Darkside, and S&R performance,
Thread Starter
92 DSM AWD
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 236
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Darkside, and S&R performance,
I have been hearing alot lately not only on forums but on the street about S&R performance, I have been hearing about some mistakes that they have made. I also have heard people as about Darkside performance.
First off ask any of Darkside's customers and they will tell you they not only are satisfied but when they have an issue Drew will go ABOVE and Beyond the call of duty as a builder or a tuner to make your car RIGHT!,
As for S&R
Just read this post from just one forum. There are So many others that im not going to make a list. But With everthing I have been hearing I do not want to see another person go there and over pay for sub quality work and not get what they where expecting. Then when they ask for support be told they are not important. This is what S&R does. They only care about you up till the moment you pay them. Then they say FUCK YOU
Here is a clip from the My.is forum post. my.IS - Lexus IS Forum
BTW Darkside is fixing one of the IS300's listed in this thread near the end. The guy had a fully built 2jz done there with the custom 2600$ intake for the IS300. Drew has to rebuild the motor now because it doesnt even have the correct compression. Beware people you have been warned..
First off ask any of Darkside's customers and they will tell you they not only are satisfied but when they have an issue Drew will go ABOVE and Beyond the call of duty as a builder or a tuner to make your car RIGHT!,
As for S&R
Just read this post from just one forum. There are So many others that im not going to make a list. But With everthing I have been hearing I do not want to see another person go there and over pay for sub quality work and not get what they where expecting. Then when they ask for support be told they are not important. This is what S&R does. They only care about you up till the moment you pay them. Then they say FUCK YOU
Here is a clip from the My.is forum post. my.IS - Lexus IS Forum
BTW Darkside is fixing one of the IS300's listed in this thread near the end. The guy had a fully built 2jz done there with the custom 2600$ intake for the IS300. Drew has to rebuild the motor now because it doesnt even have the correct compression. Beware people you have been warned..
Ok so here is the story and i am not talking bad about anyone here, I would just like to get peoples feedback on this situation...
I took my IS to S&R performance which is located in Tampa, FL to originally have the car dyno tune'd. All came out pretty well. I spent $400 that day for a dyno tune on the car which took about 6 hours due to the fact he had to start over after 2 hours because my car had a vacuum leak coming from the MAP sensor...
They did cut me a break and charged me just $400 instead of extra due to longer amount of time. So all is well and fine after the tune when i am driving the car. Well about 3 weeks later as I was driving I heard a pop noise in the car which I thought was just a pocket of gas in the exhaut which exploded...but then noticed afterwards that my A/F at idle was 10.9 to 11.2 from previous high 13's.
I thought I fouled a spark plug thinking why it might be so rich, when i pulled #5 there was oil on the tip of the spark plug. I had S&R do a compression test for me on this, which they did and have found that the 5th cylinder had a compression of 160 or 165 (looking for paper with numbers will edit when I find) I took it to them thinking it was the valve stem seals and for them to replace all of them. Well it turns out they said it was my valve cover seal, that they saw oil on the top of the plug which they believe drained in….so they replaced the valve cover gasket for me which I could have done and they charged accordingly…
They called their tuner Brian back in to have him do a street tune on my car which I paid $200 for. He spent 15 minutes and said he maxed out my fuel on the haltech and he couldn’t do anything else. So I was kind of like wtf…they said I must have a fuel pressure issue, which come to find out I did, from my FPR, but never had a visible gas leak before until they took their own Regulator and attached it to my FPR which was taped to my window to see the pressure and was inconsistent. When they put the part back together they caused the problem to be worse. Bobby ended up putting my buddy shanes tune from a while back to the haltech. So then that erased the tune brian has set on as well. I changed the braided line and no more leak so all is fine.
So, I took it to my buddy shane who is an engineer and knows how to tune the IS, Subaru’s, Evo’s etc. He spent 45 minutes and had my idle perfect and even going through the gears and RPM’s..and this was before I fixed my fuel issue, so something is to say about that. I tried calling S&R to get the tune brian put on the car from him. Originally spoke to Jeff one of the owners who has a very good help in trying to resolve the matter, and gave us brains number and all… and said I would have the map emailed to me the next day. I have tried calling him multiple times with no answer and no return call. The map is still not in my email obviously.
So 3 weeks go by and I call S&R back and spoke with bobby who is the other owner of S&R… Basically he said I brought him a car that was not ready to be tuned, and that he is not involved between brains tune and my car. With some displeasure and statements made by bobby..saying he will get a blood sample from brian for us too which really was not respectful as I was being nice the whole time. All I wanted was the map that brian originally put on my car from the dyno. That was it, and he said he dosent want my car back in his shop again, and dosent want to work on it, which I didn’t understand. The outcome of it is that he called brian while I was on the phone with him and asked him if he still had the map to my car…well there was a problem with a skyline haltech so Brian had to reinstall the driver apparently which erased all the maps from the haltech on his computer (which I do not understand how this happens)
So I paid $600 total for a map that I will never receive and the service my friend and I had to go through. So I feel like I have spent $600 for nothing really. Plus the $$ I gave to them for changing out my WG Spring, and valve cover gasket, as well as compression test which is fine and they did good work on. I am not trying to bash S&R at all, but I am not really satisfied with the customer service provided to me after the fact. Bobby wanted to wash his hands from my car, when I was in the shop with my car they made me seem important, but after the fact, it really seemed as if they did not care.
I would just like some peoples responses on this matter and how you would feel if you were in my situation and this was your car??
__________________
03 IS300 w/ Sc300 GE block, TT pistons, Clevite Rods & Bearings, TT HG, R154 Tranny, Haltech F10x, Greddy oil catch tank, PT.61 snail, Greddy FMIC 3" endtanks,2.5" Mandrel POLISHED aluminum intercooler piping, 3" intake pipe, 3" open element filter, Walbro 255 lph fuel pump, Aeromotive FPR, Delphi 720cc low impedance injectors, Tial 38mm WG w/ 16psi spring, Tial 50mm BOV, 2jzgeTubular t304 Stainless Steel Exhaust Manifold, 3" Mandrel t304 SS Downpipe w/ open WG tube, 3" Mandrel t304 SS Racepipe,
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Last edited by Jonnyd : 02-26-2010 at 05:26 PM.
I took my IS to S&R performance which is located in Tampa, FL to originally have the car dyno tune'd. All came out pretty well. I spent $400 that day for a dyno tune on the car which took about 6 hours due to the fact he had to start over after 2 hours because my car had a vacuum leak coming from the MAP sensor...
They did cut me a break and charged me just $400 instead of extra due to longer amount of time. So all is well and fine after the tune when i am driving the car. Well about 3 weeks later as I was driving I heard a pop noise in the car which I thought was just a pocket of gas in the exhaut which exploded...but then noticed afterwards that my A/F at idle was 10.9 to 11.2 from previous high 13's.
I thought I fouled a spark plug thinking why it might be so rich, when i pulled #5 there was oil on the tip of the spark plug. I had S&R do a compression test for me on this, which they did and have found that the 5th cylinder had a compression of 160 or 165 (looking for paper with numbers will edit when I find) I took it to them thinking it was the valve stem seals and for them to replace all of them. Well it turns out they said it was my valve cover seal, that they saw oil on the top of the plug which they believe drained in….so they replaced the valve cover gasket for me which I could have done and they charged accordingly…
They called their tuner Brian back in to have him do a street tune on my car which I paid $200 for. He spent 15 minutes and said he maxed out my fuel on the haltech and he couldn’t do anything else. So I was kind of like wtf…they said I must have a fuel pressure issue, which come to find out I did, from my FPR, but never had a visible gas leak before until they took their own Regulator and attached it to my FPR which was taped to my window to see the pressure and was inconsistent. When they put the part back together they caused the problem to be worse. Bobby ended up putting my buddy shanes tune from a while back to the haltech. So then that erased the tune brian has set on as well. I changed the braided line and no more leak so all is fine.
So, I took it to my buddy shane who is an engineer and knows how to tune the IS, Subaru’s, Evo’s etc. He spent 45 minutes and had my idle perfect and even going through the gears and RPM’s..and this was before I fixed my fuel issue, so something is to say about that. I tried calling S&R to get the tune brian put on the car from him. Originally spoke to Jeff one of the owners who has a very good help in trying to resolve the matter, and gave us brains number and all… and said I would have the map emailed to me the next day. I have tried calling him multiple times with no answer and no return call. The map is still not in my email obviously.
So 3 weeks go by and I call S&R back and spoke with bobby who is the other owner of S&R… Basically he said I brought him a car that was not ready to be tuned, and that he is not involved between brains tune and my car. With some displeasure and statements made by bobby..saying he will get a blood sample from brian for us too which really was not respectful as I was being nice the whole time. All I wanted was the map that brian originally put on my car from the dyno. That was it, and he said he dosent want my car back in his shop again, and dosent want to work on it, which I didn’t understand. The outcome of it is that he called brian while I was on the phone with him and asked him if he still had the map to my car…well there was a problem with a skyline haltech so Brian had to reinstall the driver apparently which erased all the maps from the haltech on his computer (which I do not understand how this happens)
So I paid $600 total for a map that I will never receive and the service my friend and I had to go through. So I feel like I have spent $600 for nothing really. Plus the $$ I gave to them for changing out my WG Spring, and valve cover gasket, as well as compression test which is fine and they did good work on. I am not trying to bash S&R at all, but I am not really satisfied with the customer service provided to me after the fact. Bobby wanted to wash his hands from my car, when I was in the shop with my car they made me seem important, but after the fact, it really seemed as if they did not care.
I would just like some peoples responses on this matter and how you would feel if you were in my situation and this was your car??
__________________
03 IS300 w/ Sc300 GE block, TT pistons, Clevite Rods & Bearings, TT HG, R154 Tranny, Haltech F10x, Greddy oil catch tank, PT.61 snail, Greddy FMIC 3" endtanks,2.5" Mandrel POLISHED aluminum intercooler piping, 3" intake pipe, 3" open element filter, Walbro 255 lph fuel pump, Aeromotive FPR, Delphi 720cc low impedance injectors, Tial 38mm WG w/ 16psi spring, Tial 50mm BOV, 2jzgeTubular t304 Stainless Steel Exhaust Manifold, 3" Mandrel t304 SS Downpipe w/ open WG tube, 3" Mandrel t304 SS Racepipe,
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Last edited by Jonnyd : 02-26-2010 at 05:26 PM.
*Turbo Interceptor*
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 6,820
Likes: 1
The IS300 went to S&R for a blown head gasket. $10,000 later the car still doesn't run (this includes upgrades and repairs). The car came into Darkside not running. Upon further inspection it turns out that some pins are not in the right spot on the ECU. The car has an unversal AEM EMS with a custom harness. The pins that where mixed up included some injector and coil trigger wires. There is no way that the car could ever run correctly in that condtion.
Once that problem was corrected we got the car started. The car ran poorly and smoked a lot. We never took it out of the parking lot. We did a compression and leak-down to check for engine damage. It failed both test. Once the engine was apart we discovered crack ring lands on three different pistons.
I'm not sure if the damage was caused by S&R or not. But if it was not, they did a very poor job in diagnosis of the 'blown head gasket'. They could have done a simple test when they got the head off the car to determine if the bottom end was damaged. Instead they elected to put the car back together with a rebuilt head and still have low compression after the 'repair'.
You cannot correctly fix the problem if you do not know what the problem is. Diag is the most important part of the repair.
I like the guys at S&R, we have a good relationship; however, they dropped the ball on this one.
Once that problem was corrected we got the car started. The car ran poorly and smoked a lot. We never took it out of the parking lot. We did a compression and leak-down to check for engine damage. It failed both test. Once the engine was apart we discovered crack ring lands on three different pistons.
I'm not sure if the damage was caused by S&R or not. But if it was not, they did a very poor job in diagnosis of the 'blown head gasket'. They could have done a simple test when they got the head off the car to determine if the bottom end was damaged. Instead they elected to put the car back together with a rebuilt head and still have low compression after the 'repair'.
You cannot correctly fix the problem if you do not know what the problem is. Diag is the most important part of the repair.
I like the guys at S&R, we have a good relationship; however, they dropped the ball on this one.
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Thread Starter
92 DSM AWD
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 236
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The IS300 went to S&R for a blown head gasket. $10,000 later the car still doesn't run (this includes upgrades and repairs). The car came into Darkside not running. Upon further inspection it turns out that some pins are not in the right spot on the ECU. The car has an unversal AEM EMS with a custom harness. The pins that where mixed up included some injector and coil trigger wires. There is no way that the car could ever run correctly in that condtion.
Once that problem was corrected we got the car started. The car ran poorly and smoked a lot. We never took it out of the parking lot. We did a compression and leak-down to check for engine damage. It failed both test. Once the engine was apart we discovered crack ring lands on three different pistons.
I'm not sure if the damage was caused by S&R or not. But if it was not, they did a very poor job in diagnosis of the 'blown head gasket'. They could have done a simple test when they got the head off the car to determine if the bottom end was damaged. Instead they elected to put the car back together with a rebuilt head and still have low compression after the 'repair'.
You cannot correctly fix the problem if you do not know what the problem is. Diag is the most important part of the repair.
I like the guys at S&R, we have a good relationship; however, they dropped the ball on this one.
Once that problem was corrected we got the car started. The car ran poorly and smoked a lot. We never took it out of the parking lot. We did a compression and leak-down to check for engine damage. It failed both test. Once the engine was apart we discovered crack ring lands on three different pistons.
I'm not sure if the damage was caused by S&R or not. But if it was not, they did a very poor job in diagnosis of the 'blown head gasket'. They could have done a simple test when they got the head off the car to determine if the bottom end was damaged. Instead they elected to put the car back together with a rebuilt head and still have low compression after the 'repair'.
You cannot correctly fix the problem if you do not know what the problem is. Diag is the most important part of the repair.
I like the guys at S&R, we have a good relationship; however, they dropped the ball on this one.
Take the DSM for example. There are 1G's that have run almost 500 HP on the stock motor. We all know that is more than the bleeding edge for our motor. If you’re going to drive around all day with that much power would you feel safer knowing that you have parts that can hold up to 800+ or parts that shouldn’t be used past 400. I for one believe in "over building" for strength This way you’re not going to end up on the side of the road because your 400 HP bottom end let go because you were running near 500.
I guess im jaded, I was the one that had to fix JonnyD's IS300. I also found the fuel issue in less than 5 mins, and fixed the tuning issue in less than 20. I by no means present myself as a “great builder or tuner “ like S&R does. I also understand that each shop will have a few bad apple cars that roll through and some customers no matter how much you try to make them happy just won’t be. So you take the good with the bad. But for a shop to be this careless about 2 cars in the same month with a combined total of well over 10k in income for that shop. IDK call me silly but I would have tried harder and not told my customer that their car wasn’t important enough to their business to make it right. I even told Bobbie the exact problem and the correction for the problem. And even after spending 600 dollars he still wasn’t able to get a copy of his tune. BOBBIE was the one that erased his haltech and copied over the tuners tune with one of mine to see if it would run better which it did. So they left that tune on his EM so he could drive home. So if givin the chance to download the map JonnyD would have, but S&R erased the tune that he paid 600 for and then said the tuner wasn’t able to give him a copy. Kind of shitty, I’m not as good of a tuner as the one that tuned his car at S&R, (that is an assumption) but I do know as a tuner I provide a copy of the map to the customer in the event there is a catastrophic failure they can replace it.
IMO S&R didnt provide good customer service, Just beware if your taking your car there. Most of us care alot about our cars. The last thing we want is a shop that doesnt.
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never heard anything about s&r but i agree that i've heard nothing but good about DS 
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I love Darkside! Also, I had a horrible time with S&R. The owner seems like a decent guy, but they set up my K-Sports incorrectly, forgot the rings for them and fubar'd a Nismo bushing install (I'll post pics of the wishbone part they destroyed if someone wants them). I will only bring the gst to Drew and his crew, and if the sentra ever needs something more than an alignment or oil change it's going there also.
Thread Starter
92 DSM AWD
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 236
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^^ Damn, How did they screw up bushing install. Sorry to hear. Did you get them to credit you back. Where they willing to refund any of the money or offer anything additional for the bad install and crappy service? Maybe some free dyno runs? Although im not sure if their dyno is up yet. A couple of months ago they moved to the building across from their old one. When they moved the Dyno they couldnt figure out how to get it back together right. As of the time that these IS300's where having problems the Dyno was down and awaiting a professional to come in and set it up. (even though they claim to be the professionals.)
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92 DSM AWD
Joined: Feb 2005
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Jeff is a nice guy, I can't believe he has kept Bobbie there. Bobbie must do really great work on his knees. Thats the only reason I can see for him to be there.
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92 DSM AWD
Joined: Feb 2005
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hahah, i know i should let this die, but i just heard another story from a subie owner that had a motor rebuild there. UGH, wow When this all happened i really thought that our situation was one of the only ones. It seems that this is a month by month issue with S&R. And before we went there we had heard GOOD things about them. especially when it came to the 2jz-gte motor. But from what S&R states that platform is dead around here and no one care about it. Hummm pondering that statement..........one of the best motors ever made no longer having a market................ humm..
