I took my car over to Justin Starky @ VMP tuning in Debary Florida for a 1 hour dyno session and asked him to move the idle up a little and add a little more timing .

Sounds simple enough right ?

For some reason he scrapped the "almost perfect" program that was in the car and started tuning the car in SD which i did not ask for .

4 hours later , after killing the battery "electric water pump"? , he pushed the car off the dyno and out into the parking lot and said call me next week ,,, WTF .

At this point the car was totaly dead and had part of a tune on it and barely ran .

This was 5 weeks ago and he will not return my phone calls .

I just dont think thats any way to do buisness and i thought i would let you guys know so you dont make the same mistake i did .

 

Holy crap that is terrible, what part of FLorida are you in?

 

FYI,

I took mine over there and he spent 10 hours making sure it was tuned smoothly. He was so concerned about the way it turned out, he had me come in another day as well to finish the drivability. Btw, he charged me about 1/2 of what a normal dyno tune session runs, and I got better then average results.

My car made great numbers, and couldnt run smoother.

There are 2 sides for every story. However, I know MANY people that have the same stories about justin that mirror mine.

Thanks Justin for your hard work on BOTH my cars.

 

Debary is right by Sanford. North of Orlando. Central Florida. Been there. I don't remember that shop being there when I was there. How old is the shop?

 

I wouldnt call it a shop as he doesnt work on cars. He just does tuning there and works on his own cars on his off time.

 

Very kool dave , but Justin hasnt called me back in 5 weeks now ?

He scraped my old tune to do dyno pulls and adjust the idle ? WTF .

Then to push my car off the dyno and out into the parking lot and not call me back or offer to get the car running right is just wrong .

 

Bummer. I hope it works out for ya.

 

Hi Russ, I'm sorry it had to come to this considering the relationship we've had over the years. I considered you a friend at one point. I've had your machine shop do thousands of dollars in CNC work for me.

Almost a year and a half ago Ryan and I agreed to tune your car at a reduced price. Ryan went out of his way and went over to your shop after work to load in a temp tune and give you an EFI Live road runner PCM to install in the car for dynotuning. He went out of his way to did this to help you out since the 408 combo was just put together with larger injectors and would not run otherwise. The next weekend you brought the car to my dyno to have us tune it. You did not install the road runner PCM as requested, so we had no way to tune your vehicle. Your response was "I thought you guys had all this stuff". Yes we did, the $1000 road runner setup was the "stuff" we were going to use to tune it. Luckily you had an old serial HP tuners cable licensed to the car that we were able to use. We tuned the car, it made 475RWHP off the N2O (which you did not have hooked up yet).

When the tuning was done I asked you to pay us, but you said you did not have any cash on you and asked if you could pay later. Considering you were a friend at the time, I said that was fine. IT TOOK YOU OVER A YEAR TO PAY US. You kept wanting us to "finish" the tune on the car before paying us. Why wasn't it tuned the first time? Russ found multiple mechanical problems, lifted the heads on N2O a few times, and added parts such as a different TB and intake (which directly effect the tune).

I would have expected anyone else to pay at the time services were rendered (after the dyno-tune) and would have charged them for additional tuning. However, in your case I did not because I thought you were a friend.

Russ never had me tune it for N2O, and never used a timing retard device with the N2O.

Due to the mods you made since the original tune you were having some idling problems with the car, and there was still some cold start driveability that needed to be worked out. I came to your shop (once again went out of my way) to work on the car while it was cold. I was not able to accomplish anything because the PCM would not flash, you later found out it had a bad PCM and replaced it.

Finally we were able to make our schedules work and you brought the car to me to finish the tune. I had tried to schedule this weeks before but you had been fighting oil leaks and blown headgaskets. We agreed upon $50 to finish the tune and put it on my dyno to see what it would make.

You claim the car was brought over for a simple idle and timing adjustment, but I had to do much more to fix the driveability and cold start issues you complained of. I worked on mapping out the VE table on my loaded dyno to fix these problems. Half way through the session your car failed to start several times, I jumped it until my jump box was DEAD. I took all the precautions, left it running for several minutes after the pull, and keyed it off except when I was flashing it. At that point even when the vehicle was running the battery voltage was 11-12v, pointing to a bad alternator.

Once the charging system was done there was nothing I could do to further tune it, 13-14v is required for the computer and other electronics to function properly. Mechanical problems like this can not be blamed on the tuner. We rolled the car off my dyno, and charged it for 15min with another vehicle so you were able to drive it home. I told you to call me when you got the problems fixed, but never heard from you. I spent hours working on the car, but never got paid the agreed upon amount of $50.

I emailed you a few weeks later about making some more CNC parts for me. In your reply you claimed to have called me several times. However, I have no records of calls from you. You then called me a few weeks later, said you needed the file so you could have someone else tune it. I told you to have your new tuner call me and I would give him the file in the format he needed since you did not know. Many tuners would not do this (especially considering you never payed me the second time), but I figured it was not worth the hassle. I never heard from you.

Finally late Saturday afternoon you call my personal cell phone. I was busy working on my house. I do not take business calls on the weekend, I think anyone else that runs a business can agree with this.

You told me you were not sure about the tune that was flashed into your replacement PCM, and wanted me to check it out. See my above post about tuning the VE table to fix some of your cold start problems.

Then you post this all over the internet, on my anniversary, and on the weekend when I will not have a chance to respond to them right away. You need to take responsibility for the problems with your car, they are not someone elses fault. I've tried to help you out on several occassions but this is what I get for that.

I heard your car was on another local tuners dyno and did not make that great of power. It does not surprise me, last time I saw your car it had more blowby than I have ever seen from any engine, good thing you make catch cans. You have always expected your car to make a certain amount of power, but at the end of the day it makes what it makes. No tuner can magically get more if the timing and A/F is right. All of that nitrous and the blown/lifted head gaskets must have taken their toll.

 

You were not paid in the beginning because you couldnt tune the car and broke a rocker arm stud on the dyno and i had to limp the car home .

Should i have paid you right then ,, i dont think so .

After i fixed the car Ryan addressed a couple issues , but it was never tuned .

Later I had Mike Norris tune the car and life was good and i slayed many a mustang on the spray.

Then 1.5 years later to redeam yourself you offered to do a couple dyno pulls and adjust the idle and "see what you could do about surging"

1 hour dyno session gone wrong ,, yea , i can see that .

Lost program ,,yea ,, i can see that .

Problems with a car , i can see that .

Brand new Dead battery , no battery charger in a shop ,, yea i can see that .

Ok , im wrong and your right and you need a new cell phone company and a little short/long term memory tuning .

You were paid , i was dicked , period .

 

damn, you both sound like nice guys, i really do feel that way. you were once friends. go have a & work this out

 

You did not bring up half of these issues with me, when I finally got you to pay none of this was brought up. You didn't even pay me in cash, you used your CNC business to trade out work.

I did not over-rev that engine, so breaking the rocker arm is not any fault of mine. It was either bad luck, or bad assembly. By your own admission you could not torque down head bolts properly, makes me wonder how you put together the valve train.

You had so many bad things to say about Mike Norris when you originally brought the car to me. I should have known to stay away from someone like you who switches side depending on their mood.

You claim to make all these phone calls trying to get a hold of me, but there are no emails and only voicemails from saturday night.

If your alternator wasn't dead a jump box would have worked fine.

The bottom line is, you have made many changes to your vette and it has had many mechanical problems. You have unreasonably expected me to tune it for free each time. Other tuners and mechanics have told you that your current issues may be hardware related, and not even tune related. You are the worst kind of customer, takes no responsibility for his own vehicle and only wants to blame the tuner.

I have better things to do than beat a dead horse, I've said my side of the story.

 

You knew i was not happy with what you did and you did not return my calls .

Money was not the issue and you know it and you got a GREAT deal EVERY SINGLE TIME we did business together and we NEVER had a problem .

Your right ,, im wrong ,, have a nice day .