Well, I've been promising to write a full review of my experience at Peter Farrell Supercars in Frederick since I had my turbocharger and BBK installed there. Those who have been following my build thread know I've had some issues with the installation and tuning. I have the car back now, I've paid PFS in full, and the car is running, so obviously my experience wasn't completely catastrophic. I wrote a long long review before I decided to just sum up the experience with some bullets. If anybody wants the full gritty details hit me up at a meet and I'll chat then.

For my part I provided a detailed two page document with the parts that needed to be installed, items that had been worked on already, and FAQs about things like the MAF setup and ignition dwell settings. I responded immediately to any questions they had, and stayed calm and respectful even after nearly 2 months without my car. I'm not trying to sway anybody, just providing some information about my experience to let you make your own judgement.

PFS:

• Told me they could tune the Cobb AccessPORT with no problems. Ray from PFS had minimal experience with the RaceTuner Beta software and did not know the details of tuning the RX-8 with the AccessPORT. I was not informed of this until he had been tuning the car for two days on the dyno.
• Told me they would install a new Walbro 255 lph fuel pump. Did not install the fuel pump, but told me they did, until Jeff checked and saw it was not installed. Ray felt bad about the mixup and handed me the proper fuel pump for free when I left. Fuel pump is still not installed.
• Told me they would paint my rear calipers black to match the Racing Brake front calipers. Did not paint my rear calipers.
• Incorrectly installed the upgraded fuel injectors, cross wiring the P2s causing serious issues during tuning that required the upper intake manifold to be removed and the injectors properly wired.
• Installed the wrong intake despite explicit written instructions, face-to-face instructions, and multiple reminders. Removed the wrong intake and installed the correct one incorrectly. They did not include the screens in the intake piping, and removed the waterproof intake sock. The combination of issues with the intake piping made the car impossible to tune, despite MazdaManiac trying for a combined 19+ hours.
• Cracked one of the snap rings on one of the wheels when installing the brakes causing a ticking rubbing sound and wheel vibration. Did not check the clearances of the wheel weights causing one of the wheels to rub against the new calipers.
• The battery went dead over the course of 2 months and needed to be replaced at my expense.
• Incorrectly wired the water/methanol controller, requiring it to be rewired during the tuning runs.
• Kept the car long over its estimated completion time while rarely returning calls, sending pictures, or giving progress updates.
• Charged me full price for everything including shop supplies and the gas the car used on the dyno.

Now, in all fairness, Ray was pretty straightforward with me when I spoke to him directly. Most of the communication issues arose between the customer service rep and the technician doing the work. Ray also stayed late on several nights to work on the car and try to get it out the door. He even stayed late the final night I picked the car up despite a dinner date with his wife so that Jeff could finish tuning the car enough so that I could take it. Ray also did his best to resolve the issues that came up, fixing the methanol wiring, helping rewire the injectors, and giving me a fuel pump for free.

My personal feeling is that Ray is a good guy and very knowledgable about rotary engines, although much more comfortable with the RX-7s. I was overall satisfied with his efforts to help get my car out the door. The truth is though that a shop isn't just a single person, even the owner. There are too many people at Peter Farrell Supercars who are willing to cut corners, or don't know what they are doing well enough to be doing it on their own. Ray's team are nice guys, but they are simply not at the level they need to be, and its not fair to the customer to wait for 40 cars on backlog while Ray gets around to each and every car. The main customer service guy at PFS, Sam, is also a nice guy, but I think he is far too willing to tell the customer what they want to hear, not give them the truth, or follow up on the things he has told them to make sure they are actually being done. This ends up backfiring because the customer ends up more frustrated about feeling lied to than if they had just been told up front about any problems.

I had a long talk with Ray before I left and he confided that PFS is going to be changing their business model quite a bit soon, focusing more on traditional repair and maintenance with a small side business of performance cars. I think this will be a really good move for the company as Ray can continue using his knowledge to help performance enthusiasts in the area and his technicians can focus on learning the trade over time between oil changes and brake jobs.

My experience wasn't altogether terrible, as the installation job they did for the turbocharger was actually quite good sans the issues with the intake and injectors etc. Also keep in mind that some of the issues they ran into were somewhat forgivable as they are unaccustomed to MAF tuning so they were not as sensative to the needs of the MAF piping. The injectors are also difficult because Mazda made the brilliant decision to color multiple of the wires blue/black making a swap unfortunately easy. I totally understand the constraints they were working with, and appreciate all of the work they did do. That being said, if I had to do it over again, I would find a friend with a garage and do the installation myself. I found often during the build that I was both the most educated person on the details, and the most concerned about getting it right. In the end you will always find that nobody else cares as much about your car as you do.

 

Amen to that!

So the car is running alright now or do you still have some "tweaking" to do?

 

very balanced write up Blackend .

how did they manage to put the wrong intake on ? They had a choice ?

 

The boxes when packed up had the GReddy intake cone in them, because I didn't know if there was anything else with that pipe they needed at all, so I brought it along. I talked to Sam and Ray at length about the need for the AEM intake and included detailed instructions about how to set it up... I even sent pictures of other installations. Apparently the tech did not read the instructions and installed the GReddy one anyway. The car is running much better now Jon, but I do still need some tweaks to lean out the tune. I don't expect it to be too difficult now that the hard stuff is out of the way, and it seems to be responding massively better since I fixed the MAF setup.

 

The fact that they flat-out lied to you about about installing the Walbro pump, when in fact they did not, is completely, 100%, irrefutably unforegivable. That is plain stealing your money and lying about it. Makes them like every other hack shop that takes advantage of little old ladies on routine maintenance.

The injector thing is BS, too, because you just unplug the P2 injectors then there is NO WAY to mix them up because the P1's are still plugged in! I still don't get how people do this when swapping out the P2's.

Then the fact they still charged you, in full, and even for fuel used on the dyno- wtf? Seriously, I would be livid. After all that grip, wait, etc etc, they can't hack you a discount? Come on....

And the battery dieing is also their fault- they obviously let your car sit for over a month before it was even touched. They should have disconnected the battery. This stuff is just common sense.

The fact remains Ray is the boss and needs to be more in control of his monkey techs. The guy who lied about installing the fuel pump should be fired. If I was Ray he would be out of that shop before the door has a chance to hit him in the ***. Unacceptable.

It's good to see that you DID learn some valuable lessons here and can pass them onto others. Hopefully others will learn from this experience.

The best part about doing installs like this yourself is that if something goes wrong, you now know how to fix it yourself and how everything works.

 

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong... I was pretty goddamn pissed off when I was dealing with them, but I made the decision to just get the car and not make a big stink over it. I could have pressed Ray more and asked for a reduced fee or whatever, but I don't think he would have given it unless I took them to court. It just wasn't worth enough for me to go that route. I personally won't go back to the shop for work, and I wouldn't recommend them to anybody, but because Ray is changing the nature of the shop I don't think my satisfaction really matters in the grand scheme of things.

 

Glad you got everything sorted but I never understood shops that are run this way. I know somethings are unavoidable but I have over 30 employees and a managers job, is to manage. You review each project every day to make sure it is being done right. Not having the experience or know how is a whole other issue but if an agreement is made, you abide 100% by that agreement. I can't stand useless excuses.

It is so very hard to find people that stand behind both their service and their product. Can you imagine what the normal uneducated (automotive speaking) customer goes through?

 

I've run a company before too, and I know how tough it can be. Hell, I was so miserable doing it that I quit and decided to stay on the technical side of the fence for the rest of my professional life. On the other hand, I know that the only way to keep a strong reputation as a company is to take responsibility for things that aren't going right, and to take steps to make the customer happy. In a community as tiny as this one there isn't a lot that happens that won't get circulated around and play a part in other people's decisions. If I had found a thread like this while I was looking for a shop I know I wouldn't have made the choice to take my business there.

 

Yeah it is good for people like you to communicate their experiences. I have employees that screw up too but when they screw up important things you have to trim the fat and cut your losses. Some managers are scared to fire people or reprimand them but that is why shops should have a shop manager instead of an owner trying to manage when sometimes they just don't have it in them to be a manager. You have to lead by example.

 

amen to that !

 

Nice review. In the end, you are correct. The best install is the one you do yourself. But I understand that you do not have a garage. So a DIY install was impossible since the job would have taken a lot longer than just one day. Kudos to Mazdamaniac. I met him when he helped carbonrx8 with his turbo install 2 years ago. Truly a dedicated Renesis expert. He ought to open his own shop.

 

And now you know why us shade tree mechanics do what we do... LOL

Great write up and you are 1000% correct; if your going to do something big - DIY; or you will regret it.

The only work I pay for is stuff that I am too lazy to do; not stuff that I can't do.

 

wow i had no idea they're still in business

congrats on your turbo

 

Well, to clarify, I am definitely able to do the installation of the turbo myself, but I don't have a garage and didn't want to impose on the only friend I knew who had one I could use (which was also at the eastern shore!). I had good reasons for having the work done at PFS, it just didn't work out the way I expected. As far as knowledge, I was more familiar with what needed to be done than anybody at the shop.

There was simply lack of space to do the install myself. The main reason I went with a shop rather than installing it myself despite that though was that I had been told PFS could dyno tune the car with AccessPORT. By having the car baselined on the dyno NA, and having the shop do the turbo installation and tuning, if they had any issues on the dyno they would be liable for any failures related to the turbo installation.

Obviously it didn't work out like I planned, but I have the car now so alls well that ends well?

 

You mean Jeff's?

I have to say I was really impressed with Jeff. He literally stood in place at the dyno for 14 straight hours last Friday working trying to get the car to behave. Then he continued with street tuning for another 5+ hours the next Sunday. He didn't have any idea how much I was going to give him for all his work, and didn't press me on paying him at all. He basically said, "hey whatever you think is fair is cool." He really bailed me out of a tough spot and was enjoyable company while he was working on the car too, so I'm his #1 fan atm.

 

but hey good side is you have a monster of a car now ! are the injectors you got the one from mm ? dont they simply click in place after you take the old ones out ?

 

Yea, I give a lot of credit for Jeff coming and finishing up. It says a lot about ones character, I believe.

 

They are the 650cc ones from Jeff, and they are basically yellow injectors with the pencil caps removed to increase the flow and flow matched to each other. Yes, they just click in place, but that would imply PFS knows which injector locations are the P2s.

 

grats. now we need to setup a time for a steamy session for you to pop my turbo cherry!

 

Hi Aaron,
I'm sorry to hear about your disappointments, I would like to clear up a few things though.

-The injectors were correctly installed and wired. We pulled the intake manifold off to double check by back probing the harness at the ECU to verify everything was correctly installed. Jeff can vouch for this.


-The fuel pump was over looked. The cause being a break down in communication with my staff. You had supplied a used turbo kit, with an upgraded turbo package, but no fuel pump. This didn't seem odd because at your power level the stock pump is fine. I also didn't see a fuel pump on your estimate so we didn't install one. Now this is not to say you didn't speak to Sam about installing one, and I'm not trying to make an excuse. With that being said I don't want people to think were tried to rip you off, by saying we installed one, billing you as if we had installed one. The bottom line is you request to have one installed, it was never added to you estimate, so it was never installed. I felt bad about the mix up and handed you a fuel pump for free. There is a big ethical difference between not doing something and billing for something you didn't do, so I just wanted to be clear about this.

Your car did run behind schedule, but sometime things do not go as planned. When purchasing used parts/turbo kits there are going to be parts missing, or things that need to be repaired or upgraded. On top of that, the tuning on your car was a handful even for a RX-8 AP expert to tune. The MAF is very, very sensitive!

On a brighter note, some changes have already been put into action to address a few problems here, unfortunately a bit too late for you to experience. You were however great to deal with despite your frustrations, I wish you the best with your car.

If you would like any part the intake track refabricated to get a straighter flow through the MAF please let me know (no charge to you)

Sincerely,
Ray

 

Ray,

I appreciate the post, and I think you will agree I have been very fair in my review about the issues I experienced and my appreciation for the work that you put in despite the problems. The injectors were not correctly installed however, and when we took off the UIM Jeff did have to remove them and rewire them. The P2s were crosswired which was causing his scaling changes to fail.

The intake track wasn't right, as the MAF is very sensative and the screens, intake cone cover, and location of the coupler are needed to get a solid reading. I have already taken the bumper off and fixed the issue though, so I don't need to take you up on your offer, although I appreciate it. Honestly I wish we had just fixed the MAF setup last Friday as it would have saved us all a lot of time. As soon as I changed the MAF piping it started responding correctly to the tune, so we might have been out of there in plenty of time for you to make your dinner appointment.

The issue with the fuel pump, to clarify is that I was told the pump would be installed, then when I specifically asked about it over the phone I was told that it was installed. Then on Friday when I asked Sam he said that it had been installed and it hadn't been. That was a breakdown of communication between your staff which I understand. I never said you tried to bill me for the pump, and I do appreciate giving me the pump for free afterwards, but the bottom line is, I was told the pump would be installed, was installed, and it wasn't.

I tried very hard to be an ideal customer, having my parts organized, providing detailed instructions, and researching information when needed as well as keeping my cool even when I was frustrated with the lack of progress. I certainly hope that you are able to institute some changes at the shop, and I keenly understand the difficulty of running a shop when you are the only one with the high level of knowledge to carry many of these projects through from start to finish by yourself. I saw last Friday that you would only get a few minutes to yourself to work on something before you had to answer questions and help various technicians with the cars they were completing. I don't fault you for the effort, just the results... in the end my experience was not an overall positive one, and I simply cannot recommend the shop to other RX-8 owners in good conscience without giving some information on my experience.

I did get the car back however, and with the exception of the issues listed above the installation was professional and well done. Thanks again for posting.

 

That's good to know. Nice response.

 

If you are willing to make the drive, my garage is open to you anytime!

 

I appreciate it man, and I may take you up on that at some point.

 

Well I know who to knock off the list of garages for when I get my upgraded turbo.