IslandBoy

Dont feel like spending alot of time talking about this becasue im busy trying to figure out why my car doesnt run right.

worst car shop i have dealt with, well actually second to redshift.
worst business in general i have ever dealt with.

nobody EVER picks up the shop phone or personal cell phone. even if you leave messages you never get a call back.

they told me around 2 weeks to put an rb25 in to an s13. took over 5 months.

when i did get in contact, they told me the same bs every time.

when i picked up the car, there were many problems. I told them what happend, only one of the problems got temporarly fixed. they thought the car ran fine. but it didnt. and i ended up being right.

jonathan seems to be a nice guy, knows alot about cars. marti seems not to have the ability to run a busniess. both very hard to get in contact with. the rest of the people seem to be like jerks, especially the asian guy.

i ended up gettin 300 bucks takin off the price for the "delay", def. not enough for all of the sshit I and my mother went thorugh. im dead broke now, and mother has had to make sacrifices on my behalf. they failed to see that and well that ended up leaving a very sour taste in my mouth.

i would not reccomend anyone to get work doen there, even the smallest job.
learn from my mistake. its a complete joke over therre, theres another customer who has had his car there for over an year, all over a simple sr/s13 swap.

im officially done talking about this shit so ill let my freinds and family elaborate for any questions u might have.

RedSuns

Sorry for trying help you when you got screwed by another shop.I offered you any sort of support after the AIM conersation 10 minutes ago. But now you go and make this thread.

IslandBoy

nope u didnt. nothing u or marti can say is goign to change the way i think about your company. its takin alot to push me to make this thread, but i feel everyone else should know what i had to go through. your services are no longer wanted. ur attempt to satisfy customer has failed. nothing was accomplished in our aim conversation. sorry man but u dont have enough time to meet the demands of your customers. ur a nice guy and i wish u the best of luck, but i got screwed over by VIP.

RedSuns

Your frustration is overwhelming your logic right now. I am offering everthing I can to trouble-shoot your issues...but you are not listening.

HKS

I'm matt's best pal, I've seen him go through alot with his ordeal. He went to redshift because they had a reputation for rb swaps, they ended up stealing $3000 of parts from him, closing a business thus protecting themselves from legal recourse.

Then matt finds VIP Garage, he seemed enthused about it, so I helped him take his car there one weekend, the guys there seemed really professional and well-spirited.

I don't know what happened, to cause a 2 week estimated time to turn to a nearly 18 week wait time for a "yet simple" rb25det swap but matt definitely got screwed over bigtime by VIP.

Things wrong with his car:

Bad knock sensor <-- Not VIPs Fault, although if they performed an error code check it would have revealed it.

All gauges read way off. Tach revs way higher, I think he needs a GTS cluster or something.

FPR installed without any sort of fuel pressure gauge or simple AFR testing. I have not touched the fpr so when a wideband is hooked up we'll see how lean/rich its really running.
No power steering belt - apparantly not under the shops control, hard part to find.

Anyways, I'm really curious to hear from johnathan his explanation for taking such a damn long time. I talked to him over the phone and in all honesty he sounds like a very responsible owner and stuck out for matt at the time i was calling, even so, theres no excuse for the long wait.

On an upside the swap looks halfway decent, ALOT of t-bolt clamps were loose, battery terminal clamps were loose, and other things, which were of course an easy fix.

I would like to see the outcome of this be good and matt get his car running right, and this thread ending in a +1 customer service for VIP because they do seem to have their heart in the right place, but don't set their priorities straight (an observation). And I do think matt is venting on the internet right now, but I think anyone would.

I think its VIPs responsibility is to satisfy their customer, I think if they openly help matt find solutions then it would be win-win for both.

Thats all I have to say for now

MGM

RedSuns

The previous order was missing many things. Alot of parts were needed that were nver supplied.
A bad knock sensor would cause the engine to run in fail-safe mode. If you don't know what that is then I advise you to look it up.


A 4 cylinder tach with a 6 cylinder input. He could of bought another tach..but that would of added more money and time for the project.


He is still on stock turbo and it is easier to get an aftermmarket unit rather than trying to track down a stock one. Plus his stock FPR was damaged.




I went to a total of 6 differnt parts stores(4 the day he picked the car up) trying to find the belt. No luck anywhere. When he finds the belt I will pay for it.



We have only one full time tech and I am not able to make it to the shop due to my high priority day job. Our full time tech left for the Mariines and I was working 16 hour days. It was very hard to get a lot done during that time frame. Martin knows next to nothing about the RB so he couldn't do much.




I want to see this work also. I could completly run off and leave matt with his problems since I completed my part of the deal...but I won't do that. Because I care. I called Matt while he was driving home because I cared. I asked him to contact me when he safely made it home with his car...because I care. I want to work with him through all of this so he can have his dream car...becasue I care. When he simmers down I will help him with all of my abilities. Hopefully the work that is being performed now will not make the issues worse.


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IslandBoy

ecu showed code 34. we found the knock sensors. both of them werent even plugged in. we plugged them in and i could feel a difference. now on to the other issues.

JJSpinALot

wow, 5 months for an RB25 swap. what a bunch of tards.

HKS

Yep, both knock sensor connectors were ziptied away, connected them, reset ecu and the car ran a hell of alot better. And if whoever completed the swap (I assume you) had given the car a good drive, or made it a practice to check for error codes, than this post probably would have never came into existance. And the hesitation and bucking might just indicate it is in some sort of fail safe timing retarded mode.

As for the long wait, you were the ones doing the swap, if parts weren't supplied, then the customer must be informed.

I'm sure you didnt expect to take 5 mos. to do the swap, but matt should have been given a more realistic time estimate. Also, if i think he wasn't extremely insistent, and didn't call to checkup all the time or drive up there, I'm sure it would have been another few months just to even see his car.

I am a little biased because he is my bud, but after 12 weeks of waiting he eventually had to purchase another vehicle just to get around.

If you put five hours a day in the car, and had it done in even 2 weeks, it would have taken a total of 70 hours.

From the 3050 hour total it shows your shop put a total of 1.5 minutes into the car every day.

The motor runs good though. I guess thats a plus

RedSuns

I will take full responsability for the knock sensor issue since I was the one that had to open the intake manifold to fix a coolant leak. While the car was in my possession I never felt a need to check for trouble codes since to motor ran smooth and did not shows any signs of sensor failure. Either the motor is in failsafe mode or it is not. There is not grey area with that.