Hey guys, this is Ryan from PerformaBuilt. It has come to our attention at PerformaBuilt that posts are popping up touting a former employee’s (Who was Fired) custom transmissions as being just like ours for a lot less money.

I wanted to set the record straight. It is physically impossible for ANYONE to produce a transmission “just like ours” because we do not sell ANY of the proprietary, custom machined components that make our transmissions capable of outperforming anything on the market.

When you see these posts pop up, just know that one of two things is going on. Either the poster is exceptionally ignorant and does not know what they are talking about, or they are straight up lying. If you have any questions about our transmissions or a transmission question in general, please feel free to call us at 5705785686 or message us on our many social media platforms.

 

What parts do you custom machine or are proprietary?

 

We have everything listed in our build specs on the website at www.performabuilt.com

 

I agree with @Kfxguy, if you claim to have custom machined or proprietary parts, list them here, preferably with pictures. We are not going to visit some other website.

 

Its all there laid out in black and white on our company site as well as a youtube that explains while showing up close in much more detail than i could put here.

 

Awfully weak post from a reputable sponsor going after a little guy. If he really didn't matter and wasn't a key resource and builder, then why the post at all? I haven't seen a single post on here of him taking a shot at Performabuilt. At least suck it up and call him out by name instead of this passive aggressive crap.

 

I just read over the list of parts. There’s nothing proprietary that I saw that anyone can’t get. You machine the factory reverse input drum. Which makes it thinner and weaker. For $6600 you’d think you could just put a new drum. 4l78 drum? The 4l79 is far better. Again, $6600 you could spend a couple hundred extra. Maybe I’m missing some special parts?

 

You missed alot yes... including the entire servo that is our design and not sonnax or others. We offer the 79 as an addon but have found it unnecessary for most applications. Please read deeper and there are some modifications we do not list as well that make us unique especially recently.

 

So here we are with a long-time sponsor, PerformaBuilt, claiming a new sponsor FranksCustomTrans is just an ex-employee who was fired and is building cheap knock-off transmissions.
There is no way to know all the details, but I suspect that Frank and Ryan together designed and built the PerformaBuilt builds. (Frank claims to me that he did most of the design and builds, but lets give Ryan the benefit that he was equally involved.)
I have heard no complaints about either PerformaBuilt's or FrankCustomTrans' built transmissions from customers. So lets say they are both very good.
There are no facts that we know of to lean toward either of them, so far.

But here are some FACTS that I know of because they directly affected us and me:
1 - Involvement in this forum:
Frank has answered hundreds of posts here in the past 6 months; it seems he has answered nearly every question about diagnosing or building a 4L60E or 4L80E.
PerformaBuilt has answered zero in the past 6 months. Going back a year, those answered by PerformaBuilt appear to all be answered by Frank while he was still there. Going back 10 years, I believe most of PerformaBuilt's 10,000 posts were made by Frank; I say this because as the moderator for many years, I stayed in touch (phone,email,text) most of the sponsors and experts here. It was always Frank who replied to my inquires and said he made all the recent posts.

2 - Ethics
A brand new member recently joined and then immediately as his/her only posts criticized Frank based on the videos he posts of building some customer's 4L60E.
I deleted those posts. When it happened a few days later, I again deleted the posts and banned the user. I asked the overall forum Administrator to look into this new user and we discovered their computer's IP address was EXACTLY the same as used by PerformaBuilt. So it is a fact that PerformaBuilt tried to discredit Frank without admitting who they were.
This "dubious" behavior reminded me of something I caught Monster Transmissions doing years ago.(Been plenty of posts telling members to stay away from them.) Back then Monster claimed to have the best reviews on a transmission vendor review site. Using minimal IT skills, I determined that this 'Transmission Vendor Review Site" was running on the same server as their main website; so obviously they had 100% control over this review site. No wonder Monster had all 5-star reviews.

Now, in the interest of Ethics and Transparency, I must add that I am personally paying Frank's sponsorship costs here for 12 months. Why in the heck would I do that? Well, with my nearly 7000 posts here I have made a significant time commitment to help make this section of the forum as useful and accurate as possible. Since I'm not an expert, I wanted to help the person who has answered thousands of technical questions here. Starting off on his own after decades at his previous shop Frank sure could use some help. Frank is under NO obligation to ever reimburse me. I didn't even ask him to be involved here; I just knew he would.

From all this, you can make up your own mind. Thanks for reading.

 

Franks seems like a stand up fella. I’ve seen him contribute quite a lot here.

 

I typed out a response but decided to delete it. The only thing I’m going to say is 😂

 

This is all so sad...

 

As always, we will ask that everyone be fair and civil to all sponsors of LS1Tech; as such, I don't really see anything constructive coming from this thread so we will lock it down.

Competition is healthy, it drives everyone to do better, and we've had many instances of competing sponsorships on this site. All we ask is the same as the above, that sponsors remain civil during any of their interactions on this site. There's nothing wrong with a sponsor pointing out what makes their product or services superior, just as long as it stays professional between competing businesses.

Thanks in advance for everyone's cooperation,
-Admin.