SoCal-NSX

OK, my little shop of horrors continues.....ughhh


Some quick back story here.... Wanted to lower my new to me 718 Cayman 6MT before I even bought it...coming from my 981 with X73, I needed that look and feel asap.

Found a shop from friend who owns several high end sports cars who hooked me up with one of the best suspension shops in So Cal....where he and his other car club friends take their cars for their suspension needs

So I check their IG and see very clean shop with Lambos, R8's, etc and DM the shop and owner, who gets back to me with a very good quote due to my affiliation with car club friend....Do more research and reviews of shop and decided to go with them.

As many of you might know, parts are hard to come by right now especially stuff from Germany like HnR, TechArt, etc...

Luckily shop says they can get the springs within a week so I'm like cool, let's do this....set up appt for Thursday after they notified me on Monday that the springs came in.

Shop is about 50 miles north of me, but well worth the drive for the service and price.....so I have my wife follow me up to shop at 8am drop it off about 9am, expecting to pick up about 3pm at the latest.

Get a voicemail about 1pm form shop telling me to call them.....not a good sign, ughhh

Call them back, service manager tells me that HnR sent wrong springs, so basically come get your car.....I'm like WTF? Y'all didn't check that **** on Monday when they came in???
So sorry blah blah blah....drive back up and go get car....not happy at all, but what ever **** happens and try to stay calm...they agree to do the alignment for free when the right springs ever come back in after some back and forth about the waste of my time and only day off....A simple check of the product before scheduling my appt would have saved a ton of time, gas money, heartache and headache.

So....they telll me good news, they have a line on some springs and will be in the following Monday , ok...cool.

Monday, no word...call them on Tuesday, oh they should be here by tomorrow for sure....ok

Call them Wednesday , to see if we are still on for Thursday? "Oh man, so sorry, they weren't the springs we thought they were sending" Uggghh

Week or so later I see Tire Rack supposedly finally has some in stock, so I order them myself and what do you know they send me the right springs about a week later....$290 shipped!! woohoo!!

The shop already had my $400 for the springs they ordered the first time around, so I told them just apply that to the labor, ok sure...cool.

In the mean time I also ordered some spacers 15/10 set up that someone on another forum had link for and or recommended from eBay that had great reviews...BIG MISTAKE, more on that later

So, here we go again, finally the day has come where I get the stance I've been waiting for and we head up there at 8am to drop off by 9am with the right springs in tow.

Drop off car and tell them I'll be back around 3pm to pick up.

What do you know, get a call about 1pm that its taking longer than expected and will done more towards 5pm...oh boy, here we go again....

Go kill some time with wife and get lunch and have her drop me off at shop at 3pm so she can beat traffic and get home.

Get there and see car on rack "almost done" and have a seat in the lounge, luckily its got big screen and Netflix, so I just chill.....and wait.

5pm, car still not done, wtf?

6:30 pm car finally done as the lower it to move it to alignment rack...car looks sofa king amazing, I could care less about how long it took.....BUT......................still not official as they put it on alignment rack

7:30 finally it looks like it's done and rolling out the back of the shop....go out front to see it pull around to get a look at it rolling with the new stance ...........crickets

WTF, go back in and it's in the rack bay again??? Holy **** as my heart starts to sink.

"Sorry, it's making a noise from rear left side, we need to check it out"....FML

So up on the rack it goes....owner comes out now with the bad news.

"where did you get these spacers?" I told him I got them on eBay from reputable recommended seller(never again will I do that again)

he shows me the problem, one of the lug bolts was about 3mm longer than the other ones and that it scuffed up the hub behind the rotor....and he doesn't want to just remove the spacers and go back to the OEM bolts let the car go without checking the damage or at least cleaning up the metal scraps the could be in there......I'm like ****ing wow!!!

I told him to line them all up so I can take a pic and show the seller and hopefully get reimbursed for their huge mistake...he also measures them with caliper all of them 70mm except one that was 73mm and the one that ****ed up my day.

So owner tells me he's gonna have to tear it apart personally in the morning to get to the suspected damage and it could cost me about 3 hours labor at like $180 per hour to hopefully fix...
I'm like, well maybe you guys should check the bolts before you put them in to make sure they're all the same size

So now I'm just exhausted as its about 8:30pm now and just want to go home....so he paid for an Uber to take me home and will call me tomorrow morning after he fixes it.


So, what do I do here? Blame eBay seller?? YES!!! Blame shop? Yes, they are supposed to be professional shop and should check the parts before they install them....Blame myself for trusting the shop again and for buying ****ty eBay product? Yes.....

Ughhh, what a fuggin nightmare this lowering the car has turned out to be.....

It sucks, because the owner is a good guy and was hooking me up, but at the same time as the owner of a business, you have to eat it sometimes and this seems to be one of those times imo

at this point, I just want the car back, but I'm gonna be pissed If I pay more money at this point.


Thoughts? advice?

manifold danger

You're probably going to get a bunch of opinions, and I'm not necessarily suggesting mine is right as it is just an opinion.

But things like this is why shops usually have a policy where they won't install parts unless they source them. Honestly that's what I would do as an owner, or at least make you sign a liability waiver.

And also for expectations- it's easy to assume that all will go well, but you have to realize you are MODIFYING the car. Things can and do go wrong when using OEM components, using aftermarket stuff (especially off ebay) introduces a whole world of variables.

I could get on a soap box and say this is why I personally am extremely averse to modifying any car I expect to drive every day, but we're enthusiasts and that's part of it... although part of the reason I'd get on that soapbox is because I've been burned before myself with something similar- expecting a shop 50+ miles away to "know what they're doing" and not to blindside me with extra **** the day I'm there to pick it up. But that's something that has to be accounted for, unfortunately.

That's why I try now to get cars that are as close in spec as possible to exactly what I want when they roll of the factory floor. Save the mods for a project car that I won't drive every day. That said I will be going through this with exhaust but I also plan to work through a shop to let them source the parts, and I have other transportation arranged so it's done when it's done.

As for the money part- good luck. Again, many shops just flat out won't install parts you give them, for reasons like this. I don't think it's actually a reasonable expectation for them to have to measure each part before installation- hell even if it's printed on the box, 1 out of 4 is wrong that's just on the seller. The guy is doing the right thing not letting you drive it without making sure things aren't copacetic. Again, you'll get varying opinions on this but ultimately I think it's on you for giving the shop the wrong parts...

End of the day it doesn't appear to be catastrophic. It's only money after all, and any "project"- car, home, vacation, etc.- there has to be some expectation of scope creep or things just going wrong, that's just life. It sucks now but once all is said and done this is a minor bump in the road.

168glhs1986

You didn’t check the parts first? You bought them. I buy from Elephant Racing for a reason. They always get it right.

pay to get it looked at / confirmed fine.

pickup car and enjoy the new look / handling.

find a shop closer also. 50 miles is way too far to travel for work like this. The big part of your problem was the drop off / wait. That’s one expensive Uber. Good on him for paying when he didn’t need to. Stand up guy

Chrismalberts

Sadly, I think this is one of those you chalk up to experience and overall it's probably a decent price for the lessons learned. Bummer, though.

nineball

agreed on owner supplied parts - no reputable shop will install them without a waiver (if they even offer to WITH a waiver).

sounds a lot like your last thread about this topic ( https://rennlist.com/forums/718-foru...yesterday.html ) only this time you bought parts off of ebay for a $60+k car. lesson learned and i bet you won't make that mistake again...

SoCal-NSX

yeah, just a snowball of mistakes from every aspect all started with a bolt being 3mm too long......

just upset that the tech didn't at least just spin the wheel by hand after install while it was still on the rack to check for clearance issues....you would think that would be protocol when installing new wheels, suspension and or spacers.
would have saved a ton of time and money if he had.

I forgot to mention this in my post, but it is important and in retrospect a huge red flag

So when they finally lowered the car to the ground to move it to the alignment rack I was exited to see how she looked so of course I was watching through the shop window from the lobby...It looked amazing, BUT
I remember getting a sinking feeling when the tech backed up about 2 feet and stopped, then forward, then back 2 feet , then forward, then back and then finally to the alignment rack..like I thought at first he was having issues with the e-brake and hoping that it was something like that, but in retrospect I’m 99.99% sure it was him noticing it right away that something was wrong....he should have shut it down right then and there put it back on rack and called a senior tech or the owner to get it figured out....ughhhh

hope to just get it out of there ASAP at this point.

lesson learned the hard way that's for sure.

AlexCeres

3 hours labor is .... pretty cheap as lessons go around here.

SoCal-NSX

yeah, could always be worse.....

hope this is a lesson or two for anyone who wants to do mods of any sort to your car.

Update- Car is back home now minus the spacers.

Looks amazing, although it looked much better with the spacers, and was very pleasantly surprised how good it felt, very close to OEM ride, maybe a smidge softer...very happy with it so far






good to be back home.....

168glhs1986

Congrats, What size spacers were you using? The car looks good the way it is also.

gurneyeagle

Ahh, the unexpected headaches associated with mods. I feel your pain.

Did major mods on a 370Z I owned ten years ago, and most installs ended with collateral damage that took time and money to fix.

Since then, if it didn’t come from the factory, I learn to live without it.

Did you know that Discount Tire refuses to touch a wheel with a spacer on it? Learned that lesson when I had a flat on the way to a board meeting in the rain.

While frustrating, time, money, and patience will remedy your problems.

Best of Luck!

Zhao

When an aircraft technician installs a part on an FAA-certified product, he or she must meet five standards, or requirements. One, the part must have FAA approval and that approval must be documented and kept in the aircraft maintenance records. Two, the part must be the proper part for that installation. Three, the part must be installed correctly. Four, the part must be function-tested to ensure that it works properly. And five, the maintenance records must be completed, showing the work accomplished, the function test performed, and that a properly certificated person or facility approved the work for return to service. The FAA parts approval process is one of the prime contributors to both the high level of safety and the high cost of aviation.

The FAA doesn't even require parts be measured by a tech before being installed on a commercial jet and you expect that as routine from an independent shop? If your car was an airplane you'd have violated 1 and 2 by giving them substandard parts and an improper part and you wouldn't have gotten to step 3 with the shop. Because it's a car they can use unknown parts you supplied so you can't fault them for trusting you especially when you made it such a huge point that they didn't verify the god damn parts last time (surely the guy who demands others verify parts in advance verifies them himself right?), and it sounds like the shop actually complied with 3, 4, and 5. Pretty good shop if you ask me.

SoCal-NSX

haha, good thing this wasn't a commercial jet airplane....Yeah, like I said, I wish I checked them myself....but, the one thing that bugs me is that the tech didn't even do a simple clearance check before he even set the car back on the ground...would have found the issue right away and avoided a lot of work and heartache. Like I mentioned when he first tried to back it out of the bay, he knew something was off. Should have put it right back on the rack at that point.

oh well, lesson learned, car looks and feel great and it cost me a few bucks and hours more than it should have.... if the bolt was the right length and or the tech did a clearance check it would have been nice, but things don't always go as smooth as you want it to sometimes.

Hope everyone who read this can learn from this