Well, since I have been getting several emails and phone calls about the situation, I figured I would post this here since it got deleted in the other thread.

Thanks for the nice comments Tom, but like Josh said, this car has nothing to due with HPE. Before HPE opened, I was one of there first customers to get and engine built by them. To make a long story short, the first motor they built me blew up on the dyno, and the secound motor they built to replace the blown up motor, broke on start up. By this time I had started working there and Chuck promised to make everything right. So he started ordering my parts for my 3rd motor that they were going to try and build me. Well, the parts came in and just sat on the ground. Months and months went by and I kept missing races and the parts remained on the ground collecting dust. I told them they have 1 month to build my motor or I was taking the parts elsewhere and I would just eat the labor cost. Well, as usual, they promised it would be done in a month, and ofcourse it wasnt. So I decided to take MY parts elsewhere to get built. In the meantime, Josh and I stayed at the shop everynight working on the car to have it ready by the time the motor was finished. Josh and I built the entire car after hours at the shop. Pecos at LateModelEngines called me the thurs night before the first clash race that was held at sanantonio and told me the motor was finished and ready to go. LME got the motor together in ONE WEEK just so I could make the race!! So Josh and I, as usual, stay up at the shop thurs night and started putting the motor in the car to get it ready for the weekend. Well, right as we are dropping in the motor, about 5-7 cops come in the shop yelling on there radios "burglery in progress". Josh and I look at each other like WTF . Well, after the cops search us and find out we are employed there and have keys and alarm codes, they decide to talk to us. They told me that the owner of the shop(chuck) has called them in regards to 2 employees stealing his motor. (Chuck was mad that LME built my motor) After I talked to the cops and gave them my story, they told chuck there was nothing they could do and that MY car and MY parts were in fact MINE! After this little incodent, there is no way I could work for someone that would try to get me arrested for something I didnt even do and try to accuse me of stealing. Even after all this, we still managed to get the car done and to san anontio where it made its debut of a 8.55.

We are slowly but surely getting the tuneup and suspension right, as you can see we went an 8.3 at our secound race. I just want to say thanks to pecos at LME for building this engine in such a short notice and timeframe. Also to Josh, who has built the car from the groud up. I am looking forward to seeing everyone in bowling green to see who really has the FASTEST LS1!!

 

well i aint lettin them buld my motor now

 

Amazing story Wormboy,especially the calling the cops part of it.

I'm looking forward to lining up with you.I'll be ready to go in 4-6 weeks if everything goes as planned.

 

interesting......

 

Sweet, I hope we have more than just 2 cars in outlaw at this next event. Whats your setup looking like. If you want you can just pm me to keep it

 

WOW! If that is how Chuck would treat his employees I could just imagine how he treats his customers.

One more sponsor of this board that will never see my money!

 

FWIW I wish Steven and Josh luck with that car and the engine. They will go very fast after the car gets dialed in. I know they've both been through hell and put in a lot of time and money as have so many people. I could not afford to put in the time and money that time represented when we had so many customers to serve. I can't speak to the police stuff because that's nothiong I am part of but i think it was all a big misunderstanding and I don't think Josh or Steven are hardened criminals at all.

The only problem I see with any of his comments requards engines blowing up here at HPE. That first engine of Steven's was dynoed at another shop and they were helping with the FAST system since it was the first time anyone had worked with it and the owner of that shop is experienced with it as he has run FAST and other EFI systems for years in up to 6 second cars there in the NMCA etc.

This engine was an all out NA LS1 engine and had a DRY SUMP oiling system. During this testing which I was NOT a part of and was not even there the engine over reved multiple times to 10,000 rpm or more according to the FAST system from a defective throttle body return spring that kept popping off. during one of these dyno pulls and over rev conditions the dry sump belt had also come off and no one saw it and no one noticed the oil pressure was gone.

I don't think it's too hard to understand that an engine won't make power too long at high rpm without any oil at all and it lost the two front rods. The same engine was fixed and never saw the light of day since the T and D shaft rockers were changed to allow more pushrod clearance and they ended up also moving the pivot points so low that the pushrods were hitting the stands when the lifters were on the base circle. We took it to Thunder but it needed new rockers and T and D would not do anything other than use these parts in another custom stand at our cost.

At that time Steven and Chuck decided to do the turbo engine instead and keep it simple and we started on this engine and it did take longer as I still did not get paid a cent through any of it and now had MANY customers who had paid and were expecting their engines which we were doing as fast as we could without doing anything wrong. It takes a long time to build something when you do it right! Because if this I told Steven myself that I did not mind it if he had Jeff Naiser and NRC finish putting that engine together if he couldn't wait anymore. They did and then Pecos also put bigger head studs in the same engine now and refreshened it after some bearing damage from crap in the oil and they are with him over there. I think they will be fine and the engine will do great.

As I know many people on these boards I think we probably have the least engine problems of ANY big vendor so far on LS1Tech as we have never had an engine issue on LS1Tech with ANY customer car so far. No one else on here can say that that I know of. I have spent more time FIXING other shops stuff than I'd like to tell. I'm sure we'll have a problem or two somewhere down the line but I know I will always do whatever i can to fix it or remedy the situation as best I can.

We have still had but ONE real incident of an older LS1 lifter guide letting a lifter spin in the bore and luckily the owner on LS1tech here caught it and we put new lifters in that engine along with a new cam and with new lifter guides but that's been the total extent of my engine failures so far on any customer engines of any kind!

You also can't compare race engines like we have had here making 1000+ RWHP on stock blocks to regular customer engines! If we can I can tell you of many shops mentioned on this same page that have had scores of failures and these are on customers cars right now on this board as well!

 

I'm not getting in the middle of the problems between Josh and Steven and HPE. Each has a good reason for hard feelings.

I do know that Eric and Cameron at HPE took my motor in after another shop destroyed it just trying to freshen it. HPE completely went thru the engine and fixed the screw ups. The motor was dynoed and made killer power. I am extremely happy with the quality of the work done to the motor.

 

I don't much like posting on the boards, but people need to understand there are 2 sides to every story. Josh and Steven are and were both very good employee's and I enjoyed having them work for me when they did. I have no hard feelings. However, things just don't happen for no reason. I'm not saying that calling the cops was completely justified. I was pissed off because I had been betrayed, and felt that if I let them go through with putting that motor in his car after LME refreshened it, it was going to do damage to my shops reputation. Since I paid for all the parts in that motor, and have receipts for them, my actions were somewhat justified. I've dumped a lot of money into that car over the course of the last year. Steven made almost 10,000 dollars worth of payments on the first motor, but I still have 11,600 dollars worth of things he never paid for (on the first motor). Since the motor failed, which wasn't even my fault, but I felt bad, and since at this point it was basically a shop car, I said that I'd go ahead and fix it, because at this point he was out of money. I just wanted to get it running so it could do advertising for my shop. So I spent another 7 or 8k building the new shortblock. Then when that one started having all the valvetrain issues, we just said screw this, lets do something simple and build a regular old motor and put a turbo on it. So at this point, I again said I'd pay for it because he'd been out a ride for almost a year now, and I still wanted to see it do advertising for the shop. So I got together with Erik and we worked out all the details and specs to what we wanted to build, and I paid for it. Every part in that motor I paid for again. And then Erik agreed to build the motor for free just because it was a sponsor deal. I'm not sure how much time passed, but it was awhile. Our machine shop has been staying real busy, and when you've got paying customers breathing down your throat, you can't exactly stop what you're doing and build a free motor for an employee. I wish we would have and could have, but it just didn't work out. So Steven asked if he could take the parts to another reputable local shop to get put together. I agreed and said that was fine, but that I didn't want people to know just for the sake of trying to save our reputation a little bit, because I'm fully confident we could have built the motor in house and it would have ran fine, but since he wanted to get it done NOW, we just couldn't get it done.

So he went ahead and did that, and it blew up on the dyno. Not really blew up, but it lifted the heads. So he told me he was taking it back to that shop to get fixed. I was fine with that. But then I found out by accident that instead of taking it to the first shop, they decided to take it to LME. And I specifically told them not to take it to LME, because of what it would do to our reputation. At this point I was upset because they lied to me, and since I paid for the parts in that motor, it was rightfully mine. I feel bad I did what I did, but things happen, and I did the best I could to make it right with them after the fact. I apologized for being brash with my reactions, and they accepted and continued working for me for several weeks.

It's not the publics right to know the reasons for their termination, but Steven was not terminated. One morning him and Rick were behind the counter, and Rick being the manager told Steven something he should have done, and Steven got a little upset about it (it's hard being friends in business together as some may know). There was someone in our showroom at this time, but Steven decided anyways to tell Rick to "Go suck a ****". After he said that Rick told him to clock out and go home. Afterwhich Steven replied, "**** this ****" and basically walked out. I guess he was upset, and that's fine.

Anyways, I wish Josh and Steven all the best, and hope the car continues to run as good as we always knew it would.

Chuck

 

Okay every got a lick in.

I don't want threads like this on here. It's a person to person issue, and it's not a TECH thread. Take it private and off the board.

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