Wow, that sure is funny. Did you think of that all by yourself? The maturity level amazes me.



I must say you remind me of a typical T.O. resident.

 

Thank you! Please don't change your avatar!


I do have something positive to say about Tripoint. The guys in the second bay over who do (or did) suspension set ups and alignment really know their stuff. They modded my OEM struts so the car can be corner balanced. That, some adjustable Konis, a rear camber piece, RB sways front and rear, a triangulated RB front strut, and a rear strut tower brace, some good Pirellis, and a relocated battery, and that car is on rails in the corners.

Just don't let them touch your engine. My regrets to Mack and others who have.

 

Well lucky for me I used to live in Denton(north of Dallas) and I actually bought the car in Dallas and drove it to LA. I wish I still lived there becuase then I would have taken my car directly to Steve Kan at Gotham Racing and they would have done all the work saving me thousands of dollars.

To answer your question though, my Dad still lives in Arlington and I use his home address as mine and even have a Texas driver's license thus allowing me to register my car in Texas. The dealer I bought it from went ahead and registered it for me and got it smogged before I picked it up.

In Texas you have two seperate stickers, one for registration and one for inspection(this one includes smog). Luckily for me the two entities that control the dispersal of the stickers don't communicate with each other and it is common to have the expiration dates for each sticker be different. I don't have an up to date inspection sticker but when I get pulled over in LA I only have to show proof of insurance and registration. They don't care or know about the inspection sticker that's also required.

Now if I went back to Texas and drove around and got pulled over I would get a ticket for not having a curent inspection sticker. I haven't driven back to Texas since I bough the car and drove it here to LA.

I have Geico Insurance in Texas and if I ever got into an accident here in LA I would tell them that I was visiting my fraternity brothers from when I attended USC. Geico provides nationwide coverage so I would be covered.

They key to this is having a Texas DL becuase you can't drive a car registered in another state and have a CA DL.

 

You can if you active-duty military, a military dependent, or (in most states) a full time student.

 

Steve, you got at least know your car and the mechanics of it before spending thousand of dollars letting a shop do it. I belive that 50% of a reliable engine, after a rebuild from a shop, is the owner knowledge of his vehicle.

I had my engine rebuilt from a shop, in Upland, and after I got the car back I immediately have my own 200 pts inspection to make sure that everything where it supposed to be. I also added reliable mods to make sure the engine stays reliable. I did alot of research, on this forum, and bought the PFC and downloaded a safe map similar to my setup to that I can drive it with peace of mind.

My point is, get to know your car and at least have some mechanical experience on maintain your own car even after a professional fix.

As for Tri-point, they knew that you were not mechanically inclined and lured you to a point of no return. You are just like a Bass in a lake and they are in a "Catch and Release" tournament. They kept on hooking you and releasing you. A point where only them can look at your engine even for a simple fix like the loose belt. You should of saw that yourself if you knew your engine.

Sorry for what you have went through and I wish you the best of luck.

TSD

 

LOL thats cheating stevemack!

 

Yeah, you are definitely correct. I wish I had known about this website before I bought the R2 because I could have done plenty of research before accepting any of Tri-point's recommendations. I would have gone with a RB dual tip exhaust and probably have gotten the Apex'i PFC instead of the PFS and definitely I would have not allowed them to add the other 2 550cc injectors. Hindsight is always 20/20 though.

 

I know. I get to benefit from the cheap registration( $52.80 a year compared to over $300 here in CA) and much cheaper insurance plus the best thing of all is the fact that I don't have to have a catalytic converter or have my car smogged.

 

Take your car over to Rotary Power. I have known Jeff for over 10 years and he does great work.

 

Thanks for the advice. I'll make sure to take my car over to Jeff at Rotary Power if I ever get it back from Tri-Point in running condition.

 

any update?

I'd get all your reciepts together and go talk in person with a lawyer while you're waiting for the car back.

 

No update as of yet. I last spoke to a Tri-Point mechanic on Friday and he said that they had tried checking and replacing everything they though it might be without any success. He said that he was going to ask Mark if he thought another mechanic should take a look at my car and try to troubleshoot the problem all over again. Maybe this way a freah pair of eyes might catch something they missed the first time they went through. I'll keep my fingers crossed and dig up all the receipts. I'll ask around and find out if there's a lawyer I can speak to and get an idea of what options I have.

 

Just had Jeff do some of my work. I was going to Tri Point also. Jeff and Alex are great. his shop is not as nice but his work is good and honest.
Jeff

 

Rotary Power seems to have a good rep. so I will definitely be taking all of my future engine work to them. Tri-Point does perform good suspension and brake work but I don't think I'll ever trust them again with my engine. Thanks for your comments.

 

wow... this is a terrible horror story. If what you said was true, then Tripoint were most certainly responsible for your motors blowing... they recommended and installed the ECUs and rebuilt the motors. Your car is not by any stretch a racing application with the stock twins, and whether it was the tuning or rebuilding, the fault is theirs. 4,000 miles is more than unacceptable, it's laughable. Not to mention so many times in a row. Hopefully you have learned your lesson and will go elsewhere, and sue them for money and time lost.

 

Well, I have finished digging up all my receipts and want to start the process of finding an attorney to see what my legal options are. The only problem is that I have not even the faintest clue on who to see.

Has any member had to sue a shop before? What kind of an attorney should I retain? Can anyone recommend an attorney in CA who specializes in cases like this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

^^^^^

is a total idiot with little itty bitty pee wee syndrome.
schmuck has no credibility.. He had a POS auto FD, that he claimed was mint.
so he sold it so he could buy a slow honda S2k, to put a mugen sticker on it.


Steve, its obvious to everyone, that 3/4 consecutive rebuilds???
with questionable mods recommended and installed by them.
They have to take some responsibilities. Don't you think??
The least you can do is have a lawyer draw you up a letter,
that can be addressed to the owner, threatening legal action
and see if that brings any response.

Call your local bar association. I think they can refer you to a lawyer
that handles this kind of stuff.

goodluck

 

[QUOTE=stevemack]

After about 3000 miles of normal driving I was on the freeway at 125mph racing a C5 Corvette and C4 Porsche (walking away from both of them easily) when I noticed a sudden loss of boost. Detonated 2 front apex seals which in turn went out the exhaust ports and ate up my turbos. I attributed this to poor tuning.

QUOTE]

They weren't trying a C5 is more than match for your RX-7 with those mods at that speed.

 

Steve,

I have never heard a bad thing from rotary power. I have spoken to Jeff before (when I was looking to get my engine rebuilt) seems like a stand up guy. A thing you should ask him if he can validate your case by being a techincal expert in court for you.


to bring another shop in the mix:

I take my car to R&R Rotary in UPLAND. Steve (he's the mechanic there) is a stand up guy. Over the 2+ years that I have knowned him (I would call him a friend at this point) he has proven that he stands by his work. My car has 30k miles on the a new engine (still holding 14 Hg knock on wood) and their warranty is 1 year/12,000 miles with mods. None of this racing application bullshit. I've seen him make good on his warranty too.

Also I know that they have gone to court before to serve as technical experts to help out people that have been screwed by other shops. You should give them a call too (never hurts to explore your options). 1-909-593-8080 ask for Stevem, tell him your story and let him know Elliot from San Diego sent you.

Good luck bro. Your story is what we all fear.

 

randomly chiming in here, sorry to hear about your unfortunate situation. I'd like to compliment your overall calmness after all these things happened.. most people on the forums completely blow up when someone else works on their car and something goes wrong. ESP with the amount of money you're dealing with. best of luck

 

How's that online feud with that Private Investigator going?

 

If you don't say anything, no one will know how little you know

 

I was probably one of the other 4 rebuilds that were right ahead of yours. I've been going to tri-point for much longer than I probably should. I can say this, they are expensive, do competent repair work, suspension and other mechanical work.

But, they've always had very limited expert resources on programming and dyno tuning. Fixing a clutch, suspension, brakes, etc... they are just as fast as anyone else. Finding a weird wiring problem, or tuning an ECU...thats been hit and miss.

I just did about 4 years and 50k miles on my last Tri-point rebuild. Thats about average for me as I drive hard and over the last 10+ years have gone through at least 5 motors in my FC and my FD.

EFI PFC vs. AEM. My last rebuild I used the PFC PMC (purple thing) and was actually very happy with it. My car ran great, lots of consistent boost in all 3 modes. Mark has been mentioning the AEM for a long time and I decided to give it a try... So far, way way unhappy. I don't know what they did to 'program' my AEM but I've got a ton of boost fall off on the seq. transition, it backfires and stutters a bit off the throttle, doesn't idle as well, doesn't start as well and doesn't make nearly the power.

I swapped the purple box/stock ecu back in and it was like night and day, tons of power, 13lbs of boost on 1st turbo and up to 16psi up until close to redline where it drops off a tad. The wideband UEGO reads off the scale rich 11:1+ with the EFI and about 12-11:1 with the AEM.

I'm really not sure what to do...I've lost confidence that bringing the car back to Tripoint is going to help much, esp. since they don't even have a working dyno (months and months after they have moved...).

I wonder what AEM would charge, maybe i should give them a call...

Otherwise I might have a nice barely used AEM to sell (bought it couple months ago online).

You can check my car out at http://riskin.org/rx7/fd/

 

Well I just got a call from Mark at Tri-Point yesterday and he said my car was fianally ready after more than a month. Mark said that apparently the problem was the wiring harness. He said that there was a short somewhere in the harness that was causing the primary injectors to fire twice instead of once thus causing the engine to flood. He said it wouldn't happen until about 5 miles into a test drive.

After changing the wire harness all of the symptoms are gone and she seems to be running fine for now. Now if only I can get another 1500 miles on the rebuilt engine so I can have it Steve Kan tuned right before SS8.

I talked to Steve Kan last week and he said that if I get him a copy of the AEM EMS program I'm running so that he can see how Tri-Point set up the 2 additional 550cc injectors, he would be able to tune it properly. I can't wait to see what his magic touch can do for my FD.