I wrote this up the other day and I'm probably going to post it on nasioc and rs25.com but I wanted to know your guys' thoughts before I post it. Should I change anything? Or is it just so beautifully written I should win a pulitzer (sp?) for it? Thanks ahead of time And sorry it's so long My Hell I’m building an ej22t into a 2.35t capable of anything. I got the motor from a friend with a wrecked legacy turbo for two hundred and sixty bucks. That was everything, turbo, heads, block, pistons… everything was immaculate. Cool. What do I do now? I decided to get the best stuff I can so I start looking online… fmic, injectors, fuel rails, methanol injection… etc… I figure I will use the stock ej22t rods and get some custom TechWorksEng (TWE) pistons (made by wiseico). Along with the pistons from TWE I will get cams, valves, titanium valve springs, and titanium retainers so I can raise my redline and enjoy boost longer. I called them on March 3rd, told them my plans, and ordered everything. We started taking the car apart the following week and preparing it for it’s new engine. During this time, I realized that I might need a new tranny to hold the power. So I send a pm to Garage Tuning to ask about a possible tranny that can support 300 whp. I was suggested a JDM WRX transmission as long as I don’t beat on it too bad (I went for a year on the RS tranny while boosting 6-7 psi… I think I can handle it). I would also need a stronger clutch and flywheel so I order a ACT full face organic clutch and lightweight flywheel through them. I also ordered Subaru 4-pot front and 2-pot rear brakes (they already were attached to the tranny so I would just receive the axles, hubs, driveshaft, tranny, slave cylinder, everything. Alright! New motor, a stronger tranny, and new brakes. I was pumped. And this is the point where everything fell apart. I will tell you my story with each vendor separately. Garage Tuning (GT) So I ordered everything in the beginning of March and sent payment via paypal right away. They received it and I was excited. When I ordered everything I told them I would like to have the tranny by april 19th at the latest. This is over a month to get a tranny to my friends doorstep (Mike Wray, legacypgt was doing all the work). Kevin at GT assured me it would be there in time. I never heard from him until I sent him a pm a few weeks later asking if the tranny would still be there by april 19th. His response was, it’s on the boat. Hmm… on the boat… on the boat… FROM JAPAN?!?! It’s never going to arrive in time. He still assured me it would be there. Then a pm was sent with one week asking for an update. The boat is here, we’ll ship it right away. Then a pm was sent the day before, he still assured it would be there. Well, april 19th passed by with nothing. From then on it was next week next week next week. Eventually some time in June a tranny shows up at my friend’s doorstep. He gives me a call and tells me that it’s a tranny and a rear diff. That’s it. No brakes, no clutch, no flywheel, no driveshaft, no axles, and no hubs. So I call up GT and tell him what I’m missing. Kevin apologizes but says there is some good news. He oversold his trannies and the one I have sitting in my friends garage isn’t just a wrx tranny. It’s an RA tranny. But there is a catch. He wants me to use the stock clutch and flywheel that came with it and eat the cost of the ACT stuff. In my mind I’m thinking… are you kidding me? He screwed up and I’m going to pay for it? No way! He didn’t even call me and ask me if it was ok to do it before he shipped the wrong transmission. I think it would have been different if he called me up and asked if it would be ok… but he didn’t. Oh, and the clutch and flywheel have been on backorder for 3 months anyway, so I don’t have that stuff yet either. And here is the other kicker. Another package arrived. It was a set of wrx brakes. I instantly called him up and told him he shipped the wrong thing. He insisted he was right, according to him, the price I paid was for just wrx brakes. I still had the pm’s he sent me that included the price and everything included. So I just forwarded the messages back to him and he apologized. But… he didn’t have the brakes, so now I have to wait for the next shipment sometime in august before I get my brakes. So after all this, I’m still waiting on brakes and my clutch/flywheel… 3.5 months later. TechWorksEng (TWE) This is another wonderful story. As with GT I ordered everything at the beginning of March. I can’t remember exactly who I talked to but he took my order and agreed everything would be at my friends place by April 19th. Now, I didn’t really know this, but TWE hates to reply to e-mails. I kept sending them, but no responses were ever returned. So I had to call the majority of the time which is a pita because I don’t have any written confirmation of when stuff will arrive. So I call and call and I keep getting the typical response that it’s right here and we’re waiting until the pistons are done before we ship the stuff for the heads. Until one day I call and I get a different person. He tells me that the person I was talking to before was “let go†and he took horrible notes and we pretty much have to start all over with the order. He does know that I paid him though, which is good. So that whole month or so that I was getting told everything was ok, wasn’t. The order to wiseico never went in and now everything is going to be late. I kept asking about the stuff for my heads and he said he would just ship them with the pistons when they’re done. I wanted them earlier so we could build the heads and when the pistons arrived we could just throw everything together. He said he would ship everything right away. After a few weeks I called them up again, now I need to send in my old cams so they could be re-ground because they had no cores. We rip the cams out of the old heads and 2-day ship them up there (which isn’t cheap… like 80 dollars or so). Now it’s June, I’ve graduated from college and would like to have my car back. Finally I get news that the pistons are done and are shipped. I call up Mike and tell him to keep an eye out for a package. He never gets one. I get home from college and find them on my stairway (the place my parents usually put my mail and random stuff). Great. They shipped them to the wrong place. I also get news that the cams should be done soon. So I decided to head up to Minneapolis (where my car is… I’m from NW of Chicago) and hope to put the car together and get tuned before the rally out in Maine (second to last week of July). My GF lives in Minneapolis so I have a place to stay and I can relax and hang out with her. So it’s alright. I only expected to be up there two weeks at the most. Back to car stuff, I get a call from my Mom back home saying that she has a note about a package that is arriving at the house in two days, they want 80 dollars for her to pick it up, she said it was from some car company. Fantastic, I talked to TWE before and they said they would pay for the shipping of the head stuff and now they shipped it to the wrong place again and want her to pay? We didn’t really have a choice, so she pays for it, then ships it up to Mike’s place. It arrives and he opens the box and only finds cams. No valves, no retainers, no springs. So I call up TWE and they apologize and say that they will ship everything out right away and I should send him an e-mail with the shipping address so he doesn’t screw it up again. I also asked for a tracking number so I can figure out when to head over to my friends house and work on the car. A week goes by with no response, I send another e-mail and get one in return. They just shipped the stuff. So when I tell them on in a hurry and he says he has the stuff boxed up right next to him, it still takes them a week to get it shipped. Everything arrives July 11th and Mike starts building the heads. Then the other day he gives me a call. “We have a serious problem, the pistons don’t fit. They’re one mm too large.†Now I talked to TWE a while ago and had a discussion with them about how I’m not boring the block because it’s nearly perfect and it doesn’t need boring. But no, I get 98mm pistons when the block is 97. So Mike calls them up and they decided that they’re going to pay Mike to take apart the block and reassemble it after boring. But I have to pay to have it bored. And that’s where I finally decided to write this huuuuge frickin review on the two vendors that I have been dealing with for the past three and a half months. What do you think? Here is the build, everything is going into a 01 RS Coupe. Block: 2.2t stroked to 2.35 STi Crank STi Rods TWE Pistons 9:1 CR Heads: 01 SOHC from an RS TWE Stg II cams Titanium valve springs Titanium retainers stainless valves (oem size) some mild pnp work Misc: Turbo- smaller t3/t4 (around a 50 trim from a minnam stg. 2 kit) Ebay FMIC Coolingmist Meth Injection Aeromotive FPR 83lb fuel injectors (around 850cc's... I think) Larger parallel fuel rails 2.5" catless exhaust (will probably move up to 3" sometime soon) 35mm tial external wastegate greddy atmospheric bov stock RS headers, ceramic coated and gasket matched 96 RA tranny 3-puck oem sti clutch with stock flywheel (unfortunately) Cliff notes, GT ships the wrong thing, late, wants me to eat the cost, and I still don’t have half the stuff I ordered from them 3.5 months later. TWE ships everything late, to the wrong place, and also sent the wrong pistons, but at least I have everything from them.
damn quite a novel there, normally there's at least one thing that goes wrong when you do something like that but damn you are getting screwed by everyone, sucks having to wait so long for stuff that gets promised to you.
Yeah, it's kinda amazing. I bought the stg. 2 kit from importimage and it didn't come with a tank. They solved the problem almost instantly and even upgraded me to a bigger tank, so they were great. But like you said, I don't think I've had a clean transaction from anyone. So should I post this on nasioc and rs25.com? Or wait until I see everything from GT?
^^^^ agreed.. when Vendors or businesses dont get a little fire under them form customers when they screwup how can they make amends and improve.. soemtimes that fire has to be some bad word of mouth on open forums for lots and lots of other people to see... as long as it is what happened they cant get pissed for being idiots... but like Deride said... post it up on every forum but make sure you update the postings for when they make good and go above and beyond... crap happens sometimes especially in a bigger business... but thats where if you build good foundations you can take care of issues and have win win situations...
I have a similar story, mine might actually be longer if you could believe that. Im going to post a little write up on nasioc as soon as I get a credit from some of the parts I sent back
I'd post up for sure... let everyone know what's going on with your project so far and hope the vendor sees the thread and will make amend... Remember to stated at the end that you hope the vendor will come through with you. Keep everyone posted on what's going on... maybe this will wake the vendor up a bit, knowing there's future customers reading up on their reputation as well. Good luck and I hope all else goes well from here on out. Try to stay as neutral as possible on your post and wait to see how the vendor respond. If they are trying to work with you and make amend, give them the benefit of the doubt and hope all else goes as they say.
That's actually why I never wrote my feelings in there. I have been pissed for a while, but I'm not going to type it. Just my experience with the vendors that drove me nuts
that really sucks! this is one reason why getting your parts through a local pro shop is good. i was thinking about getting some stuff from TWE but now i am not going to. i will either buy OEM or direct to wiseco. hope everything works out. also you might try talking to keener2.5 on rs25, he also works at GT and realyl got the ball moving on my stuff. as soon as i talked to him and bypasses Kevin (BS man) my stuff shipped the next day.
Kelly, Sorry to hear about your situation...The only way I think I could help is if you need anything else in the future let me know. I'll be glad to give you some of the vendor contacts for your parts, I know that are reliable and will tell you if they really have it in stock or not...The ones that gaurantees anything, are the ones I question the most! Shady Vendors will always say they are in stock even though they do not have it, just to get the sale and they know that once they got your CC you have no choice but to wait...
Posted... http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1047861 http://www.rs25.com/forums/showthread.php?p=877756#post877756
te me it always seems liek the more complicated the order is the more likely they are to completely screw it up. Once i ordered as swayber, endlinks and pulley all from one company. All three got there at wildly diffrerent times (despite the claims made on the phone that all were in stock at the time) and when i finally do get the swaybar, they said they have been backordered for weeks on the endlinks and that I should cancel my order and buy them elsewhere. they told me that after 5 weeks had gone by since i ordered it. The pulley didn't even come from the company it was drop shipped directly from perrin. Basically they had none of it in stock but weren't above lying to me and telling me it was all sitting on a shelf ready to go when it came down to convincing me to give them my money. Basically I am always trying to get things through iaperformance since they have been so excellent at not screwing me or screwing anything up in the past. I tend to pick vendors based on after the sale performance. "the bitterness of low quality will remain long after the sweetness of low price is gone"
Alot of these companies don't actually stock all these parts. I ordered my pistons from importperformanceparts.net, and they were drop shipped directly from wiseco. When I made the order for all my suspension and brake stuff from boxer4racing.com, he was open about the fact that they didn't have the whiteline adj. swaybar in, and he'd call me when he got it. He did call me, but I didn't have the loot when he called. I guess I've been lucky so far and haven't had any issues with the people I've bought stuff from. I can't believe my tranny was at my door three days later from Oregon.
Piddster, is that your Wiseco piston in your avatar? Is that a coating on the skirts? What p/n did you order from IPP for those?
The wiseco pistons come coated. You can see it a little bit in my avatar, but it looks alot darker in person. series # K601M975 Thats 97.5mm bore, which is .020 over. $439 from IPP.
^^ OOHHH!!!! are those the ones that come in the rebuild kit for the ej22t? can you get them in 9:1 CR? if so i am sold too! as for vendors i have had good luck with gruppe-s. they were honest about there stockign status and shipped it as soon as they got it.
damn kelly i was wondering what was going on with your project. sorry to hear about all that crap. stupid people piss me off!
Yeah, it's been hell. But the car should be done by this coming wednesday . I ordered a ver 6 front lip, fog covers, grill, and rear spats. Hopefully everything will be painted and installed by august 2nd... hopefully
