Chameleon63$

This would be my recommendation for anyone who chooses to ignore my warnings and do business with either Sam by Design or World Motorsport.

Do not accept phone calls. Keep all information to written emails. He is great at keeping the fluff in writing and promising the world over the phone. NO PHONE CONTACT EMAIL ONLY.

Do not wire money to either of these parties. Either pay with Credit Card or PayPal if they charge you 4% more for doing so it will be the best 4% insurance policy you ever bought. If they refuse those options guess why?

Chameleon63$

Anonymous as I have said feel free to DM me we can hop on the phone I will give you my full name, whatever. I do not hide behind the Internet. This is a precautionary post. Hopefully it saves someone from injury or worse, loss of time and hard earned money. I will refrain from bickering as I have work to do.

Take care,

white997

2fcknfst. There are 2 separate cars / people in this thread. Both have nearly identical story with Sam, both been taken for large $$$. I never really had a "good" relationship with Sam at any point. I shipped the car to him, wired a very large $$ to him and he delivered 20% of what we agreed on but get got paid 100%. So after 2 years of broken promises i just got fed up realized he is not going to make good on the job, took the car someplace else and they finished his mess. Sam had 20 chances to fix his mess or refund me, he failed on that too. I have had 30+ modded cars over the past 25 years, some full 1500HP builds. This is the only bad experience i had with a "tuner/salesman".

grim sleeper

First of all, I am very sorry to hear about your issues.
i find this very strange as everything you have mentioned has never happened to me. (Thank god)
My car was returned even better than when I brought it to Sam and world performance. They have been very fair and the work quality is perfect.
Sam has been fair and treated me with respect and I ended up with an awesome Porsche.
I’ve even brought it to my dealer for warranty work on the headlights and they were shocked to hear it wasn’t still stock.
It may be hard to find reviews of Sam on google because he has a well earned reputation like designing the turbo kit for the pikes peak Porsche and everyone knows about by design and how good they run.
I feel he has been the best thing for me and my car,
I was very nervous to let anybody touch it or to modify it but I was worried for nothing.

You Also chose to use Sam after first doing your due diligence and Sam is a genuine nice guy, a human being like us all.
But your obviously very upset and nobody wants that.

These cars are very easy to work on.
I bet if you just put it on a lift and tightened the loose parts and checked the rest, and got it aligned and Made sure the coolant is topped off with no air in it that you could then reassess the situation,and then take it for a drive.
With all the money you spent on parts you must have a lot of potential for a very cool fast ride

Nashvegas

I’d just like to talk about the coolant…

If the jack knocker filled with water, I bet he didn’t even use distilled. LA Tap water. Awful.

Of all the things you posted, this is perhaps the point that would stress me out the most.

(It’s hilarious you tested the coolant!)

Chameleon63$

Smartest response back yet!!

Love to give you some more details but can't yet!

Fun Fact:
Did you know that even reverse osmosis water has a unique ionic composition from source to source even at extremely low electroconductivity RO water contains impurities. Same for Distilled they all have a little chemical fingerprint if you will.

Although I suppose none of this matters cause he claims he didn't touch the coolant except for when I reminded him I have an email claiming he did, coupled with the fact its impossible to do this scope of work without touching the coolant he back pedals.

Why would anyone need coolant / antifreeze instead of dihydrogen monoxide in a place like COLORADO!?

jdgamble

Man I can't believe I got roped into this.

I believe OP and the other guy that Sam is incompetent.

And for sure 2fcknfst has a connection to Sam and is attacking OP for a reason.

100% certainty on above.

Chameleon63$

Thank you for not attacking me for having a different experience, and thank you for your input.

I will be going to Porsche COS with the results from this case once finalized. They are right up the road from me. He appears to be a nice guy perhaps too nice, disingenuous. A big red flag to me is when people use the word "brother" or "buddy" a lot in which we have no history and are doing basic business acquaintance relations . He set that alarm off early. Used car sales man type stuff. "you know I wouldn't do you wrong buddy wink wink"

Glad your car worked out. I was promised the world and delivered a death trap. Never let these guys touch a motec they couldn't even get the fans to turn on.

Take care

thesaintusa

In 2018 the local dealership had a 911 turbo modified by Sam / by Design. It was in amazing shape, and the head tech was impressed by how well put together it was. Idled like stock and ran like stock except for a HUGE power bump.

The car scared me with the power (and I was wanting a RWD car deep down inside). I passed on it, but part of me wishes I bought it.

I have no dealings with Sam, but saw / drove / examined a finished product and it was impressive.

I am equally impressed that people would allow a car to take years to finish. Hope this gets resolved.

2fcknfst

I'm a mod in the 991 turbo forum, and I can say, there are a lot of cars the vendor has modified, and a lot of happy people.

I'm also a mod in the 996 turbo forum, and again, there are a lot of happy folks.

I have done business with a lot of vendors on this forum since I joined, and as my stats show, I'm very active on RL.

Everything I have asked, or stated, may not be what the OP wanted to hear, but it doesn't mean that I'm not objective.

2fcknfst

I am truly sorry you're unhappy, it sucks, for sure.

Some years ago, I was building a car and there was a detonation event and the engine let go. Turned out that there was a poor connect to a spark plug and it shorted out. The shop that had done the work backed off because they knew I was pretty pissed. So pissed in fact, I parked it for a decade before I had the patience to get back into it.

The point is we are different people - I knew that although the shop messed up, I was also somewhat responsible because I had taken the project so far away from the OEM design parameters, so as much pain it caused me, I had to eat it.

Obviously, at the end of the day, I'm a gear head and like all gear heads, I want your car to run well and bring you some joy.

Whether or not you can get some resolution with the vendor, I don't know... But who really wants to spend this much time being so angry, over something we, the folks reading this, don't fully understand because there's much more to the story?

Life is too short.

I've said it earlier in this thread, and I'll say it again - I don't like to see anyone lead to the firing line on an incomplete set of facts.

Cheers,

white997

2fcknfst.

Curious to hear your take on Sams business motor build partner..... (or is it former partner? when things started going south?)

Arione

Similar issue a friend had with BBI, Took them 3-4 years to build his 918 Edition Turbo S. Thing was never right, ate clutches, eventually had to be de-tuned. Even caught them driving it to shows for PR as far south as San Diego down from LA. I believe he eventually sold the car, lost touch with him so who knows. You really have to be careful with these "tuner shops"

Arione

Pretty much this. I learned this lesson hard with 311RS back in 2018. I did eventually get my products, but they weren't near the quality previously seen and advertised, and only after I filed a lawsuit. Apparently the subcontractor they used got out of the business and it took them almost a year to find another. It didnt go well, so immediately following completion of my order they quit offering the custom upholstered recaro seats. That being said HI Class Customs in Louisiana did amazing work on the headrest embossing when the leather subcontractor in Georgia I believe sublet that work down to him.

GT4_Rick

Wow this is an interesting thread.

My takeaways:

Chameleon63$ - Glad you made this thread. It's great to raise awareness to people about concerns and issues experienced with a vendor. My suggestion would be to reduce the emotional element out of your posts. It's totally understandable and acceptable to be frustrated/angry/disappointed/etc and I would be as well considering, but it doesn't help your cause to raise awareness to people and having credibility. I also don't think you owe people the 'facts' and so forth like they are mentioning, like you said you have your reasons and random people on the forum aren't entitled to your information. Similar to in a court case or police investigation sometimes details are not released to the public, because it could compromise things, alert the criminal to what the police know, etc. There are reasons to withhold information and that does not determine the validity of a claim or not.

2fcknfst - this dude definitely seems like he has a relationship with the parties accused. lol. First of all, no one is objective. Every person alive operates with their personal best interest at heart okay. We are all biased towards good outcomes for ourselves, and that's not a bad thing, it's the rational thing to do. Furthermore, having a bias towards your own favorable outcomes doesn't mean you're wrong about what happened. It doesn't mean you're not telling the truth. If you truly think you're an objective person, what that means is you have blind spots you're not aware of, and thus being affected by biases in ways you're not aware of.

Also, I saw you write mention of something along the lines that the vendor accused helped a lot of forum members. But so what, if a company served 99 customers, ripped off 1, perhaps their percentage is low but that still doesn't take away the fact they ripped off one customer and that's wrong. Hey Boeing has been making planes for years with great success....until recently. But no big deal parts are failing, engines are catching fire, doors are flying off, people are getting hurt, but to you boeing is probably a fantastic company because 'most' of the time their planes work.