Found this post this morning, and it’s something some people NEED to hear when it comes to taking your car to a performance shop / mechanic. It’s very good rant.
Looks like Mike from Innovative actually found it as well :tup:
Have you ever taken your pride and joy to a performance shop for upgrades and the shop ends up f***ing up your shit? Almost every car enthusiast can relate to this scenario. The shop is always to blame; it’s was their fault, right? Eh, maybe not so much. It may be time for tuners to look within. Vinny Ten at Vinny Ten Racing in Babylon, New York shares his insight on the tuning industry and offers free advice potential customers and the shops building their rides. No political correctness or sugarcoating, just the plain hard truth.
Vinny Ten is the first sport compact drag racer to run 10’s in his Toyota Supra which is currently being brought out of retirement. Surprisingly Vinny’s last name has nothing to do with racing heritage but “Ten” is, really and truly, his last name. Vinny spends most of his life doing what he loves: modifying import cars and showing off his creativity. Specializing in VQ35 engines, Vinny is able to squeeze 800hp from Jim Wolf Turbo kits, a pretty impressive feat.
looking forward to the days when i can afford to just drop a car off and say “make it awesome, i’ll be back in 2 months”
unfortunately then you have to find places good enough to do it. probably just easier to start with an M3 or a Porsche and do mild stuff to it… heck, i’m having issues with my G and i barely modded the thing.
it seems like there are also a number of shops out there, in a lot of markets, that ARE this good and stay low key because they do not want to be bothered with the likes of ‘us’ until we’ve ‘made it’.
i remember some people, probably dan or sasha, mentioning a few GTA shops that basically only do higher dollar, high end builds but you never hear about them on-line… presumably because dudes who drop $75k on their cars at a shop like this don’t have time to be on facebook or local car forums.
and in addition to the many hats Vinny mentions, and in addition to Mike’s carpenter suggestion, above all else… you have to also be a decent business man… ethics, proper business practices (accounting, scheduling, receivables and payables, make/buy decisions, sublet/keep in-house decisions, etc. etc.) or no matter how good a car you can turn out you will have to shut your doors regardless.
Also, if you are a busy building cars and turning-over projects, then you don’t have time to be on the internet whoring your builds out to every internet forum, full of know it all haters.
We enjoy when Mike@Inno, Emery, ViperBoy, etc… post stuff for us to salivate over, but that takes time from their days, and time is money.
I bet he’d tell you to go fuck yourself if you complained about your broken Pontiac center cap after an alignement. Or if you thought his quote for labor on a starter was too high.
Hey asshole, it took 40 minutes to do the Cavy starter in my garage with just a basic 150 piece Craftsman set and that included the time to explain how everything worked to my brother in law who wanted to learn. If you think that $200 in labor for something any shop could do in 30 minutes tops is fair I guess that just shows nyspeed what a crooked shop you run.
