rrace002

What do I mean forceful?

Basically STM told me I had to take their battery relocation kit + piping and blow off valve otherwise they wouldn't tune the car because "it wasn't 100%."

Which, maybe it would free up a few horsepower; but these items are both fully functional and plenty for a daily driver. Its not an all out drag setup, its a daily driver!

rrace002

I know the easy way out is to conform with the sheep, and I have no issue with you choosing to stay in that heard of sheep.

Fact of the matter is:
STM is no holy grail of Evolution tuning. They aren't bad either (when they do the work). So don't think I am saying they do bad work.

But the best tuner in the Rochester area in my opinion was Rick at lifeline performance. He made 270whp from my brothers NA honda h2b.

I would have taken my car to Rick at lifeline performance if he was still in business. He was on lake and lyell avenue in Rochester; and he would seriously out tune Emery any day of the week, on any given platform. He was a real engineer.

I guess, the way I see it is; since he wouldn't force parts down my throat maybe it was more difficult for him to keep his doors open for an extended period of time.

LetsGetThisDone

iTrader: (1)

STM's response is here, https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ve...l#post11409591. Two very different sides of the story. And since I've dealt with STM a few times, and have had very good experiences every time, I will definitely side with STM on this.

Stop bad mouthing a good shop. You took a basket case in and the remote tuner didn't have time to tune by the time you finally finished it.. They clearly didn't force parts down you throat, and your junk parts are not why your car didn't get tuned..

rrace002

This is STM's response:
Originally Posted by rrrace002
They charged me $650 for a stainless steel downpipe and then forced me to pay another 200 just to change the flange to bolt up to my catback exhaust. So $850 in exhaust work, just for the downpipe to fit. Too much!
As for the $850 exhaust / downpipe. You purchased our STM FP Downpipe for $650 that we sell to the entire online world. So its not like it was priced higher for you. We sold it to you before you brought in the car, and you actually didn't mention your catback had a 3" 3-bolt flange until after you already had the downpipe. All our exhausts/downpipes/ and test pipes clearly use 3" 2-bolt flanges. It was no secret and that was not a mistake on our part. You knew bringing the car in to modify it or make a custom testpipe was going to be around $150-200 with labor and materials. We talked about this long before the car was in our shop. And you Okay'd the work for us to modify the downpipe to work with your existing catback. I even charged less than what I originally quoted, and included the labor for checking over the car for oil leaks into the test pipe labor.

Quote:
Originally Posted by turbocheese View Post
Brian everything you said makes perfect sense except the sun roof. What does he not having a sun roof have to do with servicing his vehicle? Some evos just don't come with sun roofs or is there more to the story here?
Wouldn't really stop us from servicing the car, but its just another thing that seemed like the car was getting rushed to be completed, and with the other issues we saw and found it was just not something we would want to get involved with if the customer doesn't want to do it how we feel it should be done.

Quote:
STM, why do you not like tuning SD on stock ECU? (just wondering)
I would have to have Emery comment on this as he knows the specific reasons why he doesn't do that much with it currently. Main reason being currently, we haven't done enough with it to where we would tune a customers car on it. Emery likes to learn what hes tuning inside and out on our own shop cars and get alot of seat time with it before we would ever touch a customer car.

rrace002

The price for the downpipe was high, but I agreed to it (FINE)!
No issue with that.

rrace002

Either case, they didn't want to tune the car for the following reasons:

Which doesn't make any sense. Now I have to drive the car to New Jersey on No Tune since they don't feel like tuning it. This is my issue! Bad customer Service!

This is a real life event, not bad mouthing a good shop!

rrace002

You can side with who ever you want, but the facts are the facts. They sold me about 4k in parts but refused to tune the car, even on 20 pounds of boost!

STM Tuned

iTrader: (4)

NO. I wouldn't tune your car because you refused to do anything right. We disagreed on your setup from the start and the way you wanted to do things was not something I was happy with doing. Here are a few things that caught my eye and turned me away

1. You built a motor and didn't even use a new timing belt. The one you reused looked like it had been through war. Clear sign that you didn't even have your own best interests in mind.

2. Your hodge podge of piping looked like it would prove to have been nothing but issues from couplers blowing off on the dyno. Its clearly not AMS as you claimed. ( maybe one pipe of it may have been ) It was a mix of stock couplers, an Ebay upper, with a stock portion of an upper pipe in there as well.

3. You had a massive oil leak that you drove the car to us with. MASSIVE. I didn't check the oil level but I can imagine it may have hurt the new replaced bearings? We would not put a car on our dyno with it leaking oil from anywhere. Especially front case / timing area. The leaking oil can also hurt the timing components. We offered the options to fix this, and you denied it.

4. You installed the rod caps backwards or on the wrong rods, When you did that you said you brought them back to the machine shop to make sure they were in round. To do that in such short notice you would have had to remove the head. Correct me if I'm wrong here but that was all done within about 24 hours from a friday to a saturday night. I am assuming the HG and headstuds were just reused at this point as well as every other gasket and part you had to remove. Again, No way I would want to tune this at this point.

5. You are already upset enough to make a post because I didn't want a part in a car that isn't right. Imagine what way fingers would have been pointed when the car spun bearings or had a bad head gasket after a tune?

-Emery

rrace002

"We disagreed on your setup from the start and the way you wanted to do things was not something I was happy with doing. "

• Ofcourse, you guys wanted to sell me a full kit with a T3 because you guys would make more money on that setup. Many people would say the same thing in your shoes.

• There are A lot of nice 2.3 FP black setups out there; sorry to hear you guys are not a fan of them!!!!!

• At the end of the day its still my car, and I am a customer / client.

• The timing belt was replaced, I'm not sure what you are talking about there; maybe you were not aware of that. No need to spread lies (that's not my intent either).

• My brother had to rebuild the lower end with Farmers' (Martin Engine Machine in Webster NY). They checked everything over, according to spec after he scewed up the ends. They do great work for us. Thanks Dan Martin!

• Obviously we didn't want you to tune the car with an oil leak; that was never a request at all to begin with (sorry for the confusion).

• Now when it comes to the forum- you guys don't want to admit the excuse you gave us which was the intercooler piping and the inadequate blow off valve?
  
  I think its obvious; because you would be frowned upon by this entire forum if you admitted that! So good job on that for backing out on that one.

In either case; I was still told the prime reason they didn't want to tune the car was the blow off valve and piping, it was a hard sale tactic on their part.
Clearly you guys are attempting to make another sale after another sale and another sale on a car THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO SUPPORT.

This is not a legitimate practice in business, if you didn't want to support my car and my build, you shouldn't have sold me the parts to begin with.
And then continued to try to sell me more parts and down the road threaten me into buying a new Blow off Valve and intercooler piping.

(For another $550 in parts)
This is all after around $4,000 in business I gave your shop STM within 2 weeks.

Why do you think the right thing to do is sell someone thousands in parts but refuse to tune their car? Unheard of!

You guys told me you would tune the car if I bought new piping when my brother was onsite. Now you guys are saying that you weren't going to tune it at all.....

rrace002

And Emery; if the engine spun a bearing; that wouldn't be your fault. But it won't happen anyway.
Rick at the lifeline performance shop on lyell avenue blew up my brothers h2b and I still give him positive reviews (he is out of business now though).

He's a great tuner. There was an issue with that motor which placed the ball in our court.

The bearings aren't going to spin on that evo motor; in fact I have never spun a bearing in my life.

IzzyRS

iTrader: (8)

lol they dont want to tune your messed up and leaking car on their dyno, you should totally take it to the amazing tuner that blew up your brothers engine
man, just drop it already

rrace002

You weren't even there man. If you want to jump in when you don't know ****.... You are just ignorant. I have nothing against you- join the sheep man.
Opinions are like something else, everyone has one.

We made 270 whp NA on a honda motor (h2b) at lifeline performance tuned by Rick, and beat a local stm tuned evolution with a naturally aspirated hatchback (on a 2nd gear roll). It was close though; almost a tie. The build is different because its a frankenstien build and doesn't last very long compared to a stock motor, but it did 270 whp for a lot less than I would have spent at STM.

I can link you to the car if you would like to see it. This is not our first time at the rodeo champ.



Emery complained about the intercooler piping wasn't up to par; along with the blow off valve. Now he has a different story. You can tell how this is only a hard sales tactic; since now he says nothing about that.
He will not admit the sales technique used in this instance.

If you don't like my car, why sell me the parts?
Simple question.......

rrace002

IF you can't see how a business is in the wrong by selling us parts; but not supporting the car, or build:
you have the wrong idea of customer service.

Its fine if he doesn't want to tune it; but he can't sell me all those parts (then try to sell me piping and a BOV) then refuse to tune it after that! Doesn't make any sense!
If the car blows up on his dyno its not his issue (I would sign a waiver for that anyway- no problem).

rrace002

I do appreciate Emery for at least making an attempt to resolve the issue without creating more conflict than he already has; especially when its already a difficult subject, but when you have people like this adding fuel to the fire, its not easy:
IzzyRS

rrace002

IzzyRS: if you could read what I wrote before; I was only using Emery to tune the car because he was local to Rochester NY and I needed to drive the car to NJ where I will get it retuned anyway in a few weeks.