I have had an overall poor experience with STM. They delivered parts on time, which is good. However; when it comes to in shop labor, they charge a ridiculous amount of money. They also have problems with certain builds.

They didn't like my car because it has a 2.3 liter and an old school Blow off Valve made by HKS. They said they didn't know if the BOV was a knock off or not. They also didn't like my intercooler piping. They tried to force me into a bigger pipe and a battery relocation kit to allow a bigger pipe to fit. I said no thanks, then they said they didn't want their name on my car.

I said that's fine I wouldn't put your name on my car anyway. The car already made 517 whp on the intercooler, piping and blow off valve already installed.

If you want to order parts from them, its fine (I can't stop you!).
But don't go in there and get a tune from them unless you plan on spending thousands of dollars. They will tell you they won't tune it unless you change it.
I told them a low boost setting would be fine if they thought the pipe was small (2.25" to 2.5")!!!!
They still said no!!!!! Bad customer service all around.

I see a lot of good reviews from people about STM. I just want to put a warning out there about what happened with my car at STM.

Overall, they don't do bad work; but they want to build your car the way they want to build it as if it was their own.

They charge ridiculous amounts of money; and talk negatively about FP turbos (since they can't profit as much as a t3 since they don't sell a turbo manifold).

My evo 9 turbo went bad and I decided to go with a bolt on Fp black for my built 2.3 evo.

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!

I really expected them to tune my car after selling me the parts. That's my biggest issue with them.

 

First thing, we don't talk Negatively about FP or their Turbos. We have been using more FP Turbos than ever before, and the FP Red has been our favorite street turbo for YEARS now. There isn't as much markup in an FP Turbo, but that doesn't stop us from selling them when its going to fit a customers preference better. People want us to constantly take $300 off a turbo and ask why when I say its not something we can do. The Black isn't our favorite FP turbo, as Emery told you. We typically prefer the FP Red 80% of the time. The Black is not 'bad' by any means though.

Now, onto your build.

Lets start with the fact We were not going to tune your car from the get go. You wanted speed Density on the Stock ECU and from the GET GO I said we will not turn Speed Density on a stock ECU. I don't know what changed to make you think we were suddenly going to tune your car and we decided to now refuse?
We set you up with a good friend and reputable tuner that we know who does Speed Density alot on Stock ECU Evo 8/9s and Evo Xs. We had him coming up from Florida for a weekend to tune some other cars, so we talked to him and he said he should be able to squeeze your car in and get it tuned as well. The car needed to be done Friday or Saturday 3/6-3/7 for him to be able to tune it though. We had you call him directly and go over the details and get everything sorted out about the tuning.

As of Friday night, you were still getting the car put together. I believe you mentioned to Emery or Carbee Rod Caps had been installed backwards( huge red flag ) during the week which is why the car wasn't running yet . Then you needed more time to get the car done and as of Saturday night you were still buying misc parts to get the car finished. We even said you could drop the car off Sunday and we *might* be able to have Chris Carbee tune the car if he has time as he had a flight home Sunday that he obviously had to make. The car was dropped off, and it was in no condition to tune Sunday. It has a a big oil leak from somewhere under the Front Case, a hodge podge of intercooler piping and couplers that we can already tell was thrown together. ( It is NOT AMS IC piping that I have ever seen like you claimed on your other post. It looks like Ebay so we made a suggestion that unless you know 100% the HKS BOV is real, there is a chance that could be fake based on the piping it appears to be on ) .

We also saw various small things around the car that set off red flags almost immediately after popping your hood, like a lugnut being used on a power steering pump, an old map or AIT sensor in the intake manifold being used as a plug. The car also doesn't even have a sun roof, which doesn't stop us from tuning it, but goes to show the current condition of a car being brought into the shop.
These would normally be huge red flags for any car someone brings that we are supposed to be tuning. We don't put our name, or tune anything we don't feel is right.

Now mind you, WE WEREN'T THE ONES WHO WERE GOING TO BE TUNING YOUR CAR. We made suggestions on things we didn't like on the car, but we weren't going to tune your car either way as it was a Speed Density Stock ECU car.

You can call Chris Carbee if you want verification, be he told us since he would now be doing an E-Tune from Florida because you couldn't get your car properly done in time for a tune this weekend, that the car needs to be RIGHT as its harder for him to tell any issues E-tuning a car that could have some issues.

We won't refuse to tune a 2.3L car as we have tuned alot of cars with 2.3Ls, we don't personally prefer the motors or like them.

This in the only pic we have of the car and the current condition it was in. Even though this probably works for you and maybe others as well, it just shows it was a what ever gets it on the road type of build. Unfortunately, that's just not something we want to put our names on. We have your best interests in mind and of course, Ours as well.



-Brian Gleason
www.stmtuned.com

 

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?

 

There is a hole... with no glass

 

If you can not afford their prices, go to someone else for work...Did you expect the shop to change their pricing policy just because you consider it to be too much?
If they think your car is not put together properly they are not obligated to tune it(even though it seems that part was already worked out).


STM, why do you not like tuning SD on stock ECU? (just wondering)

 

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.

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.

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.

-Brian Gleason
www.stmtuned.com

 

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ve...am-hoax-2.html

Like I said on the other thread, STM is a solid, upstanding shop and I have never had anything but good experiences with them.

Sounds like your car has plenty of issues based on the comments on your Youtube link from the other thread as well.

 

I can honestly say I don't really care for speed density using the stock ecu, I have tuned customer cars numerous times this way but my personal car made 550hp through the MAF with an FP red, so I see no reason to go to SD other than being able to drive the car if/when an intercooler pipe blows off...

 

LOL I hear these types of stories all the time from a close friend that owns a shop. He tells me how guys come in for tunes with cars that looked like they were thrown together by Ray Charles drunk in a earth quake. They get mad when the price of the tune goes from A to B because he has to spend hours fixing crap that he knows from experience will have an ill effect on the tune. Then they get mad when he tells them that some of their parts could be swapped out for better preforming parts. Its not an insult its a fact, ebay intercoolers do not out preform ETS intercoolers when will people learn this. Guys like this is why some shops now screen customers and turn them many potential head aches away.

 

I think my head just spun around. Is that a lugnut? That's how the car was put together? I wish I could say it's unbelievable, but there it is. Clearly, if this is what we're witnessing, one can only imagine what else was, or was not, in play. Sure, let's blame an honest shop that tried to help.

 

I wouldn't bring that car into shop unless he wanted to fix it correctly or have it fixed correctly. Lugnut tells the story LOL

 

Mark at Turbo trix must have put that bolt there. I already told you that.
I guess you guys didn't want to let me know that was there before? The prices are one thing...

Like I said on the other post, STM is the only shop I could bring the car to without getting it towed. They have reasonable prices on PARTS, their labor is high though. Customer service seemed good with Brian, but poor from Emery.

He seemed like he was inspired to talk a bunch of crap about the car rather than trying to help us fix it. He already knew he wasn't going to make much money off the deal since my brother was doing most of the labor.

Let me give an example:
Go to the dentist and he says, get out of my office your teeth are f%%cked!

Or

You have a few cavities, let me show you what we can do for you.

This is a good analogy of the experience I had at STM.

I paid them the labor rates they wanted for my exhaust work without issue, but at 90/hour things can get really expensive very quickly.

I ordered a sunroof for the car, it was simply in the process of being fixed. I guess it kind of sounds funny to think I was driving around an evo with a big hole in the roof.

If you guys want to make a certain amount of money you can always not let people in who have under a 10k budget for their car. Might be a good idea to weed out the people like me that aren't "worth your time."

A lot of people out there do budget builds and this is going to be one of them. I will make a build post within a few more weeks.

 

That lugnut is on the power steering line. It never had a leak.
Why would you guys take a picture of it but then not even let me know that I needed to replace a lugnut? I would have already changed that.

Does anyone see how this is not good customer service?

 

OP you already aired your complaints with STM in this thread here:

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ve...ports-stm.html

Please don't start another thread regarding your experiences with STM as that pervious thread was already reported for being unprofessional and disrespectful.

Thanks!