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Car tuning company
Simulacraton
Posts: 91 Forumite
in Motoring
Hello
The following all started exactly a year ago, and has been an ongoing issue.
I have a car which I sent to a firm, firm 'Z' to improve the performance from the engine.
The list of work was agreed, mechanical and electrical. A reasonable time limit for the work was set at 7-10 working days.
I paid about £6000 to Z. This included specialist parts and labour and the 'mapping' (the way by which the on-board computer controls various factors relating to the engine) of the ECU. Finally, a power figure from the engine would be obtained before I get the car back.
Two months later I collected the car. There were some factors that meant a delay was unavoidable, but only for about 4 weeks, the rest of the time I am not sure what was going on.
When I got the car back I did not receive a engine power dyno result, which was part of the deal.
I noticed various small issues with the vehicle afterwards, all of which I had rectified elsewhere or did myself as I did not want to travel back to the garage Z for fear of them taking the car away for another 2 months and the 200 mile journey was not appealing.
Now, I knew roughly what power the car should have been producing, and I have enough experience to know that this car was not performing as it should be. As Firm Z had not tested the power output (apparently, their rolling road had broken down...) I had it tested locally. It was clearly not performing well and had only gained 15 bhp over the reading measured on the engine just before the £6000 of work at firm Z.
I thought I knew what part of the problem was. The electronic mapping of the car did not appear to be done correctly, which made sense as the device used to do this kind of work, a rolling road, had broken down during the work on my car. I sent a recorded letter to firm Z requesting costs for this to be redone, pointing out different issues with the car and my suspicion it may be the engine mapping at fault, the give-away being the 3 foot flames that shoot out of the back of the car and my melted bumper and the engine exhaust manifold glowing red hot and having already cracked in their care (I replaced this item myself).
I received a negative reply regarding my request to cover the costs of this work, and only a reminder that firm Z had offered to take the car back. I would not consider taking the vehicle back after finding faults I would associate to persons with no care or respect for other peoples property, or skill, and disregard for what is reasonable in terms of time to complete work.
The cost to have the car reprogrammed was £250. It helped solve some of the issues such as the flames from the back of the car and huge exhaust detonations (funny to hear, but a sign of a poorly mapped ECU). Sadly, the peak power from the engine remained the same. Something else was at fault. The people that had reprogrammed the car are specialists as well and noted that the car was fuelling so heavily it had contaminated the oil in the engine, and if left too long could cause an effect known as 'bore-washing'. This is where tehre is so much petrol in the oil, it stripes the oil from the walls of the pistons and bores of the engine and cause very swift wear and tear on the engine, a sign of this being caused is oil smelling of petrol and low compression on the engine.
I spent many months learning about what could be wrong with the car and trying various things. Finally, at the end of 2010, I thought I had solved the problems and had it re-tested. Still low power.
After this I did a test of the engine itself, a compression test. It was not done previously as the engine I had installed in 2009 was in very good order and performed very well, and showed to produce good power when tested by firm Z. For the engine to not be working correctly was both extremely unlikely and also the worst case scenario. Firm Z should not have needed to touch the bottom end of the engine, only the cylinder head.
The test showed all 4 cylinders low in compression, meaning the power from each explosion in the pistons not being efficient (low volumetric efficiency). The exact reason at this stage is unclear. It could just be the engine has decided to let go, but why now? I could speculate that premature wear was caused by the poor mapping of the engine which was set to a very high fuelling rate, as mentioned the the firm that reprogrammed the ECU in the car.
Currently, the engine is with another firm. I have bought a new engine to use and have requested the new firm carry out some further work to the car. Many of the items installed by firm Z need to be fitted to the new engine. The mechanic, a specialist, has reported the following things of concern he has found whilst taking the old engine apart:
No gasket used on the inlet manifold. It's bare metal on metal.
Inlet manifold stud bots fitted the wrong way round.
Possible head gasket failure.
Main cylinder head bolts not correctly tightened to specified torque.
Sheared camshaft pulley bolt (not sure even a child could actually mis-thread one of these! It renders this £560 part useless unless remaining bolt can be removed and shaft rethreaded).
Extremely loud tappets (new ones were paid to be fitted by firm Z, but were louder than the ones I had previously).
I've already corrected the following myself:
Cracked manifold (BOTH manifolds!).
Loose gearbox housing bolt.
Lambda sensor not tightened and falling out of exhaust.
Inability to start the car from cold.
Brake servo vacuum hose leak.
Cracked front offside wing.
Incomplete computer map on the ECU.
Now. I have left this for some time as it is hard to prove, not to mention time consuming, that firm Z are at fault. The engine itself I cannot say was the fault of firm Z, but the camshafts and mapping will, and have already, cost me considerable amount of money and time to sort out.
I am happy to take on the costs of sorting this out myself, but the recent discovery of the damaged camshafts by the new firm has got me thinking about what I can do to recover my losses here. I have bought new camshafts now at the cost of £568 plus £30 delivery.
Firm Z are refusing to admit liability or contribute anything, and are suggesting if I go ahead with a claim they will take me to court over unfounded detrimental comments I have made about them on an Internet forum, relating to this work.
Any advice on where to start with this?
Thanks.
The following all started exactly a year ago, and has been an ongoing issue.
I have a car which I sent to a firm, firm 'Z' to improve the performance from the engine.
The list of work was agreed, mechanical and electrical. A reasonable time limit for the work was set at 7-10 working days.
I paid about £6000 to Z. This included specialist parts and labour and the 'mapping' (the way by which the on-board computer controls various factors relating to the engine) of the ECU. Finally, a power figure from the engine would be obtained before I get the car back.
Two months later I collected the car. There were some factors that meant a delay was unavoidable, but only for about 4 weeks, the rest of the time I am not sure what was going on.
When I got the car back I did not receive a engine power dyno result, which was part of the deal.
I noticed various small issues with the vehicle afterwards, all of which I had rectified elsewhere or did myself as I did not want to travel back to the garage Z for fear of them taking the car away for another 2 months and the 200 mile journey was not appealing.
Now, I knew roughly what power the car should have been producing, and I have enough experience to know that this car was not performing as it should be. As Firm Z had not tested the power output (apparently, their rolling road had broken down...) I had it tested locally. It was clearly not performing well and had only gained 15 bhp over the reading measured on the engine just before the £6000 of work at firm Z.
I thought I knew what part of the problem was. The electronic mapping of the car did not appear to be done correctly, which made sense as the device used to do this kind of work, a rolling road, had broken down during the work on my car. I sent a recorded letter to firm Z requesting costs for this to be redone, pointing out different issues with the car and my suspicion it may be the engine mapping at fault, the give-away being the 3 foot flames that shoot out of the back of the car and my melted bumper and the engine exhaust manifold glowing red hot and having already cracked in their care (I replaced this item myself).
I received a negative reply regarding my request to cover the costs of this work, and only a reminder that firm Z had offered to take the car back. I would not consider taking the vehicle back after finding faults I would associate to persons with no care or respect for other peoples property, or skill, and disregard for what is reasonable in terms of time to complete work.
The cost to have the car reprogrammed was £250. It helped solve some of the issues such as the flames from the back of the car and huge exhaust detonations (funny to hear, but a sign of a poorly mapped ECU). Sadly, the peak power from the engine remained the same. Something else was at fault. The people that had reprogrammed the car are specialists as well and noted that the car was fuelling so heavily it had contaminated the oil in the engine, and if left too long could cause an effect known as 'bore-washing'. This is where tehre is so much petrol in the oil, it stripes the oil from the walls of the pistons and bores of the engine and cause very swift wear and tear on the engine, a sign of this being caused is oil smelling of petrol and low compression on the engine.
I spent many months learning about what could be wrong with the car and trying various things. Finally, at the end of 2010, I thought I had solved the problems and had it re-tested. Still low power.
After this I did a test of the engine itself, a compression test. It was not done previously as the engine I had installed in 2009 was in very good order and performed very well, and showed to produce good power when tested by firm Z. For the engine to not be working correctly was both extremely unlikely and also the worst case scenario. Firm Z should not have needed to touch the bottom end of the engine, only the cylinder head.
The test showed all 4 cylinders low in compression, meaning the power from each explosion in the pistons not being efficient (low volumetric efficiency). The exact reason at this stage is unclear. It could just be the engine has decided to let go, but why now? I could speculate that premature wear was caused by the poor mapping of the engine which was set to a very high fuelling rate, as mentioned the the firm that reprogrammed the ECU in the car.
Currently, the engine is with another firm. I have bought a new engine to use and have requested the new firm carry out some further work to the car. Many of the items installed by firm Z need to be fitted to the new engine. The mechanic, a specialist, has reported the following things of concern he has found whilst taking the old engine apart:
No gasket used on the inlet manifold. It's bare metal on metal.
Inlet manifold stud bots fitted the wrong way round.
Possible head gasket failure.
Main cylinder head bolts not correctly tightened to specified torque.
Sheared camshaft pulley bolt (not sure even a child could actually mis-thread one of these! It renders this £560 part useless unless remaining bolt can be removed and shaft rethreaded).
Extremely loud tappets (new ones were paid to be fitted by firm Z, but were louder than the ones I had previously).
I've already corrected the following myself:
Cracked manifold (BOTH manifolds!).
Loose gearbox housing bolt.
Lambda sensor not tightened and falling out of exhaust.
Inability to start the car from cold.
Brake servo vacuum hose leak.
Cracked front offside wing.
Incomplete computer map on the ECU.
Now. I have left this for some time as it is hard to prove, not to mention time consuming, that firm Z are at fault. The engine itself I cannot say was the fault of firm Z, but the camshafts and mapping will, and have already, cost me considerable amount of money and time to sort out.
I am happy to take on the costs of sorting this out myself, but the recent discovery of the damaged camshafts by the new firm has got me thinking about what I can do to recover my losses here. I have bought new camshafts now at the cost of £568 plus £30 delivery.
Firm Z are refusing to admit liability or contribute anything, and are suggesting if I go ahead with a claim they will take me to court over unfounded detrimental comments I have made about them on an Internet forum, relating to this work.
Any advice on where to start with this?
Thanks.
0
Comments
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Can I suggest you try to write a shorter summary. :beer:0
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Man takes car to garage.
Man pays garage.
Garage gives car back.
Car not right.
Man pays new garage to fix car.
New garage finds signs of poor workmanship.
Man wants to recoup losses from first garage, but needs advice.0 -
You need a written report from the second garage, as much written evidence as possible, photographs if you have them, then a day in court. Then if you win, publish all the details wherever you can, with the name.0
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Ok. Will get reports. I have plenty of pictures.0
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simulacraton wrote: »man takes car to garage in order to spend the cost of a new car on making it 10% faster
man pays garage.
Garage gives car back.
Car is only 5% faster and sends out flames and is basically rubbish.
Man pays new garage to rectify flamage and to boost the remaining 5% performance.
New garage finds signs of poor workmanship.
Man wants to recoup losses from first garage, first garage refuses because they said they would fix it themself, which man wasn't happy with because they did a bad job the first time and are 200 miles away
fyp........0 -
Two things stand out from your OP.
How did you find and who recommended this tuning company?
Why did you pay the company before they carried out the work that was agreed to an acceptable standard? payment should have been the last part of the transaction.0 -
£6k did you go fi or is it a na car and kept it that way?
What car is it?0 -
Can I suggest you try to write a shorter summary. :beer:
Bloke decides to spend silly money on tuning a car for god knows what reason.
Takes it to a !!!!! company
Gets ripped off.
Message to OP: There was no way there was anywhere near £6k of work. I've built performance engines. £6k gets you a full Stage 3, not just a camshaft job and a remapped ECU.0 -
Unfortunately I think you need to give them a chance to rectify their mistakes. Otherwise you'll have trouble winning any claim. The fact that they tried to remap an ECU without a rolling road shows they are either imbeciles or cowboys, or both, so I can understand why you didn't want to take the car back to them, but that's beside the point. I'd be interested in knowing what the mods were and what the car is - Renault by any chance? And who is the company? Also, what BHP increase were you expecting? What other mods did you have done apart from power and were these done satisfactorily?0
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:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:Simulacraton wrote: »Man takes car to garage.
Man pays garage.
Garage gives car back.
Car not right.
Man pays new garage to fix car.
New garage finds signs of poor workmanship.
Man wants to recoup losses from first garage, but needs advice.I
MOJACAR0
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