Unleashed-Performance


Recently it has come to our attention that there has been significant embezzlement of company funds so we have been forced to take a new direction with our management team. Also, I just wanted to make the announcement that we are looking for a new tuner, effective immediately. Would also welcome any stories you care to share with us concerning any member of our staff, present or past, as we prepare our case for litigation and criminal prosecution.

Sincerely,

Dr. Robert S. Pappas, President
Unleashed Performance

Just posted on facebook.

 

Raymer.... Lol. Gee, who would have guessed?

 

So what happened exactly I wonder. I wanted to take my car to him in the spring too for a fresh tune and more power....damn

 

Pappas.... I find your comment about following "gururs" on Unleashed Performance's facebook page to be a little off. First off I don't "follow" anyone. Second I've been to a huge number of shops and tuners throughout my time dealing with cars. My belief in anyone relies on their
ability to produce results. I turn a alot of wrenches myself, but always believe some things are better left to the "professionals".... With that in mind, I've wasted tens of thousands of dollars with shops that under achieved and underperformed. My business dealings with Raymer started when I purchased one of his lids back in 2001. I talked to him a little about a turbo kit back in that timeframe, but ended up building a Malibu instead of my Firehawk. 10yrs later he shows up at Automotion in Louisville. I recognize the name and take my Corvette there to see if he can help with a tune from ANOTHER Supposedly great shop and tuner that turned out to be crap! Raymer fixed it up and improved its performance tremendously! Again.... Results. From that time on he's worked on 3 or 4 of my cars. All of them have been done professionally, with 100% satisfaction and tremendous results. Say what you will and spread rumors as you may...its a free country... but don't knock the results of what the man was able to accomplish. It will be a long time before I trust another tuner. In my book its about a relationship of trust between the tuner and the car owner. I trust Rob Raymer with any of my cars! Lastly... at this point I agree with Bill's comments on FB as well... I think friction in the shop between You (Pappas) and Raymer led to this, along with issues in your home life that spilled over into the shop and onto Raymer. As far as the concrete evidence goes... I'd love to take a look at it, prove me wrong....

 

I have known rob for many years, I don't believe and never will he has done all my cars and always treat people right I would also love to see the hard evidence,

 

Looks like he is not commenting on the work or tuning stuff. He's saying someone has been stealing money from him. 2 different things.

 

Since he is looking for a new tuner as well...figured they were one in the same... plus, i've known there was "friction" between Pappas and Raymer for sometime.

 

If your going after embezzlement on a said tuner- would you still have him working for you?

I do not know anything about this situation and really don't care. Just posted a reply from what I've read here.

 

no ****, thought the same thing. how many times? i remember back in the buick days.....

 

I would like to formally introduce myself on here to anybody that doesn't know me personally. My name is Brenton Brown and I was hired 3 weeks ago to join the team at Unleashed. I had my truck tuned by Raymer last year when the shop first opened and was happy with the work. We had talked on and off since they opened about me coming to work there helping to build cars. Over the past couple months I had been looking for a building to start my own shop and during that time I also talked with Raymer more seriously about coming to work at Unleashed. Raymer expressed his interest in having me join the team to Pappas so therefore wanted to meet and talk with me. After meeting with Pappas he decided I would be a good addition to Unleashed and hired me on the spot. I was hired as a mechanic (or a "shop Bitch" as some would have it) and NOT any kind of manager. There was turmoil between Raymer and Pappas when I started there and I had nothing to do with any of that. I'm not one to be part of any drama so I'm not here to talk negatively about anybody. I'm posting to answer any questions or concerns any of you may have about the shop or the future intentions/directions of Unleashed. I didn't attend LSX Fest because I am married and have a 10 month old son and my wife and I did not have a babysitter until Sunday which is when we were planning on going down to represent Unleashed until everything happened. ZL45 was the customers car that had the problem and who's house I went to on friday. We installed a McLeod twin disc clutch in his car and for some reason that clutch failed. It was nothing more than a defective part and it was an unavoidable situation. Raymer tuned his car on Wed and the clutch held up fine even Wed night to perform the driveability portion of the tune and make sure all work was up to par and the car performed beautifully. The customer started having an issue late Thursday night and I was there to help him through the entire thing. Once I realized it wasn't something I could fix at his house I had his car towed back to the shop and purchased another clutch set, which we had next day aired. The car was pulled apart today and I will be putting car back together tomorrow at zero cost to the customer. I also wasnt able to attend LSX Fest because I was trying to find a solution to his problem so we could get his car to the event. When it comes to the customers invoice I cant get into any specific details or how it came about because of legal reasons but after court I will be more capable of talking about it. I can assure you that this was not any kind of devious plot that me nor anyone else concocted to sabatoge Raymer. Again, I'm not here to talk **** or judge Raymer or anyone else and the court system will decide what's right. Pappas came to me after these events and asked me if I would run Unleashed and I agreed. The rest of the employees know all the details, have seen all paperwork and have heard both sides of the story, everyone stayed except the two that were involved. I am an ASE L1 Mastertech that has been working on/building cars for over 16 years now . I have worked in all facets of car repair, customization, and restoration. I was the lead tech at Hunt & Knight Corvette Specialists for 8 years, lead tech at Fargo Trucks where I was apart of lifting and fabricating custom suspension lifts. I've also worked independantly for 5 years, and have done everything from frame off restoration to performance builds of all makes. I have also had a car featured at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green for a year and a half after recieving a 98 out of 100 score from National Corvette Restorers Society. Like I said before, i dont want to be a part of the whole taking sides thing or all the drama. I'm very confident I will be able to take Unleashed to the next level and I will make sure to post pictures and updates on all of our projects so you can see what we're capable of. I understand that there are people on here that are loyal followers of Raymer and that's perfectly legitimate becaue I do feel like he is a good tuner. There are also a lot of people on here that talk **** about Raymer who are probably just going off stories they've heard and not actual personal experiences which i dont agree with. Pappas told everybody about what was going on beause he doesn't want to hide anything from our customers, not just to bash people. He stated some facts and you can form your own opinions off those facts. Now that we have been honest to our customers and they have been informed of what we've found we are ready to move forward and would be more than happy to help anybody with their cars needs. Unleashed is here to stay and I will be doing whatever it takes to make us number one. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask openly here or pm me.

 

wow, that was a long post. Brenton I hope everything gets sorted out and returns to normal for you guys.

 

This sucks. We finally get a good rounded performance shop in the area and now this happens. LS tuners are hard to come by and good LS tuners are even harder to find, regardless of the mechaical ability of this new guy nobody wants to pay good money to have quality work done and then have it screwed up by a incompetent tuner. If they hire one of these so called local LS tuners then they might as well close the doors or start building imports.

 

So basically your saying he installed a used stock clutch and took the twin disk? lol wow that's just what I gathered there.

 

Damn, that is the longest post I have ever read without using paragraphs. My head hurts....

 

^^^ You're a better man than I am: I read the fist few sentences and had to quit after my eyes started to tingle.

I wish this guy well.

 

How do you get that out of the post? It says they installed a twin disc, and it had a defective part.

 

Double space!!!

 

Yes it does suck, and Brenton this is my personal experience with Rob Ramer and the current Unleashed Performance staff not second hand information. I had Unleashed Performance dyno tune my 08 LS3 Corvette in May of this year. I went there because of Rob Ramer's reputation locally as a good dyno tuner on LS engines. Rob Ramer did a good job on tuning my car correcting several problems from a earlier dyno tune. Rob said I had a oil leak in the front seal that would need to be fixed soon. He also recommended replacing the Breathless Performance CAI on my car with a Vararam CAI. I had Unleashed Performance order a Vararam VR-SC1R CAI. It was installed on 5/23/2012. That's the good part.

After driving the car home from Unleashed it sat in my Garage for 5 months due to severe health issues. I got a call from a young woman in October saying she was doing customer follow up for Unleashed Performance on the work performed in May. I didn't think there was a problem since I hadn't used the car since May but after calling several friends I heard there were fraud allegations concerning Rob Raymer and work charged for at Unleashed.

I found that the Vararam CAI I had purchased from Unleashed was not what was installed on my car. The Vararam kit # VR-SC1R is a complete replacement CAI which includes a new lower ram air duct, new upper duct & filter, a new billet MAF housing, two red rubber pre-cut couplers and a new spacer. Unleashed Performance installed a Vararam lower ram air duct and the Vararam upper duct with filter and reused my old Breathless Performance MAF housing and the old black rubber couplers and spacer. The shroud which had to be replaced and cut where the Vararam lower duct penetrates was cut with enough clearance around the duct for me to stick my hand compleatly through to the radiator, and I have big hands. The only good thing about this was you could reach in directly and remove any leaves or debris that collected on the face of the air conditioning coil.

I went to the Unleashed performance shop and talked to Brenton Brown about these problems. I found him initially to be somewhat defensive saying he was not around when my work was done but he promised to check into the problem and call me back. I was told by the mechanic who installed the Vararam CAI in May and still works there that he just installed what Rob Raymer gave him. He also said the shroud was cut per a paper template furnished with the Vararam kit and that was the way it was supposed to fit.

Brenton called back several days later and agreed to replace the missing Vararam parts. They didn't agree that the shroud had been miss cut. The parts had to be ordered and I asked Brenton to also order a Vararam power wedge to be installed at the same time.

The missing Vararam parts and the new power wedge were installed November 9th. I picked the car up and it threw a code before I got home. I took the car to my dealer the next day for a oil change and they said the car threw a lean mixture code. they reset the code and suggested I contact Unleashed who had just worked on the car. I called and talked to Brenton about the car throwing a lean code. He doubted installing the wedge or the other parts would cause this problem but said to bring the car back if it happened again. It threw a lean code again the next day. frankly I was so disgusted with Unleashed Performance I decided to try and repair the problem myself.

I called Vararam tech support and with their help found two instillation problems with the Unleashed Performance install of the Vararam CAI & wedge.

The PCV fitting which was installed in the side of the Vararam rubber coupler between the MAF housing and the TB was incorrectly installed and leaking air into the intake. The stock PCV hose which unleashed reused was too short and the fitting did not fit squarely into the coupler. It had to be shoved into the coupler at a 45 degree angle and didn't seat properly. I replaced the hose with a longer one and fixed the air leak.

The Vararam rubber gasket furnished with the new power wedge was squeezed out of place into the intake because the four TB mount bolts were over torqued. The bolts were torqued to nearly twice the specified 96 inch pounds. The rubber gasket deformed & walked into the intake causing a second intake air leak. Vararam sent two replacement gaskets free and that fixed the problem.

I compared the area cut in my shroud by Unleashed Performance to a new template from Vararam and the area they cut out is definitely larger than the template. I corrected this problem by making a plastic spacer to fit snugly around where the Vararam duct penetrates the shroud.

The leaking front oil seal Rob Raymer said needed to be replaced turned out to be a leaking oil pan drain washer.

It will take more than good intentions by the owner ( Mr. Pappas) of Unleashed Performance to rectify all the problems. This is a new company (roughly one year old) with a nice facility. Pappas is a young wealthy local car enthusiast owner with other financial interests who doesn't work directly on a day to day basis with the shop. He had and perhaps still has the intention of owning a first class high performance shop.

Personally I feel like I was screwed twice and I won't be going back for a third helping.

 

Now i see why unleased hasn't updated the c5 rear mount turbo project. Last i heard they were leaking stock head gaskets on the dyno.

 

Helga, there isn't anything to update on the C5 project car. The car belonged to our old tuner and the kit was tweaked to the end'th degree. He is no longer with us and he sold the car out in Colorado. There are video's of it on several dyno's pulling almost 850rwhp on E85 on a stock LS1 with a turbo cam and Methanol. There is nothing more to do to the kit.