TT Gallardo Fiasco

[B C]

http://www.twinturbogallardoblog.com/

 

TL;DR  A guy gave a shop a total of $150,000 over a couple years in an attempt to have a properly built turbo Gallardo

 

and ended up with quality work like this 

 

 

 

then gets sick of waiting and goes and collects his car (now a shell) from the shop in pieces 

 

 

 

 

 

This is why we cant have nice things. 

[B C]

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

 

 

The other side of the story... from the shop that did the work

 

 

 

First and foremost, I need to apologize to Billy as we haven't done right by you, nor did you end up a satisfied customer. Before any blog was created, before this became a public issue, I have offered to take care of this for you, totally free of charge, especially since you were our second TTG customer. 

Currently, we have completed over 25 Twin Turbo Gallardo builds with satisfied customers and although I have no control over stock parts breaking, it has never been my intention for you to pull your car, have a pile of parts, and a Gallardo roller in your possession, nor do I understand what that affords you at this point. Again, I extend to you the offer to provide you a completed Twin Turbo Gallardo, assuming I can receive all the parts that you took back with you. Any shop runs the risk of having a problem during a vehicle build, but I truly believe in making you happy, and I am confident I can do so. 

You have paid for a Stage 2 build (at a heavily discounted price, which you agreed and understood would come with no warranty) and several very nice driveline upgrades. Although you were adamant about running the car at much higher power levels (as much as 1600 whp) against my advice for longevity, I have done so for you, which I now regret because we did not make the supporting modifications mandatory. What I am offering, is to provide your vehicle with a running Stage 3 system, with our 2 year/24,000 mile warranty, turned down to 1250 whp. I will also provide transportation for your vehicle and parts back to the shop, and free delivery back to you once your vehicle is completed. I can't think of any other way to help you enjoy your car, unless a competitor has lured you away with a free build, in exchange for an attempt to discredit us.

To the others that are viewing this thread, what has been represented in the blog is not 100% accurate, but explaining myself, or trying to point out what is inaccurate, will not make Billy a happy customer, or help the situation. I have tried to reach out to Billy multiple times since he decided to retrieve his vehicle, and today is the first time he has responded. It is unfortunate to be tried by the internet jury, especially when only one side is posted. I have invested a lot of time and my personal finances in building Dallas Performance what it is today. I don't take any of the accusations lightly, and will continue to attempt to rectify this with Billy. 

I would like to point out, that with no reference to what work is done, what is represented by the photos can be grossly misjudged. Billy's car had issues before it was brought to us, and has been documented at the Lamborghini dealer, not to mention a large aftermarket stereo installed prior to us receiving it. We pride ourselves in providing high quality work, and what is pictured in the blog is not indicative of the work Dallas Performance provides to its customers. I am happy to walk anyone through our shop, and go over any of the many builds in our shop, all in various stages. I am confident you will not find examples of this kind of work in any of our builds.

[YoungCR]

You'd think after dumping twice your budget into a build and still having issues it would be time to switch shops. At least that shop wasn't a total asshat in response to the situation like this story.

http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/my-e30-m3-nightmare-1601125946/1609714036/+pgeorge?utm_campaign=socialflow_jalopnik_facebook&utm_source=jalopnik_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[REKIII]

I've been following that TT story.  The pics don't lie, but there have been other Dallas performance customers saying how theirs don't look like that.  Who knows, the only true thing is he has a lot of money spent on a car that isn't together, with a junk engine block.

[Earl]

If I were that dude, I would give the car back to them to finish it for free regardless. That way he will at least have a running and driving car returned to him versus being a pile of parts that are doomed to sit.....

 

 

Edit: I just read that blog and don't know what to think at all. If my car was sent to someone and I had issues like that, there would surely be a lawsuit

[YoungCR]

Yeah its not really even worth returning, I'd sue for a new car at this point. The amount of work to rebuild an entire engine/chassis/electrical system isn't worth it.

[REKIII]

Here is the Owner of DP rebuttle.  I don't know what to think:

 

I've been getting a massive amount of people contacting me and asking for my side of the story.

After 2 years working with someone you get to know them pretty well and we liked Billy. I never want to make our customers look bad, and I never want a customer to leave un-happy. I have not replied sooner because aside from the internet jury, I still have an obligation to do what I feel is right. I felt like this is an issue between Billy and I first.

I have tried to no end, to figure out a way to make Billy happy, and now that he is no longer responding to me and he has chosen to no longer be a customer, I am just going to lay out the real truth to this mess.

Billy was our second TTG customer. He is a "hands on guy that likes to tinker, and can turn a wrench". Every step along the way when Billy would get the car, he was constantly messing with things. The car would leave here perfect and when he would get the car back to Arkansas, he would work on the car, disassemble things to see what we did, and then move things around to his liking. 

When the car left as a stage one, he was given 4 settings with clear power and fuel requirements for each setting. He also knew the risks associated with a stock engine turbo build. When he brought the car back to us, it was still running and driving but it was smoking. He later admitted that he had beat on the car over and over on the race fuel boost setting when he had run out, and was instead running on pump gas. Then it started smoking. Then he got concerned and brought us the car. 

At that point everything was cool, he accepted responsibility for it and since it was still a running car, we both agreed building the engine was the best way to move forward.

During the engine build, we installed an upgraded clutch to handle the added power. Although the street clutches need break in miles to operate smoothly, Billy pressured us to go ahead and dyno the car and let him have it then. I advised against it, but in the end I wanted to make Billy happy and I agreed. The car made great power and we were very happy with it, but when Billy got the car back he was upset with the drivability of the clutch. 

He was extremely angry with us, threw this huge fit and we all felt literally threatened by him at this point. It was so bad that one of my employees almost quit over it. We were all without exaggeration, afraid of him, and didn't know how to react. 

Partially motivated by fear, we agreed to install a new clutch for free in his car even though he knew what had happened and he was responsible. 

At this point, the car was setup to make 1200whp and it was turned back to around 1100whp, because it had stock axles and a stock transmission. These are known weak links and we did not want to see the car back again for a long time.

Next thing you know, he calls me and is beyond upset with me again because the car broke a stock axle. I calmly told him to bring the car and we would fix it. At this point we upgraded to a set of custom billet axles and we discussed upgrading the transmission. Billy did not want the car down for a minute longer and declined the transmission upgrades. Ok, fair enough, many of guys have been ok with 1100whp and stock transmissions. I told him to take it easy and enjoy the car. 

Before he even left Dallas this time, he managed to rev and hold the engine at redline (cold started, without being up to operating temperature) to show off how the car sounded to some people, and he broke a valve spring. This created some other minor damage and we had to remove the engine to fix it. All of which was done for almost nothing, but parts cost to help him out. 

We fixed the broken parts from cold revving the engine and sent him back on his way. A few weeks to a month later, I get another irate call from Billy saying the transmission is broken and he is on the side of the road stranded. Again, I told him calmly to bring the car and we would fix it for him. 

By now I've realized that Billy is going to beat on the car until it breaks and I suggested that we turn the power down. That was not an acceptable answer to him and he actually wanted more power. This is where I should have said no and been done with it. 

We seemed to have a better relationship, and although he was always trying to work on the car himself, he had periods where he did listen to us.

I wanted to make him happy, and we expected if he did the correct upgrades this time, it would stay together. So before we would agree to turn the car up, we discussed the necessary upgrades to hold the power. These upgrades consisted of our transmission upgrades, billet drop gears, billet 1-6th, as well as the Tilton triple carbon clutch, larger turbochargers, and we recommended our upgraded cylinder heads. He agreed to do the clutch, transmission upgrades, and larger turbochargers, but he declined to do the upgraded cylinder heads.

We also let Billy know that our billet 1-6th gearsets were not ready yet, so he could either wait, or we could fix the car with upgraded drop gears only, and he could drive it turned down until the parts were ready. He agreed to wait, which shocked me.

The gears took much longer than promised to us, and we ended up waiting for 3 months to get them in. During this time, Billy's personal power goals went from 1300whp then to 1400whp and all the way to 1600whp. When we got the billet transmission parts and assembled the car, we wanted to make him happy and we made 1600+whp on the dyno for him. 

Now it made good power but we are still left with the 2004 clunky egear system and this Tilton race clutch. We made several improvements to the egear system and hydraulics, but in the end it was just very hard to drive. We expected this but just had not tried it before. We knew the same clutch in a manual car drove very nice and so we discussed doing the manual conversion then. Billy was just anxious to drive the car and he took it as it was. The car would jerk violently from a dead stop when you would try to get the car moving, and ultimately ended up breaking more stock parts from pretty much a wheel hop situation. 

All of this is very frustrating to me because we had planned to try the clutch on the 2004 egear system knowing its limitations, and we had agreed to do a manual conversion if it didn't work. Well it didn't work, but he didn't want to wait, and as a result it broke more parts. 

He went on to have two clutches start slipping in very short time frames after he went and attempted to adjust the pedal and master cylinder himself to his liking. One time it was from him actually pushing the clutch pedal down so far that he broke the factory clutch pedal stop and over stroked the clutch pressure plate. 


Another thing worth mentioning is that Billy had specifically asked us if we password protected the MoTeC ECU when we did the stage 1 build. He assured me that he had no intention of messing with it but that he felt if he was paying for it he wanted to have access to it if he needed. I didn’t think much of it at the time but later on I did find changes to the boost settings, fueling, and other parameters on two occasions when we got the car back. The second time this happened we locked the ECU and have since locked every ECU on every build to protect ourselves and the customer. Lesson learned.




Now this all paints a very grim story and a lot of STOCK parts failures. But don't think for a second he wasn't having fun with the car, racing anything that moved, and he told us on many occasions how amazing the car drove and the power was unreal. Yes he was mad when parts broke and he was very hard to handle, but these were STOCK parts breaking, and deep down he knew it and he wasn't blaming us when it was explained to him. After all, it wasn't like it was any of the parts we built that were breaking here. He also managed to put over 3k miles on the car over this time period (which would be pretty tough to do in 2 weeks as indicated).

After all of these stock driveline parts breaking and finally doing a complete transmission upgrade, Billy had the car in his possession and was driving it again. 

During this time Billy started asking me a lot about different engine oils and viscosity and such, and wanted to know if he could try a light weight engine oil for more power. I explained that would be a terrible idea, and not worth any possible very small power gains. I thought he had listened, until he called back a few weeks later with low oil pressure concerns. I advised him to go back to the oil we use and see how it, was but the damage was already done and he had literally run the car with no oil pressure. 

Given all the trouble he had previously, I told him to bring the car and we would cover labor if he would pay for parts and expenses. He agreed, we pulled the engine and took to the machine shop and it was disassembled. We did find the bearings wiped and 2 small cracks and we advised him that a new block would be best. Unlike stated in the blog, this was not a blown up engine. The car was running and while it did have low oil pressure all other components were in great shape.

When we told him the bad news, he flipped out and told us to figure something else out. From there everything went downhill, and it was not recoverable. That's when he told us to have it welded and do it ASAP and he was tired of waiting. I told him that if that was the path he took we could not be responsible for the results and that the power needed to be turned way down to have a chance at living then. The communication got very minimal from here as I didn't like the plan of action and I felt like I had no choice.

I thought about it long and hard and decided it needed a new block. I actually ordered a new block and told Billy I did not feel comfortable with welding the block and he would have to wait for the repairs to be done properly. At that point he informed me he would be picking up the car. I tried to reason with him and I even offered to do ALL REPAIRS FOR FREE if he would just allow me to do so. He totally stopped communicating with me and sent his employee to come get the car.

Our entire shop stopped to carefully package every nut and bolt. We wrapped all the parts, we assembled the engine short block hand tight so that the crankshaft, rods and pistons were not damaged, and we actually loaded all the parts and strapped the car on the trailer for his employee and wished them well.

I will admit that was a huge relief to see the car leave and all the headaches that came with it. 



The wiring pictures look terrible and Billy can pat himself on the back for those. Being the hands on guy that he was, he was convinced that the military connectors we used to connect the stock harness to the MoTeC harness was a bad idea and he or one of his guys "hard wired" them. That is what’s pictured, along with some extra made up stuff that I don't recognize, I guess in an attempt to make us look bad.

The wiring pictures are insulting plain and simple and it was fabricated/staged to hurt us. Whatever he did with the car he owned in his possession, was outside my control and this stuff was probably done after the car was a shell, to make us look bad. Or heck it might not even be pictures of anything on that car I don't know. 

Then there are pictures of the fuel system showing leaks? Is that a fuel leak or is it from the entire engine being removed from the car and the entire fuel system being apart as a result?? You can even see the SS braided line is off. Fuel will come out when you take a fitting off 

Even still, make it look however you want, there was never a single time where the car went lean or had any sort of damage from fuel or wiring. Personally I don't think that would be possible if those pictures were not staged or at the very least exaggerated/embellished.

The very last picture he shows a vacuum line folded over and a worm clamp to hold it. Let's ask ourselves folks, wouldn't that method be harder than just putting a vacuum cap on the line? Well I guess that wouldn't be as easy if you don't have drawer full of them like we do.

Use common sense folks. Read Billy’s posts, and then look at the website. There are inconsistencies everywhere. If you choose not to see it that is up to you. 

Even after all of this has been exploited to make me and Dallas Performance look bad, I will still to this day offer to fix the guys car for free 100%. I didn't want to take 2 hours away from my many customers in the shop, and stop making the best products on the market, to sit here and shred each false point, but I just did. 

I would like to conclude stating that I have no ill will toward Billy and I wish only good things for him. If he should desire to take me up on my offer, I will still honor it. 

Taylor Sims
Dallas Performance LLC

[jc43089]

When people have more money than brains... 1600 hp and then complain when parts break? 

[tsweers89]

Knowing these parts will break they should not do 1600whp for any customer with out upgrading all stock parts that are known to break. Me and you know better and expect that to happen but rich people that own these cars are not really mechanically inclined and just think everthing should work properly when spending $150k on upgrades. To me its a dumb decision on Dallas Performance for doing it that way. I don't know what to make out of all of this. But I bet not everything the customer stated it false and they did not do everything right. Like the owner stating the oil viscosity, that would not make that big of a difference in oil pressure to make an issue. Take a e60 m5 for example, oem is 10-60w. Although anyone in the know, knows you should use gibbs racing oil 5w30. Which is a big difference and is actully better for the motor due to the s85's known bearing clearance issue. But you dont get any oil pressure issues or such. Still would not bring my car to DP after seeing this.