Well, since my car/I was brought up in the other thread I felt I should probably clarify my situation as well.
3 years ago this month I bought a Lexus SC300 that had a built motor, DFI, toyomoto turbo kit with spearco FMIC, etc., etc.
The car drove fantastic for about a month then went to poo. I had owned a Supra prior to this car so had obvously heard of SP. I called up and talked with Larry. What we basically discussed was just cleaning up the wiring, retuning the car, etc., etc. We were planning on also polishing some things up, and just in general cleaning up what looked to be a pretty sloppy install. We were looking to have a bill somewhere in the $5000 range and possibly take 4-6 weeks to complete.
Well, to make a long story short I can't leave well enough alone, so we decided to do a lot more work than we originally planned on. No one made a tubular header for the NA motor at that time, so I had Lar make me one (yes NA guys, you can thank me now for paying to have that made
). We also upgraded the whole fuel system, switched over to Speed Pro because DFI is crap, swapped out the FMIC for a Greddy kit, installed a complete stereo system, put in a TT rear end, put on wheels, swapped out the TRD suspension that was on the car back to stock so it would launch well, new turbo (sp63), new wastegate, etc.,
We picked the car up on memorial day weekend (May for you guys who don't know holidays) and the car ran fairly well. This bill was @$36000, and that was after they agreed to drop a pretty sizeable amount of labor off.
I had honestly NEVER had a car modified to this extent and I had no idea about what fuel was necessary, what detonation sounded like, etc. Well, we drive the car back and I was planning on staying in STL for the night and showing my friends there the car (STL is about 3 hours short of where I live). After a few hours of beating on the car at 17psi on 93 octane and the car apparently detonating like madness it was still running surprisingly well. However, later that afternoon the crank pully broke, which made the magnetic pickup on the crank trigger not pick up ever rotation. Needless to say, this was a problem. I called the shop at probably 6 or 7 oclock on Sat night, and 5 hours later Ivan was in STL fixing my car for free in a friends garage in STL. Ivan offers to have me come back to Chicago and stay with him so they can make sure it is all right again, and also so we can redo some tuning, etc. and make it a little more 93 octane friendly.
Over this time period I actually end up staying with Ivan for 5 weeks. We fixed the tuning, redid numerous other little things (small things like adding a bottle heater, redoing some of the original owners nitrous wiring, etc.) This ended up adding about $5000 to the bill, but the car was running incredible. We went to the track and went [email protected] with a 1.5x short time the first day we had it there, and this was at base boost with the spray.
At this point we ran strictly 104 octane in it, and I supplied myself by keeping barrels of 104 at my house.
Unfornately as many have learned the original built SP toyo trannies weren't exactly the most reliable thing, so anything more than that and the would not make the 1-2 shift. We had the tranny redone (free) and then I took the car home. I had the car home for @ 1.5 months. I made 8 passes. 6 on base boost with no spray on street tires, and on 26psi on street tires, and the last on base boost and spray on street tires. On this final pass the transmission completely let go. You could actually make the car move if you gave the car like 5% throttle and it didn't just spin through the melted converter. Following this the car started overheating. The conclusion was it was from the car bouncing off the rev limiter on spray in 1st gear because the tranny wouldn't shift. This created small pinholes in the head gasket. This was aided by the original owner o-ringing the block, but not having a receiver groove put in the head. The car would actually still drive (kind of) and not overheat if you were not stopped in traffic. A friend of mine and I were actually able to drive it 8 hours to SP, and dropped it back off to have the trans and converter replaced (under warranty still). At this point Ivan actually let me take HIS car (galant vr4 at the time) while they were working on my car, as they were confident they would have it ready within a few weeks. Once they pulled the head though they realized the motor needed a complete rebuild. This was towards the end of July. I don't honestly remember the exact amount of this bill, but I want to say it was something like $7k.
The car was ready again the weekend of battle of the imports in Joliet (second weekend in September) so we went to pick the vehicle up and go the race with SP. Well, the car made an incredible 2 passes before the motor let go We knew ahead of time SOMETHING was not right with the motor, considering it was filling the coolent overflow tank pretty damn quick, but were assured this would not be a problem. Unfortunately this was not correct, and we payed for it by popping a motor. Luckily by this time we had actually bought a truck and trailor, so we could haul it back to SP ourselves, instead of a tow truck.
Now over $100000 and almost 3 years this is honestly the only time I can say that we have ever been unhappy with SP. It wasn't because the motor blew, it was because they left us at the track and just took off for home. They actually left with a couple of their mechanics at the time still at the track. These guys helped up push the dead car onto the trailer, and then they rode back to SP in the bed of our truck. At this time Ivan came up to talk with us, as he could tell over the phone we were pretty hacked. Apparently Larry could make the time to come up because of some dinner engagement or something like that, and Gary was busy barbequeing at his house.
This is the point in time where anger actually set in, and I think Ivan was able to convey to the guys over the phone that that was the case, so Lar made it up to the shop to discuss what was going to be done. What was settled on was that SP would cover all the Labor to fix everything on the car, and that we would cover parts. So we leave and everyone is still a little unhappy, but at least something had been agreed upon, and we were pleased with the resolution, just unhappy about the guys not wanting to help us at the track, come to the shop and talk with us, etc.
We were hoping the car would be ready for TX2K2. I don't know how long the car sat without having anything done to it, but I understood that they were not making money on my car at this point so I was content for it to be worked on when time was available. TX2K2 came and went and the car was still not running. We were planning at this time on having a 74 and my original 120 shot on the car, but once lars car popped at the strip in TX he said he is going to the 88 and just spraying out of the hole, and we should do the same. This is what we did. We also had a powerglide setup built, and shipped it all up to SP for them to install that since we had so many problems with the toyo trans. They actually had the car running in probably may (if I remember correct) but lar said the glide made the car drive like a school bus, and that if I planned ANY street driving I would be very unhappy with it. So we sold the complete setup and ordered up an SP400 lock up setup. We also had the 6spd rear end put in as suggested by Ivan and Lar.
The car was going to be ready for a race in STL in August (this was the goal), and we were told it would be. However we showed up and the motor wasn't even in the car and running yet, so Ivan and Lar bust ass to get it all together while we are there. Everything is good to go and we head over to AMS for dyno time at around 8:00 PM. This is actually pretty funny, because when they had pulled the motor they didn't drain the oil. Not a big deal, but considering when they were working on wiring under the dash they told my pops to drop in 5 quarts the car ended up having 10 quarts if oil in it. We found this out when 28psi of boost sprayed a river of oil out of the vents in the valve cover gaskets This was at about 1 or 2 AM. It was evident that the car was not going to be right for the race the next morning, so we left with plans to pick the car up again in a few weeks.
Now at this point I honestly lose track of how many motors we went through over the next 8 months. The motor that was in the car spun a rod bearing before we picked it up, the next motor had the intake manifold explode (nitrous backfire) and blow a hole through my hood, this same motor I believe was blown up on the dyno when the car ran out of gas (it actually had 1/4 tank but the twin fuel pump install by an ex employee had one pump high enough that it didn't get any fuel so basically my 4, 5, and 6 pistons were totally jacked. This also scored the cylinder wall bad enough in #6 that we had to sleeve that one cylinder. Now the goal is to have it ready for TX2K3, and it ends up being ready. I have the car for about 4 or 5 days prior to that and get to drive it around Springfield. The car is detonating pretty bad, so I call Ivan and ask him how to check the timing tables in the Speed Pro, and he tells me. This reveals that much of the timing map is set at 30-33 advance! We drop the timing back down to 20 degrees and then I finally get to feel what my time/money has built. This thing is CRAZY fast. Well, the car is running AWESOME and we are pumped to head to TX for the meet. We get to TX drive the car around a bit, no problems. Everything seems good. Then we pull on the dyno and the car is running 9.2:1 A/F ratios. We take it off and park it. I pull the plugs to see what they look like, and they look fine but we replace them anyways.
3 years ago this month I bought a Lexus SC300 that had a built motor, DFI, toyomoto turbo kit with spearco FMIC, etc., etc.
The car drove fantastic for about a month then went to poo. I had owned a Supra prior to this car so had obvously heard of SP. I called up and talked with Larry. What we basically discussed was just cleaning up the wiring, retuning the car, etc., etc. We were planning on also polishing some things up, and just in general cleaning up what looked to be a pretty sloppy install. We were looking to have a bill somewhere in the $5000 range and possibly take 4-6 weeks to complete.
Well, to make a long story short I can't leave well enough alone, so we decided to do a lot more work than we originally planned on. No one made a tubular header for the NA motor at that time, so I had Lar make me one (yes NA guys, you can thank me now for paying to have that made
). We also upgraded the whole fuel system, switched over to Speed Pro because DFI is crap, swapped out the FMIC for a Greddy kit, installed a complete stereo system, put in a TT rear end, put on wheels, swapped out the TRD suspension that was on the car back to stock so it would launch well, new turbo (sp63), new wastegate, etc.,We picked the car up on memorial day weekend (May for you guys who don't know holidays) and the car ran fairly well. This bill was @$36000, and that was after they agreed to drop a pretty sizeable amount of labor off.
I had honestly NEVER had a car modified to this extent and I had no idea about what fuel was necessary, what detonation sounded like, etc. Well, we drive the car back and I was planning on staying in STL for the night and showing my friends there the car (STL is about 3 hours short of where I live). After a few hours of beating on the car at 17psi on 93 octane and the car apparently detonating like madness it was still running surprisingly well. However, later that afternoon the crank pully broke, which made the magnetic pickup on the crank trigger not pick up ever rotation. Needless to say, this was a problem. I called the shop at probably 6 or 7 oclock on Sat night, and 5 hours later Ivan was in STL fixing my car for free in a friends garage in STL. Ivan offers to have me come back to Chicago and stay with him so they can make sure it is all right again, and also so we can redo some tuning, etc. and make it a little more 93 octane friendly.
Over this time period I actually end up staying with Ivan for 5 weeks. We fixed the tuning, redid numerous other little things (small things like adding a bottle heater, redoing some of the original owners nitrous wiring, etc.) This ended up adding about $5000 to the bill, but the car was running incredible. We went to the track and went [email protected] with a 1.5x short time the first day we had it there, and this was at base boost with the spray.
At this point we ran strictly 104 octane in it, and I supplied myself by keeping barrels of 104 at my house.
Unfornately as many have learned the original built SP toyo trannies weren't exactly the most reliable thing, so anything more than that and the would not make the 1-2 shift. We had the tranny redone (free) and then I took the car home. I had the car home for @ 1.5 months. I made 8 passes. 6 on base boost with no spray on street tires, and on 26psi on street tires, and the last on base boost and spray on street tires. On this final pass the transmission completely let go. You could actually make the car move if you gave the car like 5% throttle and it didn't just spin through the melted converter. Following this the car started overheating. The conclusion was it was from the car bouncing off the rev limiter on spray in 1st gear because the tranny wouldn't shift. This created small pinholes in the head gasket. This was aided by the original owner o-ringing the block, but not having a receiver groove put in the head. The car would actually still drive (kind of) and not overheat if you were not stopped in traffic. A friend of mine and I were actually able to drive it 8 hours to SP, and dropped it back off to have the trans and converter replaced (under warranty still). At this point Ivan actually let me take HIS car (galant vr4 at the time) while they were working on my car, as they were confident they would have it ready within a few weeks. Once they pulled the head though they realized the motor needed a complete rebuild. This was towards the end of July. I don't honestly remember the exact amount of this bill, but I want to say it was something like $7k.
The car was ready again the weekend of battle of the imports in Joliet (second weekend in September) so we went to pick the vehicle up and go the race with SP. Well, the car made an incredible 2 passes before the motor let go
We knew ahead of time SOMETHING was not right with the motor, considering it was filling the coolent overflow tank pretty damn quick, but were assured this would not be a problem. Unfortunately this was not correct, and we payed for it by popping a motor. Luckily by this time we had actually bought a truck and trailor, so we could haul it back to SP ourselves, instead of a tow truck.Now over $100000 and almost 3 years this is honestly the only time I can say that we have ever been unhappy with SP. It wasn't because the motor blew, it was because they left us at the track and just took off for home. They actually left with a couple of their mechanics at the time still at the track. These guys helped up push the dead car onto the trailer, and then they rode back to SP in the bed of our truck. At this time Ivan came up to talk with us, as he could tell over the phone we were pretty hacked. Apparently Larry could make the time to come up because of some dinner engagement or something like that, and Gary was busy barbequeing at his house.
This is the point in time where anger actually set in, and I think Ivan was able to convey to the guys over the phone that that was the case, so Lar made it up to the shop to discuss what was going to be done. What was settled on was that SP would cover all the Labor to fix everything on the car, and that we would cover parts. So we leave and everyone is still a little unhappy, but at least something had been agreed upon, and we were pleased with the resolution, just unhappy about the guys not wanting to help us at the track, come to the shop and talk with us, etc.
We were hoping the car would be ready for TX2K2. I don't know how long the car sat without having anything done to it, but I understood that they were not making money on my car at this point so I was content for it to be worked on when time was available. TX2K2 came and went and the car was still not running. We were planning at this time on having a 74 and my original 120 shot on the car, but once lars car popped at the strip in TX he said he is going to the 88 and just spraying out of the hole, and we should do the same. This is what we did. We also had a powerglide setup built, and shipped it all up to SP for them to install that since we had so many problems with the toyo trans. They actually had the car running in probably may (if I remember correct) but lar said the glide made the car drive like a school bus, and that if I planned ANY street driving I would be very unhappy with it. So we sold the complete setup and ordered up an SP400 lock up setup. We also had the 6spd rear end put in as suggested by Ivan and Lar.
The car was going to be ready for a race in STL in August (this was the goal), and we were told it would be. However we showed up and the motor wasn't even in the car and running yet, so Ivan and Lar bust ass to get it all together while we are there. Everything is good to go and we head over to AMS for dyno time at around 8:00 PM. This is actually pretty funny, because when they had pulled the motor they didn't drain the oil. Not a big deal, but considering when they were working on wiring under the dash they told my pops to drop in 5 quarts the car ended up having 10 quarts if oil in it. We found this out when 28psi of boost sprayed a river of oil out of the vents in the valve cover gaskets
This was at about 1 or 2 AM. It was evident that the car was not going to be right for the race the next morning, so we left with plans to pick the car up again in a few weeks.Now at this point I honestly lose track of how many motors we went through over the next 8 months. The motor that was in the car spun a rod bearing before we picked it up, the next motor had the intake manifold explode (nitrous backfire) and blow a hole through my hood, this same motor I believe was blown up on the dyno when the car ran out of gas (it actually had 1/4 tank but the twin fuel pump install by an ex employee had one pump high enough that it didn't get any fuel so basically my 4, 5, and 6 pistons were totally jacked. This also scored the cylinder wall bad enough in #6 that we had to sleeve that one cylinder. Now the goal is to have it ready for TX2K3, and it ends up being ready. I have the car for about 4 or 5 days prior to that and get to drive it around Springfield. The car is detonating pretty bad, so I call Ivan and ask him how to check the timing tables in the Speed Pro, and he tells me. This reveals that much of the timing map is set at 30-33 advance!
We drop the timing back down to 20 degrees and then I finally get to feel what my time/money has built. This thing is CRAZY fast. Well, the car is running AWESOME and we are pumped to head to TX for the meet. We get to TX drive the car around a bit, no problems. Everything seems good. Then we pull on the dyno and the car is running 9.2:1 A/F ratios. We take it off and park it. I pull the plugs to see what they look like, and they look fine but we replace them anyways.
![::MySTiK_[SuPRa]::](/d1/avatars/m/13/13198.jpg?1560438478){kind=avatar}
