if it wasnt right y would u take it and pay for a service u didnt recieve? then u get back home and hook up to the tunning system and start doing who knows what. then complain about it.Originally Posted by magicandmisc
you see what it looks like?
either way good luck.
I see where you're coming from. I already paid for the services when I realized there was issues. And since I picked the car up so late they closed right when I left and didn't answer the phones. I see what you're saying but I nor any of my tuning buddies messed up my car, we made it better. The reason I didn't bring it back was because I don't have another daily driver and to leave it there for a week for them to do a few hours worth of tuning wasn't worth it. So i spent the time I would have wasted driving back and forth to just tune the car myself with the aid of a few friends. See the predicament now? The car should have been tuned better from the start and I shouldn't have had any issues what-so-ever for the money I spent.
It's a waste a time and money to try to tune a car when it's not ready to be tuned. that's the moral of the story.
a tune is going to tune the air/fuel ratio's and timing when the rest of the car is operating correctly. if the car is not operating correctly/consistantly there is no way you can get a correct/consistent tune.
i'm deducing now this is a black turbo'd e30 bmw.
Now let me give the shop's perspective:
*SORRY, this is gonna be pretty long and boring. This was 4 or 5 months ago so our memories of the exact days may not be chronologically perfect*
When the customer called, they said that they just needed their car tuned. they said that they just got done building it and everything was ready to go with the exception of installing some bigger injectors that he supplied.
when the car got dropped off, and we got to look under the hood, almost every part on the car was used/junkyard parts with the exception of the brand new home depot intercooler couplers. but with the customer stating that the car was ready to run and just needed a tune. we strapped it down to the dyno and tried to tune the USED (previously installed on a different car) megasquirt ems.
with the car on the dyno, at 3,000 rpm when the turbo would spool it hit 15+ psi with no sign of stopping. now unless this was a fully built bmw engine, this is not safe for this application, and the customer was notified of this.
we took it off the dyno, the customer came by to look at it, debated whether or not to take it home, asked how much it would be to look at it for him and fix it. after we found out that the problem was one of the bolts in the custom made downpipe was so long it was keeping the internal wastegate shut.
so next day, back to the dyno. the boost would spike to 5psi then fall to 2psi. so we tried adjusting his home depot ball/spring boost controller repeatedly, and the best we could get with it at that point was 7psi, then it'd fall down to 2. that was the best that we could do with the car at the time with the way it was. he came, payed his bill, and picked up his car.
the next day, we received a call from him saying the car wasn't running right, so we asked him to drop it back off again, which he did.
another problem we were having with the car from the beginning was that the innovate lm1 that was wired to the megasquirt was not working properly. it also had an off brand air/fuel guage in the dash that was wired into the innovate wideband that was connected to the megasquirt, and it didn't read properly/consistently in the software. however if we plugged the wideband into our dyno it read fine.
he also wanted to get a boost controller to try to help with the boost issues. so he bought a used aem tru boost which i personally (Dave) wired in and charged him to install. but just like all the other USED parts on the car, it didn't work right. when we put it in and turned it on, the screen would blip out, it wouldn't read the boost right, sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't.
we put the car back on the dyno, and it wasn't acting the same as it was when it left the day before. the car was retuned and it was holding boost better at the top end and wasn't falling off as bad, but because it was holding boost better it was leaning out up top.
we called the customer, asked him what kind of fuel pump he had in the car. anybody wanna take a wild guess to what was in the car.......
a stock fuel pump.
so the car was taken off the dyno, rolled off to the side, and once again waiting for him to find the best deal on parts while the car sits in our shop waiting for them to get here so we can install them.
fuel pump got here, we installed it, put it back on the dyno. more tuning. now it has enough fuel up top, and everything was running ok.i want to stress though, (our definition) at no point in time did this car EVER run great.
with the issues and condition of the car, it ran safe and was driveable. Since the customer called us 5 times a day rushing us to get it done and pick up the car. we gave him the update, he drove out here to come get it, and when he got in the car to leave, the car started blipping out again. so he had to leave it....again.
at this point in time, everyone, including the customer is over this whole event, frustrated with the car, it's inconsistencies, and the whole circumstance.
we put it back on the dyno again, do more testing and diagnostic tuning, we have records of the car being on the dyno 4 different days with recorded passes. and we know of 2 more times it was on the dyno where it couldn't make complete pulls because of the various problems. in other words the car was on the dyno 6 different times.
Inbetween these 6 times of trying to get the car running well enough given the lack of funds, and waiting on used parts, that the car needed. the customer was charged the initial dyno tune and the installation of the injectors. then when the car came back, was charged for the installation of the boost controller and fuel pump.
With the new fuel pump, basically everything with the previous tunes changed and it all had to be redone from the beginning, it's not the shops fault for not having an adequate fuel pump from the get go, so he was also charged for additional dyno time which was greatly discounted.
we all spent more time on the car than we were payed for,
we could only do so much with what we were given and what the customer could afford to pay us to do.
we could definitely have fixed it all and made this into one bad ass running e30, and we went over with him of what needed to be done and what it'd cost to do it right, and it wasn't cheap............which he declined to do.
it came to us with boost leaks, janky clamps and hoses/couplers for the intercooler, oil leaks, power steering leaks, and chatter like a deisel, etc which we never charged to address or were payed to fix, but "The car was ready to get tuned." REMEMBER??
to this day i'm sure the car still has a lot of these same parts and issues on it that it had when we saw it, that STILL need to be replaced....
A lot of the inconsistencies of the car are attributed to cheap/used parts and other electrical gremlins from just being an older bmw. the biodegradable wiring harnesses don't help any either.
Everyone has their passion and everyone has a certain type of car that they like, so no offense, but the car came in here looking like an up all night, budget build a couple drunk buddies slapped together on a whim for shits and giggles. Then came to us "ready to be tuned" but that's somehow our fault?.......
bringing the car half complete, with issues, ended up wasting our time and your money, and i would be upset about the situation as well. the difference is, i would take responsibility for the car not being ready to be tuned, not have a buddy make a screen name just to bash the unlucky shop who had to deal with this headache car.
We will gladly re-TUNE the car for FREE if the car is brought to us before friday. If the car has any other issues while the car is on the dyno other than just needing to be retuned. You will need to pay for the time and repairs.
Dave @ Lethal Injection Motorsports
770-343-9969
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