Scott Plante

to those folks waiting on work, fabs, parts or just considering whether or not to use SFR, i have an update.

talked to Tim just a few minutes ago and he said that he wasn't banned, but that his password is messed up etc, and has been waiting to sort out his access. dunno, just what was said.

i am a current customer and have been in the throes of a difficult and expensive build. it's taken a lot longer than anticipated due to a number of factors. vendors shipping turbos without housings, oversights, vacations that parts vendors decided to take without shipping items first, wrong items, missing items etc etc..

now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things i'm upset about or have massive irritations about with Tim specifically.. communication being my main issue, since i live in phx and i only have the weekends to travel to santee to either pick the car up or whatever. that being said; i have, on occasion, jumped in my yukon and just shown up to make sure things were kosher, if i can't get ahold of anyone or to make sure things are on track. but to be honest, in a build that can take this long due to one thing or another, frustrations and tempers can run high, considering the monetary amounts and time invested, and i'm certainly no exception; especially when i have to make peace with the wife about something i spent or want to spend <grin>

as most, if not all, folks that have ever done a serious build will tell you, there are a lot of unknowns and murphy's law is definately in effect. anything that can go wrong more than likely will, and in my case, that's been a big part of it.

anyway, the main reason for this wall of text, regardless of my personal feelings good or bad is to inform everyone that SFR is indeed still actively in business and folks that need to contact him or the company can either call him on his company number or cell phone to inquire about whatever; parts, fabs builds etc

i do this for 2 reasons.

1) like i said, regardless of the frustrations that i might have personally or not, folks deserve to know that not all experiences are the same and to imply or post outright about anyone being out of business isn't right imo

and 2) anyone that is concerned about their particular situation or experience or order etc with SFR and *hasn't* been able to get ahold of Tim or anyone there; let me assure you, they are.

below are contact numbers, and permission to post his cell number was specifically granted.

1-619-328-4012 shop main number
1-619-249-5101 Tim's personal cell number

thanks

xtaC

I was honeymooning in the US during December/January, and ordered an Oil Cooler kit through Tim at SFR.

I did receive the kit in the agreed upon time frame (last day before getting on the plane to come home!), however, I would agreed with the OP that communication at SFR is DEFINATELY sub-par, to the point where I was legitimately concerned about whether I would be getting my parts.

Tim is a top-notch bloke to deal with, when you can get a hold of him!

Having said that, all my parts turned up, as ordered, correct and in full.

reno808

why doesnt he just reset his password?

teamcrossworks

Thanks for the contact #'s but to be honest I will never have a need for them. There are too many good sources for parts and services that do communicate well and return calls ect. I have no personal experience with Tim but from the amount of things I have read, my time and money are too valuable to waste on someone that conducts business as such...but to each their own.

Darwantae951

I will never do business with him again. Too much bad communication and poor delivery times. Not to mention poor shipping prep.

chrenan

Same with me, I wish him well but I've had great experience with other vendors (paragon, 944online, rennbay, rennline), Lindsey Racing helped me over a weekend to help make a deadline I had for an event last summer. With so many good choices there is no need to even risk working with someone who has communication issues.

slivel

Tim's welding and fabrication skills are among the best I've seen. I've bought his header, 3" exhaust, 3" downpipe, and custom BB turbo and I admire the workmanship and quality of the pieces that I've bought. But, I live in San Diego so I can deal with him face-to-face. Sadly, the negative comments on his communication with customers are probably deserved. I've driven over to his shop to bug him about an order that is taking too long. Too bad his business acumen doesn't match his fabrication skills, the man is truly an artist.

He will have to step up his game or customers may resort to buying on a COD basis only.

User 41221

I'll question his fabrication skill too.

I bought a full boat Stage II header/crossover/downpipe (321SS, ceramic coated) and full exhaust from him a few years back. The quality of the header was so poor, with so many mismatched welds and improper length runners, that I took the time to bench flow it and came out with worse numbers than the stock headers. I had to cut, reshape and reweld two of the runners and spend a ton of time smoothing the internal path before I could get decent numbers. The exhaust and downppipe that Tim sold me came directly from FabSpeed and were not built by SFR, altho Tim never bothered to mention that fact to me when I was placing the order. In retrospect, I am glad they did come from Fab Speed as teh quality was good on those parts.

I have a suspicion that Tim got backed up at the shop and farmed out the job of fabbing my headers to someone else and didn't bother to look at them before he shipped them out as he was already significantly late in delivering them. I have seen Tim Richards built Stage II headers before and thats not what I received. When I called him to discuss it, I got the impression that he wasn't interested in doing anything about it, so I wrote him off as a vendor choice and moved on with my life.

jmj951

Since we're comparing vendors....

I was recently in the market for replacements to my stock headers and was deciding between headers from SFR and Lindsey. The communication issues and more importantly the sometimes unpredictable delivery times with SFR were a big factor. I was actually surprised to call them and be able to speak to a real person to get estimated production and delivery times, but even that wasn't enough to give it a shot.

I went with Lindsey on the headers, paid less, got them right away, and I'm extremely happy with them. I wouldn't say the build quality was showroom-ready, but it was very nice. I had to clean out a few dangling pieces of metal from the inside of a few joints that didn't get completely cleaned up, and I wasn't comfortable with the surface finish of the gasket mating surfaces and did some work to clean those up and applied copper coat, but they did seal up perfectly fine. The fit was great, their jig must have been near perfect for my car, just took a slight bit of pressure to get the flange holes to line up for the stud installations (I did not have to loosen up the crossover at all). Only part of this replacement that really surprised me was having to remove the cam tower to install the new headers, that made the job a lot less fun, but I guess that's just the way it is with one-piece headers.

BTW, I chose to wrap mine instead of getting the ceramic coating, and it's been extremely effective. I'd choose to go that route again.

ibkevin

Sad to hear Tim has let this happen, and yes it seems a password reset would be a quick fix.

I had a cat build #2 that had to be redone because the cat part number wasn't facing downward as required by CA law, that he gave me a quick heads-up on the new laws.

Knowing what I know now, cat #1 would have worked and I strongly suspect Tim knew it, but went for the cat #2 build anyway. Good for his budget, bad for me because it's about another $350 laying around the garage.

Paulyy

Tim is banned..

reno808

^^ LOL

Thom

I ordered twice from SFR and got delivered, if later than expected.
Communication was minimal but functional.

All these threads about SFR suggest to me that Tim would just need to hire someone to do all the customer service and logistic stuff so he could concentrate on just making parts, but apparently he isn't in a position to allocate any resources on hiring someone for that job. That's life.

Scott Plante

btw, to SFR and Tim's credit, anything and everything that has gone wrong on my build, they've stood by and sorted it out, including what we're going through right now with a cracked block courtesy of the machine shop ;(

every shop has it's issues and horror stories for one person, but mebbe not for another.. it happens.. best advice? make up your own mind.

PorscheDoc

If you are a paying site sponsor (doesn't matter if you were a member long before being a site sponsor) and decide you can't afford to (or choose not to)sponsor the board any longer, you are banned permanently. From a business standpoint this makes since, as a previous site sponsor could build a rep, then peddle wares via pm's or whatever after dropping sponsorship.