WS6TransAm01

iTrader: (13)

That is just silly. So if I was to buy a brand new Lotus Elise it was not be a street car because it has no sound insulation?

I know you are not giving me any grief over it but I still vastly and respectfully disagree with your opinion on what makes a street car a street car. There are plenty of cars that sold new would not be thought of as suitable to take to a funeral, drive children around in, have rough heavily sprung rides and so on. Would you put a car seat into a Koenigsegg CCX? Would you drive to a funeral in a Ford GT? Would you go get groceries in a Ferrari FXX? No, yet they are all street cars and non of them meet your criteria for streetcarism. Its a silly debate meng.

I would try it but I don't have the money for an Accufab 4150 TB right now.

themack56

iTrader: (70)

What experience did you have with Cartek? Was it good? I've heard a couple of nightmare stories about a black z06 last year. I'm considering them as my top end builder but would need stories like this to be cleared up.





I hope this is good enough, and dosnt offend anyone.

LS1LT1

iTrader: (16)

Lots of experience, 8+ years and three cars worth.
And yes it was all good, impeccable actually.
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themack56

iTrader: (70)

lol. get off Carteks nuts. I'm not on the vette docotors side lol. I'm simply stating, make sure you got what you payed for. You cant tell me what i said about that guy and his car with incorrect parts was wrong. If I am wrong please lmk the full story and I will be the first to publicly apologize. What part of the story should i fully know? Please tell me, or should I say tell US. How do you pay for morel lifters then put comp lifters in a customers car? Or the wrong sized piston? If it was a mistake, then so be it. But I wouldn't have a shop like that working on anything I do. I'm sure the vette docotors have their issues. I really don't care about them. So if I don't know the whole story please educate me. I'm all ears. Believe me I wanted to have Cartek do my top end package on my motor, but after several complaints on this site about them, I chose to stay away. I give them props, there cars do move. Ive talked to several sponsors on this site(will not name any) and they say the same thing about Cartek. So I mean is everyone wrong?

This is a public forum and I am only raising awareness to fellow tech members. It's up to every member to research what they are going to do with ANY shop.

LS1LT1

iTrader: (16)

Yes I can.
I know the whole story, apparently you don't.






I'll let them tell you the story firsthand:


I am sure some of you have seen the post on a few forums:

I am here to tell our side of the story. The reason for the delay is that we didn't want to comment on a public forum until we had discussed the matter with our attorneys.

The story starts off with how we ended up with this customer. He came in after he had a cam package installed by Lingenfelter on his Z06 and it dropped a valve after some time of use and threw the rod out the side of the block destroying everything including his starter, damaging his engine harness, etc. Nothing was reusable. This is one of the reasons the bill was so high. He tried contacting them to see if there was any type of warranty and see what they could do for him and they told him there was nothing that they would do for him. Lingenfelter is a reputable and well known shop and by no means has done anything wrong here.

So we took in the job and built the first engine which made 570+ RWHP and there was plenty of video of him racing cars that had claimed higher horsepower figures yet he was still winning. The warranty in the bill was from a previous company when Cartek was co-owned by Julio and Dave. After Julio bought out Dave the company was changed. Dave had made some business decisions that we did not want to haunt us.
The warranty states "normal wear and tear". On that original engine that he states had failed, he conveniently forgot to mention that it failed when he was at a track day event and took the oil temperature above 290 degrees with non-synthetic oil by his own admission. Immediately following this he had low oil pressure. He wanted the engine warrantied, we told him no that it is not under warranty since we are no longer the same company and that even if we were still the same company, you damaged the engine while racing and the damage was due to your own negligence on top of that.

He was very upset and up to that point had been a good customer so after some careful thought and truly believing that he was decent guy, we'd decided that we should take care of him....clearly "a bad business decision".
We said we would help thinking that it would be just a simple rebuild. Well upon dis-assembly we saw that the block was junk, needed a new crank (the snout was bent... we had questions as to how that happened... we know it didn't leave that way), pistons, etc. Since we had already committed to fixing his problem for him we stood by our word and at no charge built him a new engine... a second engine. We selected smaller 4.125 pistons to give the engine another service life and to add rigidity to the engine. The lifters were also junk since they had so much bearing debris go through them, we replaced the Morels with Comp R lifters which are lighter for the road racing that he wanted to do. This was no longer a warranty build, but a gift to help him get back out, so we changed a couple of things to make things better while we were at it. The second motor ran just as well as the first one and made the same power.

After a few days we get a call that the car had died and would no longer run after running like crap. So he brings in the car and we see that there is an electrical problem. The electrical problem was related to damage to the engine harness not realized in the very first engine failure before it came to our shop. He is complaining that he wants his car back ASAP and that it had been here for 2 months (please note, one really shouldn't be complaining since they just got a free engine), so Julio spends the entire night diagnosing and along with the help of GM schematics and wire probing gets the problem narrowed down to a ground on the harness. This ground ties into a few sensors including the O2 sensors. So the O2 sensors were malfunctioning and the car had "learned out" the tune causing the car to run real rich and wash out the rings. The customer comes in the next day, everything is fine, and he starts complaining about the bill we submitted to him for repairing the harness that, keep in mind, was damaged before the car even came to us. The harness was not broken because of us or anything that we had done in the past so it was a billable item. He becomes very irate, Julio tells him to take his car and just leave and of course this customer has now skipped out on the bill.

The customer while getting his car corner weighted at another shop is talked into getting his car dyno'd since it had been running pretty bad, and expectedly so. He puts the car up and does a pull and sees that the car dyno'd 50 RWHP less. After that the customer contacted us quite upset about what was going on... he questioned the integrity of our shop and threatened to take the engine apart. At this point we were pretty disgusted with this whole transaction. He never gave us a chance to look at it. He now goes to a fourth shop and has yet another dyno pull done and the car dyno'd low again. So he had it retuned back up to 54X RWHP (so obviously the previous tune was gone and it didn't fully recover probably due to the rings being washed out). Now that he retuned it, even if there was a warranty (and as stated above, there was none at all), he has now clearly voided it anyway with that retune.

He posts up his findings in an unfair light and blasts us on the internet. So at this point why would we ever do anything for this obviously ungrateful person ever again.

He's then convinced that his low power is the result of too small a cam being selected. The cam he had in there made the power and was not huge since he wanted a road race cam and those cams are typically milder to allow the valvetrain to live longer. So he lets the other shop change out the cam for some larger selection... once again voiding any type of warranty even if there was one to begin with, but it doesn't matter because there wasn't any. After the new cam he dyno'd something like 16 RWHP more from what we'd heard and the car is now not going as fast as it previously had... I guess that new cam and tune didn't work out too well.
Finally the engine had a ticking noise, who knows how that new camshaft was set up??? He basically had now also destroyed his second engine. According to the video the lifter was damaged... well that is probably due to an improper cam selection for his application.

So the customer now calls me to ask for replacement parts for what he didn't receive. He mentions the smaller pistons (.005" smaller = less than 1 cubic inch) and wants new pistons, he also mentions the lifters and wants new Morels. I told him that he was entitled to nothing and that the parts he received were just as good (the Comp R lifters he received were the higher Comp lifter part# and are lighter than the Morels and are far better for his valvetrain with the cam we had selected). On the phone the customer says "if you want this to go away, you should give me what I want.", I said to that "is this a threat?" to which he replied "uh, huh".
That's called EXTORTION and our lawyers are quite familiar with how to handle that.

There are lots of people that know what we stand for and also know that we truly do stand behind our work. We are not known for any type of questionable or shady practices.
I suppose you simply can't keep everyone happy.
We believe that we have handled this better than most and have done everything humanly possible to make the situation right, actually we went above and beyond what is expected.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read this.

Max
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WS6TransAm01

iTrader: (13)

I have been friends with CARTEK and have had them work on my car since 2001. If at any point during our association I thought even for a moment that I was not being given the wrong parts I would have not continued to work and be friends with CARTEK for the better part of a decade. My car has never been to any other shop [aside for Jay Fisher Pontiac for a 12-bolt install - and even he is good friends with CARTEK]

At no point have I ever felt like I did not get what I paid for therefor your statements are clearly only here to entice negative discourse in regards to CARTEK. This was done once already by a member who is now on "Vacation" I sugest you read the post provided by LS1LT1 to educate yourself before making such foolish statments.

The fact that you even say "make sure u got those tfs heads and not stock castings is not only an increadibly foolish statement but also an insulting one. Seeing as how Trick Flow heads say "TRICK FLOW" on them in inch tall leters I doubt even shops known to be underhanded [like those shown voicing their negative views of CARTEK in the video of which you speak] would not be stupid enough to replace TFS heads with a stock 853/241/243 casting which as also clearly designated as such.

Please become familiar with all of the pertinent facts before spewing garbage onto a public forum.

Thanks.

PREDATOR-Z

Every shop has Ghosts in their closets. I read both sides and watched the videos. As stated by Cartek, their kindness came back to bite them in the ****.

I am a big fan of their 243 4X heads and I've seen first hand (multiple times) the power they can dish out. A bit pricey but they do perform as they advertise. (which says a lot compared to quite a few other "advertised" products by other shops).

I think this thread has gone beyond its original intent and that it contains most of the info pertaining to the post at hand.

JFM-jr

iTrader: (23)

This is so true. Being in this bussiness you can not have a flawless record. Somewhere along the lines there will be mistakes made and customers not happy it can and will happen. The key to the whole thing is how the shop handles it in the end. I have been in this LS racing trance since 1999 when my Dad bought my car (he gave/signed the car to me about 2 years ago). I witnessed the guys in Houston breaking into the 12's with them and that was groundbreaking . Cartek has been around since these early days and have always put together great stuff and performed great work.

WS6 TransAm Girl

I left these boards for years because of the shop feuds. It made this whole hobby no longer fun. I learned by the time I had my first mortgage, that the whole tuner wars was immature, petty and a waste of time. It's great to have healthy competition, because then it raises everyone's standards and motivates companies like Cartek to keep putting out more and more impressive products. But the bashing, and subsequent obnoxious defense, is really a blight on the ls1 group.

If the most major thing going on in your life is cheerleading for a shop, you need to switch your priorities around- it actually just makes things worse. And if your main goal in life is to cruise around a shop's thread and bash them constantly, the same applies.

Don't come into a thread like this, that was, for the most part, an informative and mature discussion and bring up random complaints that were "he said, she said". Like someone mentioned, EVERY shop has skeletons in it's closet for sure. Oh boy, the things I have heard and experienced at a wiiiiiide range of places. It's a big shame, but it seems to be the nature of this industry with so many variables- and the success or demise of a motor being the results of the smallest of measurements.

If you have a problem with a shop, by all means, I would say post up in your own thread and hash it out. It's good to be an educated consumer, and it keeps honest people honest. But this thread isn't the place for it, there is a vendor feedback section last time I checked!

I'm excited for Alex, I hope this car flies down the track. It's pushing the limits, yes, which Cartek says in the first post! But Alex has always been willing to do that with his car! So what's the problem?? If this package works at the track like it's dyno numbers would indicate and shows some longevity, Cartek has upped the bar again and it's up to the other tuners to find ways to do the same.

This is how we have gone from the groundbreaking 11 second run from 10-11 years ago, to LS1s running 7's, 8's. It's great for the advancement of technology... the bashing and cheerleading... not so much!

heymoej

iTrader: (67)

very well said.......

themack56

iTrader: (70)

The information I gave was informative.

WS6TransAm01

iTrader: (13)

It was nothing of the sort.

It was many things, incomplete, inflammatory, libellous, adgenda driven but it was far from informative.

kinglt-1

iTrader: (26)

Hey nice setup man, its too bad people can't put thier egotistical bullshit aside and give compliments. Oh no, they got to get all butt hurt and call bs, because this particular combo is puttin down more power than thiers. Thats all it really is. Keep us updated on track results!

themack56

iTrader: (70)

They def. nice results. I'm not blasting Cartek at all. I just said check and gave information on what happened. I'm sorry that you are a loyal customer and got hurt by my comments. I appologize for the way I said it. I mean it. I will edit my post but I will not take off what happened or the issue. Great results is what they produce, I know that. Like I said Cartek is good, I'm just bringing awareness.

WS6TransAm01

iTrader: (13)

I understand you need to bring awareness. But you are bringing awareness on an issue that is clearly slanderous.

That would be like me bringing awareness to you being illeterate. Clearly you can write, so saying you are illeterate is a libel statement. Same as what you are doing.

Johnnypappis

Wow! whats the price on one of these pkg's that's definitely something id like to look into!

J-Rod

Per requests that have been recieved as a result of this thread, it is being moved to the dyno result section which is probably where it should have been to start with. If someone wants to post actual technical detail about the combination in question, then feel free to post that in a thread in the GenIII section.

Max@Cartek

Ok, let's try this again.
Please keep the negativity to a minimum and keep the discussion a little more 'tech' and A LOT LESS 'drama/crying' LOL as I'd rather not have to delete the thread and start over yet again.



We just finished up a new heads and cam combination and thought we'd take a moment to post it up for everyone.
It's a somewhat 'new' approach.

The car is a Trans Am with a manual transmission. The heads are in-house modified TFS, the camshaft is our own 4-XS camshaft.

This set-up is certainly on the edge and not for everyone, Alex of course isn't "everyone".
And the bottom end is still a stock 346....we know it's pushing it a little bit.
We'll be hitting the track with it very soon.

Enjoy.

Max
(908) 317-4496

Dom

iTrader: (2)

I'd be curious to see a 427 build with a comparable cam peaking at 7k. That's a lot of power. Is this a 24x/24x cam? What TFS heads? 225s?

02Sweet

iTrader: (4)

Those are very impressive numbers. Like you said already track times are coming and that would really tell a lot.

I have a few questions:
What are the supporting mods?
What is the size of the cam?
What rear is this running through?

Also why is the torque seem low?