Yeah I never heard anything from anyone either so I never said ****.

 

same here. I never heard anything so I just kept quiet til now.

 

i am not scared buddy, ur just going to be slipping left and right while my slow car is going straight. i think u got more power than u handle now

 

Wow, nothing against the shop, Rob seems like a very nice guy. In all fairness, you dont ever see people post up about the good experiences of a shop, as much as bad experiences.

 

very true, go on corvette forum, they alwyas post up good things about shops.

 

Maybe. In my case, if a shop has done good work for me, I'll usually recommend them to other users. If, on the other had, a shop has screwed over me, I won't give them my business again, but I'm hesitant to bad mouth them to other users. Everybody makes mistakes, right? And, yes, Rob is a nice guy.

But here's what happened to me: I had a built 4L60E drop shipped to Strictly from Coan Racing in Indiana. The core charge for the tranny was $500. When I took my car in, they had taken the tranmission out of the wooden shipping crate, and destroyed the crate in the process. I was upset about that, because (of course) I had intended to use the crate to return the core. Rob apologized, and I told him I guess I would ask UPS to box it up for me. He didn't offer to pay for that, by the way. This was two or three days before Christmas.

I came back a couple of days later, and the car was done, and for a reasonable price, I think. But right after New Year's day, I called Rob to arrange to ship back my core, and he said his "core man" had already picked it up and it was gone. He said his policy was not to keep cores over 10 days or somthing like that. Well, as I said earlier in this post, this was over Christmas and New Year's. I wasn't even sure his shop would be open. I also didn't know about his so-called "policy" and I also think he could have called me and asked my if I wanted the core, especially since I had already made it plain that I was pissed because the crate was ruined because I wanted to use it to RETURN THE CORE. We argued for awhile, and the bottom line was I was out $500 and that was it. I asked him if he could make all or part of it up to me in labor, and he said no.

A couple of months later I noticed a bunch of metal shavings in my transmission fluid after it was on the dyno. The stealership said my transmission was gone, but it felt fine when I drove the car. Turns out Strictly had not flushed the transmission lines when they put in my new tranny, and the particles were left over my old trans. It cost me another $100 to flush my transmission lines and replace the fluid.

All I have to say is caveat emptor.

 

[QUOTE=BeachZ]Maybe. In my case, if a shop has done good work for me, I'll usually recommend them to other users. If, on the other had, a shop has screwed over me, I won't give them my business again, but I'm hesitant to bad mouth them to other users. Everybody makes mistakes, right? And, yes, Rob is a nice guy.

But here's what happened to me: I had a built 4L60E drop shipped to Strictly from Coan Racing in Indiana. The core charge for the tranny was $500. When I took my car in, they had taken the tranmission out of the wooden shipping crate, and destroyed the crate in the process. I was upset about that, because (of course) I had intended to use the crate to return the core. Rob apologized, and I told him I guess I would ask UPS to box it up for me. He didn't offer to pay for that, by the way. This was two or three days before Christmas.

I came back a couple of days later, and the car was done, and for a reasonable price, I think. But right after New Year's day, I called Rob to arrange to ship back my core, and he said his "core man" had already picked it up and it was gone. He said his policy was not to keep cores over 10 days or somthing like that. Well, as I said earlier in this post, this was over Christmas and New Year's. I wasn't even sure his shop would be open. I also didn't know about his so-called "policy" and I also think he could have called me and asked my if I wanted the core, especially since I had already made it plain that I was pissed because the crate was ruined because I wanted to use it to RETURN THE CORE. We argued for awhile, and the bottom line was I was out $500 and that was it. I asked him if he could make all or part of it up to me in labor, and he said no.

A couple of months later I noticed a bunch of metal shavings in my transmission fluid after it was on the dyno. The stealership said my transmission was gone, but it felt fine when I drove the car. Turns out Strictly had not flushed the transmission lines when they put in my new tranny, and the particles were left over my old trans. It cost me another $100 to flush my transmission lines and replace the fluid.


Strictly Preformance
i do not recall this incident,what was your name and if we cost you anything we always try and make it up to our customers. Like i said i do not recall this incadent and if we cost you we will still even this late in the game make it up to you at least 50% if not more...it really sucks to hear all this stuff come out when all we are trying to do is keep all you guy's happy at the same time try and keep prices low..and you guy's are my living if youre not happy i am not in bussiness .and then you have the few people that come on here and complaine about overcharging when they got there car tuned( i got paid $400 for 2 completly different tunes on the same day and $250 for a pcm that i had to supply due to customer had locked pcm..he paid the dyno directly for dyno time and race gas after he draind 91 octine in lue of race gas.we never worked on the car and he never set foot in my shop ,we made sure he was happy with the tune before we left and went on our way) and to not be able to tweak the tune for part throtle problems because the customer moves or gets bent and does not return to get them fixed what am i suposed to do..bottom line we do everything we can to keep our customers happy i only charge 1 time for a tune you come back 10 times no charge and if you want to go on the dyno you pay for the time and i will be on it with you no extra charge.so i do not see how their can be any complaints .if you do not tell me i can not fix it .and if we build a car for some one and something goes wrong with it and it is related to our work we will go transport the car fix it and return it to the customer i feel we have put our selves out there for you guy's and have not been treated fairly in most of these accusations . so far only 2 people have valid complaints . and if you contact me i will do everything i can to make them happy . hopefully this brings a little light to the subject i usually never come on here and talk when some one has a problem with the shop but most of the people in this post have nothing to go on . i usually let people air there problems , it lets me know where i need to focus on in my shop.... ROB....

 

I Dont Think A Group Of People Would Speak Up About A Shop Unless It Was A Realy Bad Experience. Im Not Into Bashing Innocent People. I Tell It Like It Is If Someone Does Good Work For Me I Praise Them And Recomend Them To Others If I Feel Screwed Over I Warn My Friends. It Seems Like Thats Whats Happening Here. Just Trying To Help Eachother Out.

 

So then let me know if I am wrong,you had your car on the dyno for tuning on 91 octane gas,then you wanted to drain your gas tank while your car was still on the dyno and then add race gas and then retune it again at no additional charge and also I don't know how many times he has to tell he doesn't get any $ or break on the dyno time.So that might explain your so called hidden charges that you keep referring to.

 

DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THE **** YOUR TALKING ABOUT I GRIPE WAS BEING DOUBLE CHARGED FOR DYNO TIME IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TUNE ALSO HE DID SWAP MY PCM FOR 250 THAT WAS FINE TOO EXEPT FOR THE FACT THAT ROB TOLD ME WHEN I TAKE MY STOCK ONE BACK ILL GET MY MONEY BACK. I DROVE 2 HOURS THERE TO TAKE BACK MY STOCK PCM AND HE NEVER GAVE ME BACK MY MONEY THEY ASKED ME TO COME BACK. I DONT KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT IM NOT GOING TO TAKE ANOTHER 2 HOUR DRIVE OVER 250 BUCKS THAT SOMEONE WANTS TO SCREW ME OUT OF. AND YES HE DID TUNE IT FOR 103 AT HIGH BOOST AND I PAID FOR THE DYNO TIME AND THE RACE GAS ON THAT I NEVER ONCE GRIPED ABOUT THAT! AS A MATTER OF FACT IF YOU READ MY ORIGINAL POST I WAS THE MOST PISSED ABOUT BEING QUOTED 100 DOLLARS AN HOUR DYNO TIME BUT CHARGED 175 DOLLARS AN HOUR I DIDNT SAY ANYTHING BECAUSE I THOUGHT MAYBE THAT INCLUDED THE GAS AND TUNE BUT IT DIDNT. SO I PAID IN THE BALLPARK OF 1250.00 FOR A TUNE DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A DEAL TO YOU?
YEAH THANKS FOR TAKING CARE OF ME!

 

[QUOTE=ROB55]My name is Bruce Kinnaird. I live in Hermosa Beach, Ca, and my car is a black 2002 Z28. Like I said in my original post, I thought your price for the transmission install itself was pretty fair. It was $400. I picked my car up on December 23, 2004. You don't remember this? I had Midwester converter on my car then, and the seals gave way on it at Pomosa Raceway and grenaded my transmission. You showed me all the pieces and I wanted to take some pictures but I didn't have a camera. I don't what else to tell you. I could dig up the invoice, but I don't know what that would prove except that I had my car worked on at your shop. I've also got the invoice from the shop that flushed my transmission.

I'm not interested on having you "make good" on anything. The way I feel about most performance shops is that you pays your dime and you takes your chances. The deal with the core happened exactly as I stated in my post. I was pretty upset at the time, but I have never mentioned this incident on any board. A shop would have to screw me more than once for me to launch a crusade against it, and in this case, you didn't get a second chance. But just because I don't go around bitching about it doesn't mean I'm going to keep quiet when other board members point out what seems to be a pattern.

 

Settle Down Bro easy on the cap locks

Well I talked to him and he said that when you came by he wasn't there,so that is his fault right I don't think so especially since he wasn't even aware of you driving down there.

And as for the $1,250 that you are referring to of that he got $400 for the tuning of your car twice and the $250 for the PCM because yours was locked.This was also @ his shop which means that he had to send someone after it all of this while your dyno time is counting which you were aware of and agreed to.

So now I quess we are now getting somewhere on helping you out.And by the way he still says even after all of the BASHING that you have done unmerited that he will still give you your $250 back.So if you would like you should work out arrangements to clear this up rather than continuosly bashing.


Thanks for your time.

 

As far as tuning goes messing with the maf table is a bad idea. I would only load the maf table that was designed for whatever maf I am using from gm. You can make changes to the ifr table and the ve table to set the fuel correctly. I have tuned many cars and only need to drill the throttle body on bigger cams, and that is usually only one step bigger than stock. I did some tuning on one of strictly tuned cars and picked up a lot of drivability and top end. I think there is a learning curve with tuning and some of these cars I believe were tuned when rob was first starting tuning. I am sure he has improved since then.

 

i guess he didnt tell you that we got him on the phone while i was there and he told his wife or whoever the lady is to tell me to come back and i wasnt the only person in the office trying to get my money they cant give a refund unless he is there?what kind of **** is that. and i did tell him i was coming. and yes i did pay for the down time on the dyno while they ran to the shop at twice the price it should have been i even paid for the time while they played halo. whats your point? mine is the dyno time was too much in price not to many hours. and he didnt honor my refund like he said he would . how do you justify that?i dont get it. you keep bringing up all the work he did i never bitched about that once just over charged.do you get it yet? rob also responded to my original post about getting the dyno guys to give me some money back i never heard back after that! as you can see im not the only one here!


oh yeah you can keep the $250

 

Ok I'm going to pick up the $250 for you Martin and bring it up to cruise night tomorrow, minus my fee's of course. But yeah sounds like a fair deal. So call Rob and let him know I'll be there around 1pm.

 

I don't know about the rest of you. Sorry to hear that you feel you had a bad experience with Strictly. Personally I've had a great experience doing business with Rob. The mods I have done to my car have all been done through Strictly. The mods I have had done through them are: TD's, headers, stall, beefed up trans, h/c, Moser-12 bolt, torque arm, pan hard bard, lca's, new alt and dyno tune. All work has been done in a very high quality manner. As well I feel I received very professional service. There has been two times that Rob went out of his was to pick up my car to bring it into his shop (once when the alt went out and once when my trans went). This was done both times after he had spent the day working in his shop on other people's cars. One time he arrived in my neighborhood ~9PM and once ~11PM. I felt this was above and beyond the normal service that most shops would extend to a customer. There have been a few times Rob has tweaked my tune after the initial tune to address some drivability/idle issues. At no time did he charge me any extra to change settings. All work has been done on schedule as promised save for one install where we were waiting on a vendor for a part (issue outside of his control). There have been many occasions where I have stopped by being in the neighborhood where he has always inquired about my car and how well it is doing. I for one have always been very happy with the work done at Strictly Performance.

 

I've used Strickly on one occassion for a blower install and tune. I was very satisfied with the installation and found the tune to be acceptable. It was apparent to me that Rob was literally burning the midnight oil in order to meet his time commitments to myself and others.

I have spent countless hours tuning my cars with HPT. I needed a safe starting point with Strickly's tune while in boost and got it.

Strickly has a lot on its plate. That is both a positive and a negative, but usually better than a shop that has too much time on its hands. If Rob purchased his own dynomometer, I'm certain that things would go smoother. However, the expense is probably not justified.

Without judging the validity of the above complaints, the "me too" mentallity is pathetic. Waiting over eight months, or even longer in some cases, and then airing a complaint in a public forum is weak.

 

Ahhh, a Corona local... cool

 

I will let this rest after this post. The reason that I didn't initially mentioned the name of the shop is because I don't like bad mouthing specific shops or individuals on the board. It was meant as a recommendation to watch out carefully when selecting a tuner. I can most certainly accept that the quality of the work between shops varies - some are better and more qualified than others. This will normally solve itself I suppose in that less qualified shops will go out of business eventually.
In my particular case, I was confronted with lies which is the reason why I decided to post the incident. I will share the last of the e-mail correspondence I had with strictly after I suspected that my TB had been drilled. I just cannot see any excuses for not telling the truth...:

My e-mail:
"Rob,

I’ve tried everything but the problem with the idle hanging at 2000 rpms continues. Even with the stock tune it’s the same. Therefore I believe the problem lies somewhere else. Did you by any chance drill my TB when you did the tune? Unfortunately I don’t have a spare TB so I can’t try another one. Any ideas? The car is not very drivable as it is now. It takes up to a minute or more before is comes down to 1100-1200 and is not stable there either."

Response from strictly:
"check for some kind of air leak in the intake area or t- body any where after the mass air meter."

Shortly after this I removed the TB and found that it had been overdrilled.

I rest my case.

 

But then you waited several months and posted here? Seriously, you post in a regional section and write "LA tuner." I knew you were going to name the business before I read your next post.

If you were so good natured, your post would have been elsewhere and you wouldnt have bad mouthed a business over 1/2 year later. You're full of BS.

There is another LS1 shop in the greater LA area that doesnt even touch f-bodies for reasons like this.