tag rant
 

well what can i say, i hear only bad things. one guy from another club im in had the car tuned and its acting as if its blowing out spark up top. im running nearly 3 times the amount of boos tthat he is withthe same ignition setup and im seeing no issues and they just keep his car there. another guy had them develop a turbo kit on his car, charged him an arm and a leg and now the turbo is seized he says. wtf is up with these clowns?

Those guys are butchers all they do is promise lots of power but your car never runs right again, and ends up costing you more money to get their S--T fixed and replaced.

funny you say that, ive heard the sme thing from a few people now. wh oelse hsa a story about these clowns?

ive heard good things as well, but only from the people that were renting dyno time and doing the tuning themselves lol

Maybe the spark plug gaps are too wide? VW guys run .022-.028 on boosted motors, most plugs come gapped around .030-.045 IIRC, maybe someone just didn't bother gapping the plugs
I haven't heard much about TAG, just from people who have used their dyno for tuning/dyno days

I can see where your comming from... But with the issue of owning an "original car" is the issue of who to let work on your car. I know for my cougar if I told them to swap me an escape motor in it not a single shop would know where to start. I took into accountability knowing this car would be a bitch to work on. The only info available is what's on forums from past attempts etc. With tunning, tune it yourself or get a custom chip. I throw no pitty at all on the weak and mis-guided whatever you call it in this game. I still have no idea at all how to tune, but I will learn from reading. I constantly read a cougar forum, contour forum and good ol HT.


I don't know about you but letting a shop do a custom turbo setup for a cougar/contour is just not even in my mind. They wouldnt know where to start, and obviously it would cost an arm and a leg... Tag charges 85$ an hour which is basic rate in shops nowadays.


But I don't blame that guy for going to a shop to do custom work... I've read the j-body forums a few times and...:smilie_d0

every shop is a butcher.

oem plug gap is around .050, we both gap our cars to .032. ive had no issues at all right to the limiter in any gear. hes running the gm blower which is making roughly 5 pounds of boost. i was hitting 15 last year from my turbo. makes no sense other than a poor tune

i built my own turbo setup and ive had no issues with it at all. this guy paid more to have his kit made by tag who used his car for the prototype kit than what i had invested in mine and he put a tiny amount of milage on the car and now the turbo is seized. who knows why, could be improperly sized supply and return lines, mostly supply in this case. could be a bunch of other things but the car got finished over the winter so really, he has minimal seat time in it.

^ man i would be uber pissed if i payed all that and olny got to look at the car and not drive it :smilie_d0

another guy from my club, same guy who is getting the spark blowout as he thinks it is. was supposed to have his car tuned one nite after hours, so he rushed over there to find the guys gone home for the nite. dont make plans you wont keep.

Though Mel is a nice guy, hes not a licensed mechanic. Ive taken my car there previously and all i have to say is, Mel is a nice guy. My car has since been taken elsewhere and wont ever return to that shop.

I'm posting this from an outsider's view, this is in regards to the whole issue with the turbo kit on that car. The owner came in with low oil and said it made grinding noises a few days before and it didn't make any boost! He kept driving it, when it came to the shop a month after it was tuned. The motor was basically really low on oil and yes the turbo did seize due to that.

So who do you blame? The driver or the guy that built it? When having a modified car you should at least know what to check on a daily basis. This is especially true on a NA motor that has been turbocharged.

What time you expect shops to stay open until? What is a shop to do when a customer/tuner comes in after 6pm to tune for a couple of hours. The same tuner came in the next morning and the "spark blowing out" is due to his tune. All the basic procedures a tuner goes over before a session (i.e. spark plug gaps, timing etc) however, the same car came in for a pulley swap and a dyno run....

So now you have both sides of the story.......

Please feel free to tell me what you think!

The shop was "keeping his car" locked down inside the shop overnight because the owner did not want to drive the car home. WHY, cause his belt was shreading on one end due to the tuner installing the pulley inncorrecly and not in alignemnet. Also it sat because he didn't want to pay the dealer cost for a new belt and had to wait for cheaper priced belt from the states.

dealer cost for belt, 220 bucks, belt from states, 25. makes sense to me. how was the solstice motor low on oil? was it leaking from someplace? was it not topped up after the turbo had been put on?

i expect shops to stay open late if they say they will for the customer, they said they would, they didnt. its all about customer service, and we all ahve to work a little late sometimes to get that good word of mouth advertising going.

so even you said it, the spark blow out is because of his tune. quite the ability to tune over there, remind me to bring my built and boosted car over there and have them tune it. id so love to have a knock issue or something equally as fun at high rpm's.

wow Legend.. i wonder how many excuses you could come up with for my car. :smilie_da