back when Clint and Trent attempted a business partnership..

S.U. Vette

Someone has misinformed you.

Clint does not work for CPU. He did before, and while he was there, he was trained to tune by Trent, his partner at the time. Trent is the sole owner of CPU now and Clint is the owner of AIR.

Neither of these guys work/worked with Bill, and neither trained him.

erichg1000

I'm going to see Ian this afternoon to diagnose my tune and clean it up. Missing at low RPMs and a big dead spot off idle half the time.

tommypenguin

Can I reach Ian via the shop number or do I need his personal info? Was going to see if he could tweak my cold start portion of my tune and workout a little hesitation at partial throttle 2500rpm. Thanks

ClintHuggerSS

Old thread I know, but just saw this and wanted to clarify.

A.I.R. existed first (originally called Altitude Intense Racing, then shortly afterwords American Intense Racing) with myself and Trent as friends that became partners. As things happen we split many years ago and we went our separate ways. The business name stayed with me as it was in my name, CPU started shortly afterwords in his name only.

As far as tuning, self taught and agreed I never helped Bill in tuning never said that I did, I've never met him. I always wanted to meet him.
I have had a few of his cars at AIR over the years, customers always spoke fondly of him . I wish him all the best overseas, I think that's just awesome !!