patsbimmer1

With the baby coming this month and due this week I've been busy at work trying to get things wrapped up before I go on leave along with trying to get projects done around the house and get a few of my own customers cars done at home so I haven't had much time to really do anything with this other than stare at it and more recently, drive it. I got it out of storage on March 17th and since then I've put on 300ish miles hitting back roads to run errands. I have a few boxes of parts either at my house or on order that need to get installed that includes: Rod Bearings/Motor Mounts H&R Sport Springs Spacers (15mm front/12.5mm rear) Pad Wear Sensor I still want to order a front lip for the car and get the GTS DCT tune done this summer. With the baby coming and the maintenance i'm doing this summer I don't know that I'll be able to get any track time but I plan on driving the hell out of this thing! And if anyone was wondering, it will hold two car seats. My seat didn't need to move forward and the passenger seat was left where my wife keeps it. .

I was reading that ad thinking "wow, this is a great car!". Then I saw the price... Then I saw the mileage. He's fucking insane.

I see what you did there...

Oh is that what you appreciate about him Squirrelly Ramplesauce?

Any progress is good!

Did you sign a full and final settlement? If not you can still challenge them through the DATCP. It's still wrong for them to charge you more than you were quoted. If they were getting in over their heads they should have called and gotten verbal authorization to charge more or ate the cost and learned a $200 lesson. Communication is key in that situation and they blew it.

So we're all clear here ECS isn't actually acquiring these companies. They're falling under the ECS umbrella but in the grand scheme they're being purchased by Bertram Capital who is the private equity firm supplying the money that has ECS in it's portfolio. These moves all make sense from a private equity standpoint. The target is acquire and increase value in order to sell at a higher price later on. A 5-7 year investment is pretty standard for most private equity firms. They're piling capital into a company to make it's net worth and gross revenue as large as possible in order to dump it off later. Every time they acquire a new company it's net growth. ECS and it's subsidiaries will all be sold off at a later date and the cycle will start over and as a community we'll be fucked looking for quality aftermarket parts at a fair price.

Now that I think about it to Fluid Motorunion in Naperville has done a lot of dyno tuning and started out specializing in BMW's. They moved shops and I don't know if they still do dyno tuning but it might be another good one.

$1k seems about right for a custom dyno tune on a standalone ecu. For reference, Late Model Throttle charges $900 starting for tuning a standalone ecu and $100/hr if they need to go more in depth. I'd consider Late Model Throttle to be one of the better dyno tuner's in Wisconsin. I don't know if they have any experience with MS or tunerstudio but maybe they could help point you the right way.

This is something we're all told but to be honest it really depends on the number of reviews that company has and how good their marketing team is. Just like anything else these reviews can be easily manipulated, deleted, etc. You can mine for good reviews and easily hide any bad ones without doing much work. Try looking at product reviews and tell me how many of those are honest reviews and how many were paid advertisements. Also, from my perspective there are tons of fabricated stories that paint the writer as a victim when in reality they left out key details. So how reliable are these reviews? For example, a recent one: Customer wrote a bad review because their wheel came loose while driving after having tires put on. In reality they failed to mention that after further investigation we found through Carfax that a week after leaving our shop they took it to another shop and had the brakes replaced on THE SAME WHEEL THAT CAME OFF. Good reviews and word of mouth certainly help in auto service but based on market data I've seen reviews are typically the 3rd or 4th reason somebody chooses a repair facility. Writing a review may help get you heard and rectify your situation but more often than not if it's an independent shop they may not care and the person reading and responding to your review may be the same person you dealt with at the shop. Bad reviews are a great way to make people feel better and vent but other than that you're better off reaching out to the DATCP and starting your legal paper trail there. Nobody remembers the bad review someone else wrote, they only remember the experience they had and will defend that experience regardless of others experiences. For clarity sake, this is not me defending poor service from a shop. That's absolutely unacceptable in an industry that relies heavily on paying someone to be the expert trust is key to building relationships. Many people have worked very hard over the decades to remove the "grease monkey" image and mentality from the industry and these shit hole scam artists that continue to perpetuate this image should be wiped from the face of the earth.

You're in luck! I deal with this for a living! So if you signed for $195 then you owe $195 unless you verbally authorized more. The catch would be knowing the exact wording in the line you signed and of it says something where you "agreed" to paying more within a percentage of the quoted price. Unfortunately unless they agree to allow you to pay less then you'll end up paying it then filing a complaint with the Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection which will take weeks.

That's a steal! He's even generous enough to take trades plush cash on your end! And holy fucking tags! I've never seen so many tags!

That's very cool!

Yes, moisture over the course of ten years will cause that.

I don't know if I read that correctly in context but how can you do a leak down or compression test if you can't crank the engine? At this point the only option I see is to disassemble the engine, clean it, reassemble and hope it starts. 10 years worth of oil not running will absorb moisture over time so milky color doesn't surprise me. There's not an effective way to clean that sludge without a running car and I wouldn't try to start the car seeing what's in that engine right now. Not an easy task but that would be the right way to do it.