jzk25 wrote:smythie wrote:And up until your paragraph admitting to the headers being too noisy for compliance (and subsequently being modified), you have allowed others to give you credit for those headers and the conversion you did on his car (which aside from the exhaust I reckon was a good job by the way - I have not said anything different about that car). By not disclosing the fact that the finished system was not wholly yours (and you've been around long enough to do so), you have taken the credit for the work yourself. If you are going to take credit for the positives about a car, you had better be prepared to accept responsibility for the negatives.
Another reason I have been disappointed with the work coming out of your workshop was a dodgy front mount installation on a Gen 2. In the process of cutting reinforcing behind the front bar you left a sharp edge to later cut through the silicone elbow coming of the intercooler. When we found the reason it wouldn't build boost during a roadside repair after the owner got tired of it on a cruise we were able to fit a couple of fingers through the cut in the elbow.
If the reputation of your business is important enough to you that you search around forums for negative remarks, your focus should be on getting cars right first not getting upset when dodgy work comes back to haunt you.
Would the pierced intercooler hose have been on a car that had a front end shunt by any chance?
It's great that you have two examples of random cars that have probably done 20k kms since they were at the workshop that have had "catastrophic" failures and therefore you can judge my work upon that.
Who said anything about catastrophic failures?
Nope, what I saw was not the result of a front end shunt. The car may have been in one at some point (just as yours or mine may have - I didn't run over it with a fine tooth comb looking for evidence of impact damage, though there was none in the area of the front bar) but the fault was the workmanship of your shop which performed the front mount installation. I won't disclose any more about the owner of the car as the owner does not deserve you yelling down the phone to them about daring to mention to people who were performing a roadside fix on the car that it was your workshop that did the installation.
And a sharp edged piece of (2-3mm thick) steel rubbing a silicone hose at near right angles to the surface of the hose (the hose was around 8mm thick fwiw) is rarely going to be an issue for the car in its first couple of weeks out of the shop. It is months and thousands of km's down the track that it will become an issue. It seems that you build cars to be safe and reliable for the long haul going by the supporting comments you have received in this thread over the weekend. This one was not. Hopefully (for your shop and your past and future customers) I've just seen the one bad example and there are thousands of very good examples done and yet to come.
jzk25 wrote:You are truly awesome and should never leave the internet as it is your natural home.
Why thank you. You're doing pretty well at it yourself.
jzk25 wrote:I came here to see how much of an ass Ian had made of himself being a forum warrior(it's his profession) and find some local legend dropping comments about a workshop he has no knowledge of apart from some random well used cars that have previously been worked on by us.
And yet you couldn't be arsed doing something to diffuse those threads where Ian went over the top, particularly when he was talking about your work as reference. Instead, you lurked for months before taking a shot at me because I had the gall to criticise your work based on evidence I had seen (including some which you refused to correct which lead to a seemingly incorrect conclusion in the case of one car). So far you've proven yourself to be a pretty good forum warrior in the space of a couple of days.
jzk25 wrote:Tell me all about yourself Smythie. You must be an experienced man in the automotive industry to make such sweeping judgements with no basis?
What sweeping judgements? Statements of fact. I have seen some dodgy work that has come out of your workshop. FACT. And until you confessed that the full exhaust was not your work, your taking credit for it allowed the statement I made at the start of the thread AT THE TIME OF WRITING to also be FACT. If you or your mate smoov had bothered at the time to pipe up and say something along the lines of "The headers as you see them there were mine but I know the exhaust system has been modified a few times since" I would have happily apologised and retracted the statement. Instead, you defended the exhaust as your own work and only after being told a second time that they leaked did you try to distance yourself from what you think may have been the issue.
A sweeping judgement would have been "AMAuto can't build a long term reliable car"
With the benefit of the further information you have finally provided, I apologise to AMAuto and anyone else offended for the statement that I made early in this thread regarding leaks in an exhaust system.
I also apologise for this statement from earlier in the thread, just in case it may be perceived as defammatory towards your shop:
they're pretty basic for sure but following the route all 3 pipes on each side take it is evident that they tried to get as even length as possible. Not elegant, but they achieved it as well as the nicer looking example you provided a pic of
I thought it was a statement in defence of the shop but now I'm not so sure it would have been seen that way by the owner and their supporters
I bet they do
