Boys, I won’t be racing the sprints. My car is home but it doesn’t run. But this is still a big success. It took two cop interventions and one stolen car report to get possession of the car.
Alex M******, M****** Motorsports, Decatur (Atlanta).
Nov. I buy a head from M******. He called it his premo race ready SpecE30 special. I drop my car off for him to install the head. He brings the car to RA Sat morning 6Dec
6Dec. Motor is hard top start and incredibly weak. M****** says that my original bottom end doesn’t like his tightly sealed premo head. I’m a complete newby so I don’t know enough to recognize this theory as absurd. He takes my car back to his shop, My race weekend is hosed.
8Dec. Reach agreement to do ring/hone on my block and I pay $700 (50%) down. Alex commits to taking my car to a dyno and getting 160hp.
10Dec I ask him to also look into cause of insufficient neg camber at right rear.
Mid Dec we coord a pickup in time for me to do an instructor gig at a track day. I coord with home boss and work boss to be gone for the entire day to do the pickup. But when I attempt to make near coord the day before, the guy is nowhere to be found. I call track and make apologies for not fulfilling instructor gig commitment.
Because of the nature of my work, my wife’s work and the kids, it takes serious coordination to be gone for a day.
Alex does not apologize for coordinating a pickup date and then disappearing. Odd.
In the weeks that follow, Alex became very difficult to contact. Emails and phone calls go unanswered and unreturned. I can’t seem to get any feedback about the car. Multiple attempts to find out what is going on nets only this one sole nugget of info…my car is a “mess”.
End Dec we coord a pickup in time for me to do another instructor gig at a track day. I coord with home boss and work boss to be gone… Once again I attempt to conduct near coord the day before the roadtrip and he is nowhere to be found. I contact track and grovel with apologies for letting them down again. Once again, no apology from shop. Work boss and home boss getting irked.
Early Jan we coord a pickup in time for me to to do another instructor gig at a track day. A couple days prior to pickup I make near coordination to confirm and he’s f**king AWOL again. I’ve now had to cancel an instructor commitment 3X. What kind of asshole cancels commitments 3X? Well, it’s me. And I feel lower then whaleshit about it. Wife, boss, tracks and event organizers are now all pissed at me. And for good reason, I’m totally yanking them around.
Shop makes no attempt to apologize for this 3rd iteration. But, I’ve now been given more info about my car. Thanks to numerous attempts to find out what is going on I find out that my car is a “monster”. WTF is going on with my car?
Alex says that if I just leave him alone the car will be ready shortly.
Mid Jan we coord a pickup in time for me to do another instructor gig at a track day… Another near coord failure. He’s disappeared again. My work boss is irked, my subordinates are irked and my wife is f**king furious about being yanked around so much. I’m not too happy either.
3rd week of Jan I put a post in the forum that alludes to the problem. Damion now involves himself. For the very first time, thanks to Damion, I really start finding out what is going on. Apparently the engine work is long done and the motor did very well on the dyno, and the rear camber issue resulted in my rear subframe needing to be replaced because it was bent. They dyno news was terrific. The fact that the car was done was terrific. The fact that he went ahead and replaced my rear subframe was less terrific because it wasn’t that big of an issue and I’d not planned on that significant additional expense. Odd that he’d embark on something so significant as a rear subframe replacement without even checking with me first. This would all turn out later to be untrue.
I tell shop that I’ll be there in 5 days (27Jan) to pick up the car. That is agreed to. I do all the coordinating, but then the night prior he tells me, “death in the family”, need to do 1Feb instead.
1Feb I drive 4.5hrs to the shop and no one is there. I spend all afternoon in front of his shop trying various ways to contact him and trying to figure out how I’m going get some control of the situation. I can see my car inside of the shop. As usual, he doesn’t answer any kind of attempt to contact him. To my surprise, I end up spending the night in Atlanta. Damn it’s cold.
2Feb He’s not at the shop in the morning, but looking into the shop I can see that there is now a light under my car, so he was there in the morning or late night. He’s sneaking around my stakeout. I spend 3-4hrs sitting in front of his shop. Then I headed up N and spent the day enjoying Robert Patton’s hospitality.
It’s cold as hell out, and I’d brought no cold weather clothing. Hell, I didn’t even have a toothbrush.
Alex texts me and tells me that he is in NC. Of course I know full well that he was at his shop that morning before I started my daily stakeout.
Wanting clarification on my rights in this ridiculous situation where I can see my car but can’t get it, I call the cops. A couple perfectly nice cops show up and we discuss the situation. They are sympathetic but it’s not entirely clear that it’s a criminal (vs. Civil) situation. They suggest that I could report the car as stolen.
My buddy and I go shooting that night at an area indoor range. I’d only brought the carry pistol and it’s been a long time since I’ve done this competitively, but I didn’t embarrass myself. Good accuracy, just slow.
The feeling of utter helplessness is getting to me. Alex texts me and tells me that he’s in NC working on a job. I tell him that he either meets me in the morning (4Feb, today) at 9am and gives me my car back, or I report the car stolen. He says that he will be there at 05 and my car will be ready.
Later that night he says, sorry, I won’t be there tomorrow after all, but that he’ll meet me at CMP with the car all finished. I decide that I can’t accept that answer, because no commitment has yet been kept.
4Feb I go to the shop in the morning, sit there a while and then go to the police station to report the car stolen. I feel like dogshit about what I’m doing, but I just can’t come up with any way to influence his behavior. I either involve the law or I round up a platoon of guys and we do a smash and grab. What the hell other alternative do I have?
Reporting the car stolen turned out to be a 3hr ordeal, because there is one person taking police reports for the entire county and she requires 2hrs per customer. That is not exaggeration. The police are also very unimpressed with the idea of a car that is neither registered nor tagged. The whole “but it’s a race car”, is lost on them. Fortunately I had it’s original PA registration.
I text “the guy”, after reporting the car stolen, and tell him that if he shows up with my car running perfectly at CMP, (his latest suggestion) by 0900 Friday I’ll cancel the stolen car report.
I then go back to the shop to pick up the trailer and take it home. I note now that all my race tires and wheels have been stolen from my tire rack. Lock was cut. My trailer was only supposed to be there a week, not 2 months.
To my shock the guy is at his shop.
I head into the shop for the inevitable confrontation. He’s been acting like such a whackjob, I’m a little concerned how this might go. I’ll go in very non-confrontational and do my best. I remove the pistol from my waistband and leave it in the truck. That way if he gets over-excited and starts swinging a torque wrench, I’ll be highly motivated to defuse the situation.
He is, as usual, dark and brooding. There is a car without front suspension, and an engine blocking my car from the exit. I ask him what I can do to help get me and my car “out of his hair”. He says all I need to do to get my car is leave him alone a bit. I can’t help but note that the guy is working on a lot of stuff, but he’s not doing anything about moving the car and engine that obstructs my car from leaving. So clearly I’m not a high priority.
I take a hard look at my engine and new rear subframe. I recognize the subframe from it’s scuffs, so the report of my “bent” subframe being replaced is apparently false. The motor’s sparkplugs are out and ignition system is dismantled. This looks to me like the motor hasn’t been touched since the 8Dec compression test, not a motor with a new ring/hone job and a good dyno report card. Near as I can tell, nothing was done. Not a damn thing. F**K me to tears. 2 months shot. 2 months of battling to get the slightest tidbits of info. 2 months of breaking instructor commitments, and 2 months of burning up patience at home and at work.
I head back out to my car to give Alex the time he’d asked for to clear the stuff blocking my car from rolling out of his shop. I hung out a couple hours in the parking lot and then notice that the trailer has a flat. I take it to a tire shop and then go back to “the shop”. Tire sidewall was deliberately punctured.
I went back to the shop. It’s 3PM and he still isn’t doing the slightest bit to move the obstructions preventing my car from being pushed out.
The feeling of being utterly helpless to gain control of this situation, or influence his behavior is galling. I could see where this is going to go. In the early evening he’s going to jump in his car and zoom away. And there I will be sitting in my car with my thumb up my butt. And I’ll be driving back to Savannah, having spent the better part of 4 days being dicked around sitting outside his shop.
I wrack my brains trying to come up with a way to settle the situation without creating a huge confrontation. And I just can’t. My choices seem to come down to roll over and take it up the ass, or go ahead and create the necessary confrontation. So I call the cops again and ask them to come visit because I was heading into a conflict and I thought that the cops being there would help everyone behave like adults. Cop showed up. Talked to us. Alex said “if I’d just leave him alone he could get it done”, “I’ve just been really busy”, and “it takes time to do it right”. I said that I wanted my car right now. The cop stood there with his arms folded as the guy moved the motor and blocking car with a forklift and then pushed my car out.
An hour later I was heading home thinking that it would be nice to change clothes after 4 days, that I was grateful to my wife’s Atlanta buddy for a place to sleep, and to Damion for his help and morale support.
Sitting in a car in a parking lot, hour after hour, day after day when it is 15deg out bites. Especially when you’re being a patsy.
So I paid for 1/2 of the work, but nothing was done. I’m taking the car to a local shop in the morning for a ring/hone job. I’m tempted to attempt to put in a junkyard motor, but I’ve already got $1300 into my head.
My race wheels and tires are gone. Who’s got Koenigs for sale? I really need 7-8 Koenigs. Alternately, I can move to a different wheel type and sell my 5 remaining Koenigs.
My Spec Exhaust remains outside of the shop. I’d be very very grateful if an Atlanta type could go by there in the next day or two and pick it up. Or I’ll be buying another.
