Northeast Ohio Cobra tuners?

[Satyr]

Don't post here at all, usually just skim... But THIS was interesting!

Sorry to disagree with your shop-bash-fest but it looks to me like you had a relay get fried - plain and simple - Could be a bad relay, could be a voltage spike from the PCM somehow (more on that later...). I don't know the shop owner but I know of them and I think they are one of very few KB certified installers and KB doesn't hand that designation out like cookies. They probably have installed 100's of BAPs.

On to the PCM spike - "someone" had the wrong impedance injectors onboard. This NEVER plays pretty with a stock PCM. Running low impedance injectors without a resistor box on a stock Ford PCM will substantially increase the temperature of the transistor driver IC due to the increase in current flow. It will QUICKLY increase injector temperatures and quickly get the transistor and IC junctions well past design temp limits. This can cause havoc with a vehicle. Could be the PCM is near it's death throes because of this and it's doing very weird things like throwing codes and not communicating right with the FPDM. It happens. Unfortunately, what YOU did was one of the quickest ways to kill or cripple a PCM. I think you admitted that wasn't the shop's fault. If I were advising a shop what to do with a car that came in with: wrong impedance injectors; a hacked bypass you did and; the wrong belt you chose and that you didn't understand that you cannot just add to another shops tune to change injectors, I'd advise the shop to tell you sayanara!, go somewhere else. Don't touch it. In my mind, props to the shop for FINDING the injector problem before your PCM was a smoking pile of goo and for working with you to tune it after you hacked it up. I guess I'd be frustrated too if I were he, all things considered.

Sorry to disagree with you, but it's just so easy to give one side of a story without the shop being here to give its side. And it's just so easy to gloss over the litany of things that probably caused all your current woes, that in fact YOU caused.

Anyway, I really am not bashing you, just trying to educate and highlight some problems as I see them. So good luck to you - hope it all works out for you!

Stan

Stan,

To start with, you mentioned that you usually just skim here and never post...though you joined this month? Also, since you are averaging .75 posts/day with only a single post, you must have joined very recently. Interesting.

Anyways, I agree with you entirely regarding the injectors and, if you read my initial post, I greatly exalted the shop for finding my error and correcting it; also, there was no need to say "someone," as I clearly designated myself in the wrong for getting the wrong injectors. Furthermore, it's not the PCM causing the CEL's because they were not on for the last 500 or so miles; aside from that, it's not doing any "weird" things, so you must have thought there was more to it. Moving along, the EGR bypass was not hacked at all; there was no boost leaks or vacuum problems anywhere. In fact, the only problem regarding its delete that came to light was the CEL coming on because of it. So I am not quite sure where you're going with that. As for the belt: I purchased that belt because I found it from Cobrabob's list. I have no local belt distributors that carry sizes that large so I was on my own to guess and check. I apparently guessed wrong and ended up finding my own error, though I was told by the shop that it was possibly an error in Stiegemeier's port work. This was despite the fact that I mentioned the belt feeling a bit loose.

Lastly, if you can explain what this meant, "that you didn't understand that you cannot just add to another shops tune to change injectors," then maybe I can elaborate on it...but I am not real sure what it says. As for me causing all of the problems, I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. I'm not exactly sure how dis-aligned exhaust pipes or the purchasing of 500 dollar injectors without speaking to me was my fault, but your opinion is understandable.

Anyways, as I have said a few times throughout this thread, this was not a bash of the shop at all, it was simply an outlining of my happenings. For you to say this is one sided is pretty misguiding, especially considering that I was honest about all the errors I made throughout the experience. I blamed all that was my fault on me. What you may consider marginal errors by the shop I consider the differential between somewhere you go once and somewhere you return to.

Nonetheless, good first post to make. In fact, it seems almost as if it were destined to be your first post...

EDIT: my above post has been changed to include the notes that Stan mentioned as possible ways for the relay harness to have been burnt up.

 

[TERMIN8TR]

Don't post here at all, usually just skim... But THIS was interesting!

Sorry to disagree with your shop-bash-fest but it looks to me like you had a relay get fried - plain and simple - Could be a bad relay, could be a voltage spike from the PCM somehow (more on that later...). I don't know the shop owner but I know of them and I think they are one of very few KB certified installers and KB doesn't hand that designation out like cookies. They probably have installed 100's of BAPs.

On to the PCM spike - "someone" had the wrong impedance injectors onboard. This NEVER plays pretty with a stock PCM. Running low impedance injectors without a resistor box on a stock Ford PCM will substantially increase the temperature of the transistor driver IC due to the increase in current flow. It will QUICKLY increase injector temperatures and quickly get the transistor and IC junctions well past design temp limits. This can cause havoc with a vehicle. Could be the PCM is near it's death throes because of this and it's doing very weird things like throwing codes and not communicating right with the FPDM. It happens. Unfortunately, what YOU did was one of the quickest ways to kill or cripple a PCM. I think you admitted that wasn't the shop's fault. If I were advising a shop what to do with a car that came in with: wrong impedance injectors; a hacked bypass you did and; the wrong belt you chose and that you didn't understand that you cannot just add to another shops tune to change injectors, I'd advise the shop to tell you sayanara!, go somewhere else. Don't touch it. In my mind, props to the shop for FINDING the injector problem before your PCM was a smoking pile of goo and for working with you to tune it after you hacked it up. I guess I'd be frustrated too if I were he, all things considered.

Sorry to disagree with you, but it's just so easy to give one side of a story without the shop being here to give its side. And it's just so easy to gloss over the litany of things that probably caused all your current woes, that in fact YOU caused.

Anyway, I really am not bashing you, just trying to educate and highlight some problems as I see them. So good luck to you - hope it all works out for you!

Stan

Excellent post! See, there's always 2 sides to every story. Knowing that the car came in with so many issues that were caused by the car owner i would have sent him back to the drawing board to make things right before tuning it.

Also, if i'm not mistaken they are also an authorized saleen supercharger installer. i know they've installed tons of them.

 

[TERMIN8TR]

Stan,

To start with, you mentioned that you usually just skim here and never post...though you joined this month? Also, since you are averaging .75 posts/day with only a single post, you must have joined very recently. Interesting.

Anyways, I agree with you entirely regarding the injectors and, if you read my initial post, I greatly exalted the shop for finding my error and correcting it; also, there was no need to say "someone," as I clearly designated myself in the wrong for getting the wrong injectors. Furthermore, it's not the PCM causing the CEL's because they were not on for the last 500 or so miles; aside from that, it's not doing any "weird" things, so you must have thought there was more to it. Moving along, the EGR bypass was not hacked at all; there was no boost leaks or vacuum problems anywhere. In fact, the only problem regarding its delete that came to light was the CEL coming on because of it. So I am not quite sure where you're going with that. As for the belt: I purchased that belt because I found it from Cobrabob's list. I have no local belt distributors that carry sizes that large so I was on my own to guess and check. I apparently guessed wrong and ended up finding my own error, though I was told by the shop that it was possibly an error in Stiegemeier's port work. This was despite the fact that I mentioned the belt feeling a bit loose.

Lastly, if you can explain what this meant, "that you didn't understand that you cannot just add to another shops tune to change injectors," then maybe I can elaborate on it...but I am not real sure what it says. As for me causing all of the problems, I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. I'm not exactly sure how dis-aligned exhaust pipes or the purchasing of 500 dollar injectors without speaking to me was my fault, but your opinion is understandable.

Anyways, as I have said a few times throughout this thread, this was not a bash of the shop at all, it was simply an outlining of my happenings. For you to say this is one sided is pretty misguiding, especially considering that I was honest about all the errors I made throughout the experience. I blamed all that was my fault on me. What you may consider marginal errors by the shop I consider the differential between somewhere you go once and somewhere you return to.

Nonetheless, good first post to make. In fact, it seems almost as if it were destined to be your first post...

sounds to me like bigshot was trying to unscrew what you screwed up, which they had no obligation to do.
and yes, by reading your initial post, it was indeed a total "shop bash".
someone will come in here and read your inaccurate, finger pointing posts and decide not to do business with them. that's not fair.
why didn't you bash cobra bob for recommending the wrong belt?

thank god OEM Calibrator came in here and pointed out the facts!

 

[Satyr]

Excellent post! See, there's always 2 sides to every story. Knowing that the car came in with so many issues that were caused by the car owner i would have sent him back to the drawing board to make things right before tuning it.

Also, if i'm not mistaken they are also an authorized saleen supercharger installer. i know they've installed tons of them.

sounds to me like bigshot was trying to unscrew what you screwed up, which they had no obligation to do.
and yes, by reading your initial post, it was indeed a total "shop bash".
someone will come in here and read your inaccurate, finger pointing posts and decide not to do business with them. that's not fair.
why didn't you bash cobra bob for recommending the wrong belt?

thank god OEM Calibrator came in here and pointed out the facts!

Call it what you will. I tried to approach the situation as gingerly as possible. I noted both sides of the story and included my faults and my appreciation in the finding of them. You consider it a "total shop bash" because you had a good experience with them...which greatly skews your opinion, in much the same way as mine is skewed by my poor experience with them.

If it stops some business, then that's that. By the same token, however, the proclamations of their greatness made by you and the elusive Stan will certainly provide them with business; that should balance it out, no?

Anyways, this thread has gone in the direction I felt it would...people crying because someone didn't love a shop as much as "the other guy." It was bound to happen and that's fine. As far as I am concered, my experiences were stated adequately and that's all I needed to do in this thread. Interestingly enough, after I made this post of an honest story, another member noted that he had heard bad things about some of their work, as well. I don't quite think that's a coincidence. I also received a few pm's from members with complaints, but I will let those stories be told by their authors, if they so desire.

So long.

 

[OEM Calibrator]

Well, "the elusive Stan" posts one more time. I'm a VERY busy guy and took time out of my schedule to post and try to help you by telling you that if you continue having problems, that you should look at your PCM after what happened with your injectors. You seem to intimate that there is something surreptitious going on. Nope, I don’t know that dyno personally, but I have heard of them. I do know a LOT of different dyno owners though, some good, some not so good. But I do get peeved when people do this on the internet though, because I have seen it happen to shops in this neck of the woods – good shops like Lidio’s and Paul’s HP – a frustrated owner posts their side of things. No matter your disclaimers to the contrary, you ARE bad mouthing them – after YOU hacked your own car up. Maybe you should post that people out there better not use YOU for mechanical repairs – that’d be fair, correct? Now if Big Shot posted here and we all saw that your side was 100% correct, then I’d back off – but they have not. After taking the time to post, to help and try to even out this conversation a bit so it wasn’t so ‘shop bashing’ oriented, you intimate that I have a vested interest in this, I’m inclined to agree with the guy at Big Shot Dyno who told you to “stop crying…”

And why don’t I post much? Or barely at all? Well, it’s easy, because of posts like this, where I try to help and express my opinion and then get bashed. I’m not the only one in my field that refuses to post on websites. I don’t plan to post too much in the future either, just not worth the hassle of having to post a ‘defense’ post like this one.

To ‘explain’ my one point to you: I got on Big Shot’s website and saw that they use SCT software. So that means even though you just wanted them to adjust the ‘slope fields’ on Amazon’s tune file, they could not do this. No SCT dealer can ‘suck’ the tune out of a chip or programmer to look at it. SCT did this to protect the integrity of their dealers. So that shop had to start and do the tune from scratch and not use Rick’s tune, unless of course they have some magic way of bypassing this. By the way, there is a bit more to it than ‘adjusting slope fields’.

Getting back on point – if you DO want to accept some help, my guess is your PCM is really on its way out. I have never seen a PCM actually survive the wrong impedance injectors and live a long happy life after that. It is just too hard on them. If I were you if you want to bash someone out of frustration, I’d bash the shop/store that sold you those injectors – I’d make them take them back AND pay for a new PCM. Any place that sells injectors should have known what injectors work with Fords. The SD 60# injectors work really well and those would be my first choice for a car like yours – I’m not a fan of the Summit 48’s either, but they do work. My guess is the shop chose those because they didn’t have SD 60’s in stock and they were trying like heck to get your car drivable to get it back to you in a timely manner. Just curious, what’d the shop charge you for figuring out the injectors you installed were of the wrong impedance? Since shops usually NEVER see this kind of error, my guess is they probably had at least two hours in it – it’s NOT and easy diagnose – it IS easy once you suspect it, but 99.99% of the time, you’d never expect it and look at other things.

I did really mean I hope you get your issues worked out and wish you good luck. The first rule of tuning is do not tune around mechanical problems – fix them first. It can be frustrating dealing with things when you have issues and all you want to do is drive the darn thing. But hang in there you’ll get them worked out and them have a great, fun car!

The Elusive Stan, LOL!

 

[04 light]

Reply

Most shop owners don't respond to Internet posts because the shop owners always get further bashed when trying to defend themselves. I have a lot of customers that want me to respond to this thread, so here it is.
This car came in with a leaking head cooling mod and the owner said that he would fix it because he is going to school and didn't have much extra money. The owner had tried to hook up the boost a pump, but the car wouldn't run and he took it off and wanted us to install it. The relay that comes with the wiring upgrade has the leads molded into the relay harness. One of these leads is smaller than the 8awg wire from the power source and gets soldered to the 8awg wire per the instructions. A current high enough to melt the relay and adapter would have happened right away during tuning, so something else caused the current to spike high enough to melt this.

We installed the headers and mid pipes, but did not install the bung because the rear bungs would be turned off in the tune and he could use the rears. We tried to save him a little money because of what he said above.

When we found the car had issues, we called the owner and he said he woud come and get the car and figure out what was wrong since he stated earlier he didn't have the extra money to have us do it. When he brought the car back, he didn't say anything about the misaligned pipes, or we would have made them rignt.

As far as the injectors, when we found out he had the wrong injectors, I called him and told him the only injectors I could get the same day were the Summit 48's. He told me to get the 48's if he could pick his car up later that day, and I did. I couldn't do the final tune because of too high down stream air temps. (I gave him a photo shot of the SCT data logger showing too high down stream temps). Again, he wanted to come get the car to figure the cause of the down stream air temps.

It is easy to adjust the bypass stop and then rev a cool motor so show higher boost and then declare problem solved.

The shop phone number is forwarded to my cell phone 24 hours a day and customers call me at all hours and on holidays and are able to talk to someone. If they don't get a hold of me personally, I call them back as soon as possible. I don't just throw parts on a car without the customers approval.
I hope this clears up some issues.
Keith

 

[MIKESTANG_SVT]

And now we know the rest of the story.

 

[TERMIN8TR]

Most shop owners don't respond to Internet posts because the shop owners always get further bashed when trying to defend themselves. I have a lot of customers that want me to respond to this thread, so here it is.
This car came in with a leaking head cooling mod and the owner said that he would fix it because he is going to school and didn't have much extra money. The owner had tried to hook up the boost a pump, but the car wouldn't run and he took it off and wanted us to install it. The relay that comes with the wiring upgrade has the leads molded into the relay harness. One of these leads is smaller than the 8awg wire from the power source and gets soldered to the 8awg wire per the instructions. A current high enough to melt the relay and adapter would have happened right away during tuning, so something else caused the current to spike high enough to melt this.

We installed the headers and mid pipes, but did not install the bung because the rear bungs would be turned off in the tune and he could use the rears. We tried to save him a little money because of what he said above.

When we found the car had issues, we called the owner and he said he woud come and get the car and figure out what was wrong since he stated earlier he didn't have the extra money to have us do it. When he brought the car back, he didn't say anything about the misaligned pipes, or we would have made them rignt.

As far as the injectors, when we found out he had the wrong injectors, I called him and told him the only injectors I could get the same day were the Summit 48's. He told me to get the 48's if he could pick his car up later that day, and I did. I couldn't do the final tune because of too high down stream air temps. (I gave him a photo shot of the SCT data logger showing too high down stream temps). Again, he wanted to come get the car to figure the cause of the down stream air temps.

It is easy to adjust the bypass stop and then rev a cool motor so show higher boost and then declare problem solved.

The shop phone number is forwarded to my cell phone 24 hours a day and customers call me at all hours and on holidays and are able to talk to someone. If they don't get a hold of me personally, I call them back as soon as possible. I don't just throw parts on a car without the customers approval.
I hope this clears up some issues.
Keith

That's what I figured. The guy doesn't know how to work on a car himself and does a 1/2 assed job then brings it to you to unscrew it and bitches when it ends up costing him money.

Lesson learned

 

[SonicTerminator]

i had terry from street lethal performance right outside ohio tune mine and am very happy with it

i know terry personally, he is fantastic! the first forced induction 5.4 in a sn-95 or mustang period, o yeah he was only 19 years old at the time. there is a lot of wicked shit goin around he built. not bad for someone mid to late 20's.

The shop phone number is forwarded to my cell phone 24 hours a day and customers call me at all hours and on holidays and are able to talk to someone. If they don't get a hold of me personally, I call them back as soon as possible. I don't just throw parts on a car without the customers approval.
I hope this clears up some issues.
Keith

one of the best things about big shot is the excellent communication with the customer. i would defently go back again, and i recommend them to everybody who asks about my car. my car was well taken care of, no scratches or finger prints on it. this is the way a business should be ran. this was just my experience with them (Keith), i am sure like any other successful business there are unsatisfied customers but, all in all they are a kick ass place and know what they are doing.