Ricky@Race-Tech

Hello Guys,

Sorry we don't use the forums now, we are just too busy.

If anybody has an issue please contact us on, Ricky@race-tech.net

I sent the OP a message by PM but didn't get a responce.

If anybody has an issue with any of our products please contact me via the website, above email or usual phone number.

Regards

Ricky

Hello Guys,

Sorry we don't use the forums now, we are just too busy.

If anybody has an issue please contact us on, Ricky@race-tech.net

I have spoken with the OP today on the phone, and he is coming to collect his parts this week, or we will post them out if he cannot make it.

If anybody has an issue with any of our products please contact me via the website, above email or usual phone number.

Regards

Ricky

The main tool you need is a balancing machine. Without this it simply cannot last, you wouldn't drive with unbalanced wheels so why drive with such a vital component like the turbo out of balance. we can balance it should you require. But our labor charge on the rest is small anyway.

Looking good again Mike.

They send a test signal down to the (joints/boosters) and measure the time it takes to get a response. IIRC, I asked a mate who does it a few years back.

that is so crazy how the cables are there so how do they kno which bit is broken/failing??

humans are so clever

Another 106 power steering set up ha! I don't supose when u have lines made up you could price a 2nd set? I have the pump sitting but nowhere local makes lines so it involves a lot of arsing around for me to measure and have them made.

We have 1 set of the shelf and 2-3 days would be needed to make another set up. PM me for info/price as to not mess Matts thread up.

Same. If your offering Matt

Ps great job. And the speed of the progress is mental

As above.

If the emanage was mapped on bigger injectors it would be leaner.

maybe this

your o2 sensor is what pulls/changes fueling at idle, your map sensor needs to see voltage and your TPS is on off.

but if the emanage was mapped on bigger injectors it'll be mega rich on idle with just your o2 sensor trying to pull it up.

Phil

Get the map checked/it mapped ASAP.

It might be running rich at idle but lean on boost.

Regards

Ricky

We have a jig for the press that supports the piston completely.

We charge £10 per pin plus postage.

Regards

Ricky

Sorry my mistake I thought it was the electrode that had failed and not the ceramic gauging by what was posted.

High EGT's can cause the electrode to go into a molten state and drop off into the cylinder if hot enough, however since it wasn't the electrode that had failed then that's irrelevent now.

Heat range 9's certainly wouldn't have been ideal I don't believe and should only be used when running exotic fuels and or nitrous, I believe Spuddy before had ran 440bhp on heat range 8's with no problems at all.

Saying the plugs look perfect can be quite misleading in some cases, that's not the actual condition of the plug. How does the insulator look, what colour is it? Is there any deposits on it? Is the nose pitted or blistered? Are the electrode/s discoloured or eroded? etc etc.

The condition of the combustion chamber looks like its wet in the pictures Matt posted, is there any signs of oil leakage from the valve stem seals or excessive clearence on the valve guides? Or is it just the way the picture comes across?

To say the rest of the plugs look perfect I have taken into account everything you mentioned, we didn't get a true "plug chop" as Matt had run the car for a while after the issue. But the plugs if anything looked a little on the cold side.

Matt was present, and gave the bores a quick "wipe" to remove any coolant drips fairly early, I'd have rather it been completely left untouched for pictures but never mind.

We have inspected the rest of the head. Valve stem seals look great for the amount of time the engine has been built. Guides are still in good shape (and bad ones were replaced at rebuild time IIRC)

As you pointed out earlier, you cannot really compare one engine to the next, cylinder pressure, fuel, timing and fueling all effect a plugs performance.

Back to EGT's.

High EGT's (exhaust gas temperatures) have no direct relationship with combustion temperature. Infact if anything are the direct opposite.

They were NGK,

We have used 100's without issues on various cars.

They were heat range 8.

The ceramic failed on 1 plug, the rest look perfect.

I have spoken at length with Matt about plug choice. At the end of the day this is a street car, that we have pushed further than any other. Without doubt, when on full boost a heat range 9 would be a better options. But this is certainly going to have its drawbacks as you have correctly pointed out at the end of your reply.

High EGT's and spark plug failures don't really go hand in hand. Generally high EGT's would be further from knock, which is what could cause a spark plug to fail.

However. The pistons and other 3 plugs tell a different story. And the ceramic still should fail. I've seen plugs with melted tips before and ceramics completely intact.

I don't believe the plugs were the problem, if thats what's being told I would want reassurance that all plugs were removed from the shelf (assuming they were supplied by Race-Tech in the first place).

It's not uncommon that an electrode from a spark plug falls off into the cylinder, however they don't "just fail", its usually down to an EGT issue, however the plugs would need to have their condition inspected.

What grade plugs were used?

Regarding which plugs to choose is quite irrelevant as it depends on the engines charcteristics, you also have to remember that a sacrifice has to be made, running a colder grade plug is fine for high speed running but may foul at lower speeds and vice versa.

Another tip is that plugs from HKS, Greddy/Trust etc are all just re-branded NGK, Denso components.

Why has no1 gone twin scroll

We use twinscroll as often as possible. Not many people with starlets want to try it. It'd certainly be very good though. We would make a kit, but sadly I doubt it would sell.

We have done it once in the past, but the owner has never completed the build I don't think.

As it stands our 400hp kit spools around 1000rpm's better than anything else we have tested.

You could have had the previous version much earlier as I emailed. Its only because we upgraded you to what was probably the third gen. Sorry to hear you haven't fitted it yet. But don't worry, all our turbo's have a warranty.

Don't like to hear this especially when I have one of his hybrid billet wheeled tdo4 still to fit to my car.
I have to agree though I wasnt impressed with the service
Bought the turbo last year for going to the nurburgring. Took over 7 weeks to recieve the turbo when I was quoted 2 weeks. Every week was a different excuse.
I am still to fit the turbo as I've just not had the time yet just hope when I do get it fitted it will be fine and produce the power Ricky says it will.

How is the kit doing? What outlet port on the turbo?

My kit took 6-7 months lol and never came with the outlet port on the turbo I had asked for although to be fair I never bothered asking why it didn't come with what I had asked for. Also reminds me I better contact my card company and cancel the chargeback, forgot about that lol.

We are working towards being able to stock all of our turbo kits etc. We have stock of a few kits now to reduce lead times. However custom kits take time to make up, and we are generally very busy.

When collecting the car we had the boot open and went through the parts in it? It looks like rusty rain water in the boot from the pictures. Oil floats ontop of water, the 2 don't mix. It looks like your pliers are whats caused the rust, and the water looks to have been there a while.

Remember, when the car came to us, it had absolutely no coolant at all in it. So the rad was completely empty. It certainly wouldn't have put what looks like a litre of water in your boot?

right well I was going to leave it at that however your last comment in my opinion tells the whole story about your service

"some oil in the boot (that was stripped out and already scratched)"

what your basically saying there is that because you have a low opinion of my car it means that you have not given it the respect that it should have had.

also I obviously did not think to check make sure that the parts where there I expected them to be as you would from a reputable tuner. and if I had noticed that there was a puddle of brown sludge in the back of my car I would have mentioned it.

its not just the oil in the boot or the pricing its the whole service I have received. I have been spoke to like a chimp (when I was spoke to), my car has been treat like it was scrap, and the workmanship in my opinion did not match the price tag!

I've just had a look at the first pictures. You are aware that the seals on your boot leak, and the water isn't from the radiator or anything we/you put in there to take home.

If you leave the car out in the rain for any length of time it fills with water. Out of interest when did you take the picture?

I don't agree with what you are saying however like I said I don't want this thread to be an argument so we will just leave it at that and agree to disagree.

I still haven't received any messages from yourself as I stated in previous posts if you would like to post the items you have my address and when I receive them I will update this thread accordingly.

Jordan.

I'll call/text you when I'm at work.

He wasn't charged him for running in and mapping. Jordan couldn't afford it, so he didn't pay and and collected the car without the turbo kit. Please learn to read or don't have an input. I have better things to do like look after my children than read rubbish on here.

And it's not even mapped or running which he paid for all the work to be done and come out working, I wouldn't have paid him, that's all you here about is his bad service and he sounds a complete twat! He should be ashamed of some of the stuff he does and robs young boys of all that hard earned cash

We supplied a quote and stuck to it. As soon as we stripped the engine we emailed Jordan. I know he read this as he replied!

The costs was too much. It included things like a new manifolds, (the old one was cracked and IMO beyond economical repair) Obviously these added a lot to the price, but there is no way I would have known the car would have a cracked manifold when it arrived.

The car had also been so hot we had to deck the block, skim 0.75mm from the head! realign the cam journals, a couple of new valve seats, recut all valves etc etc. This is where the rest of the money was. Again, this was all quoted, by email before any work was done (apart from stripping to find out the extent of the damage)

im not taking side but infairness ricky your a pro tuner no ????? u should know by now how much it cost to forge a block to do the job etc etc

ive bean it the turbo modifying scene for 15 years and i know exactly how much it ruffly costs for doing stuff to rides !!!!! so giving a real close quote aint that hard ( within 300 )

i might of read it wrong in the 1st post but did you not give him a quote ????? for the job ????? iff so its not the customers problem but urs if u didnt price the quote right

mind the last bit im not sure how i read it

Have you read the thread? The complaint is about some oil in the boot (that is stripped out and was already scratched), nothing was spilt before Jordan left with the car, and he knew exactly where the parts were, Had he arrived in a van, he could have put the bits in the van and drove away. But I suppose it would be our fault if it spilt into his van as well.

What a joke.

Hope you get your car fixed up soon pal.

As you mentioned I rang you in November to tell you I didn't have the money and assured you I would have it after the new year as soon as Christmas new year etc was out the way I rang you at the start of January and told you I now had the money ( 2 months where I didn't have the money as I mentioned).

so basically you had the car for 6 months instead of 8 weeks.

I mentioned that the car was ridiculously hot in my feedback so there was no confusion about it however what parts did you replace to make my bill go higher as from what I can remember I brought various sensors and a cambelt cover to you and the dizzy cap wasn't replaced and neither were the HT leads? also I didn't complain about the rocker cover not been on the car properly as that was my choice.

The time it took me to collect my car after you said it was finished was not 3 weeks it was 2 and you have got to appreciate the fact the I had to work it around work commitments and also the person picking it ups schedule and like I said it was 2 weeks not 8 months.

as for the missing parts they wernet in the boot as the picture shows there was only brown sludge in there. im assuming the rocker cover gasket you forgot about because the old rocker was placed on the car not quite fitted ( easy mistake to make) the exhaust gasket because the exhaust wasn't fitted centre caps I honestly don't have a clue where they have went maybe they wernet on the car when I brought it down im sure they where but say they wernet for arguments sake as I can see you would have no reason to take them off.

but the oil filter missing and the old one been left on the car? whats going on there surely you had this engine apart? why wasn't it rtemoved then? you have just said yourself the state the engine was in why didn't you take this off then it would have been pretty hard to forget.

I havenet received any texts or pm's from you in the last week and still havenet got anything right this minuite so I don't know who you have sent that text to and as for the pictures you sent me three on whatsapp

oil pump

block

oil pump on the block

also you still haven't addressed the brown sludge that was in my boot I find it a bit bad that you would take 3500 off a customer and let them take there car away with all that crap in the boot and all the parts still in the workshop

We waited longer than the 2 months in total for your decision making, and we cannot at the drop of a hat start working on your car as soon as you call to say you have the cash.

You also ordered a turbo kit and canceled in the meantime, along with other things.

It seems you have 2 points when we cut to it.

Oil filter. As said, it wasn't fitted the car as we have no reason to attempt to start it. We left the old filter on to save the threads while installing the engine, but after bolting the engine in we left it as that's what you instructed us to do. I can send you a rocker gasket, ex manifold gasket and oil filter no problem, and i've said I will. I text you about it but didn't get a reply.

It is more common than you would think. To be fair to the customers. The are often nasty surprises. But they are 20 year old cars with varying levels of maintenance. Very few customers have a contingency. We rarely/never ask for any money at all upfront. But think this needs to change.

Obviously it is in our interest to do the job as quickly as possible or we don't get paid.

Hello,

I'm sorry if I offended you, I have 100's of people contact me each week, with varying levels of understanding. I obviously teach some people to suck eggs, and still speak a foreign langauge to others.

I spoke to Ricky about mapping my car, and he also seemed that he thought I was a chimp too, and he came across very arrogant. So I left it in the end. I wasn't going to let other people's opinion and previous experience make it seem like it's a dump hole. I mean look at socks car is a very respectable examples of what they can do. But now after seeing this I don't think I will bother with them. I hope that other people read through this properly and not just look at the pictures and just comment from what they see.
Will.

Hello,

As you know when you arrived the engine wasn't in the best of conditions. I have never seen an engine so hot and still running!

This obviously caused other damage and made more parts need replacing which made your bill higher.

There were also other obvious faults.

Cracked manifold/poor turbo kit etc.

After the price was slightly higher you said to me "I haven't really got the money yet, so there is no rush". I waited a couple of weeks. Called you and you said similar. This was November. In the new year you said you had the cash for the engine but not the rest of the work so you said you would collect the car with just the forged engine.

We did this and called you in February. We then waited around 3 weeks for you to collect the car.

We put the parts in your car the day before you were supposed to collect it the first time, on your instruction (but all the other parts in the boot) I'm not sure what where else we could put them?

I sent you various pictures through on "whatsapp"

The pricing was sent upfront, which is how you knew you couldn't afford it. At various stages you asked (how much is my bill now, this is a pretty much impossible question) until the agreed amount of work is completed.

I didn't mean to offend you. I always try to speak to customers in layman's terms. If I was teaching you to suck eggs you should have said.

We couldn't fill the car with oil (no oil return), we didn't refit the rocker cover because of the state it was in, we just sealed the engine. A new oil filter would have been used before startup should we have finished the job, (we use 3-4 oil filters during running in)

I tried to call you last week, I also sent you a text.

While the car was with us you came and swapped the wheels and ECU. We never removed the rear wheels from the car.

I'll write out the text here.

"Hello, I made up an oil line, but we have since found your old one, it was infact 300mm long not 250mm like the one we have made you. However now we have found your old one we will send that. Please note though it looks somewhat damaged and twisted. Maybe due to the heat?"

I will also send you a PM now regarding another car.

I wasnt going to do this for the simple fact that I dont like bad mouthing people and cant be bothered with the hassle that it brings but if I had read about the experience I have had before I sent my car there I wouldnt have took it.

Basicaly I did my head gasket in doing a track day and instead of fixing it I decided I was going to go forged so I rang two companys one of which been race-tech and the other been another reputable tuner. Race-tech qouted me 8 weeks aposed the the 10 that the other quoted so i decided to go with race-tech. I drove the car down there in the state that it was in (obviously making it worse) and left it with him.

Cut the story short the car was with him for 8 months (2 of which was my own doing as i couldnt pay for the car) instead of 8 weeks like he quoted me. I obviously know that the time he quoted me to do the car wouldnt be exact but if you take away the 2 months I couldnt pay for the car that is triple the time he said.

Whenever I tried to get hold of Race-tech he would not answer the phone or reply to my messages and whenever he did speak to me it would be to tell me that one of my existing parts is broken or not good enough making the bill go higher yet other people i spoke to seemed to think these patts were fine. I found it quite hard to get prices off him (as though he did not want me to know how much it cost until the end) and i also thought he was quite arrogant and spoke to me as though I was a chimp. In the end it got to the point where I asked to get my car back not running and finish it myself as the bill was going to be to large if he was to do it meaning the car now has no warranty or guarantee etc.

I also asked him to take as many pictures as he could of the rebuild so I had a bit more proof that my engine was forged and as you can imagine because after 8 months I wanted to see how my car was doing. He told me he took loads but the only ones that I received from him were a picture of the bare block an oil pump and an oil pump on the block. I appreciate that he is a tuner and not a photographer but when he said loads I assumed more and better than them.
When I got the car back there was a puddle of brown sludge in the boot where he had thrown my radiator and various other parts in the boot carelessly as shown below.





Due to this been in the boot of the car for so long my bride seats and various other interior parts have now gone mouldy and the car stinks.

I was missing the centre section part of my exhaust and radiator brackets which i had to take the 4 hour round trip to collect and am still missing 2 centre caps a rocker cover gasket an exhaust manifold to head gasket and an oil feed for my turbo possibly more yet and he has left my old oil filter on the car bearing in mind that when I got there the car was so hot that the ht leads had melted in half the dizzy cap, cambelt cover and various other plastic parts had melted off like they where chewing gum.

We arranged three weeks ago to have the missing oil feed and various other parts delivered and I have tried contacting him for the past 3 weeks to speak about the other missing parts however he is not replying to me as usual.

Basically the service I received from him was in my opinion the worst service I have ever received from any company ever and would not wish it upon anyone. The workmanship isn't great neither like i said the engine has the skanky old oil filter on it the guys meant to be one of the best tuners around what's all that about? Various other parts of the build make me question how long this engine is actually going to last for!

There's probably loads that I have missed out or forgot about but i hope this gives people an insight of what you could be letting yourself in for and its not just me who has been treat like this neither a good friend of mine has also been treat the same way however I don't want to mention his name in case he doesn't want me to.

Please don't jump on the band wagon or do the opposite commenting on this post slating him or saying he's great I haven't wrote this for an argument I've wrote it to warn people. You might be treat differently I don't know I'm just telling my story if anyone would like to talk to me about it please pm me don't put it on here.

Thanks,
Jordan

We have an injector flow tester and cleaner, providing stock are ok, they are fine at 230hp. You will need an uprated fuel pump though.

Hello,

What is the spec of the engine/turbo?

Turbo's cannot "spin" bearings, this is a terminology used for shells in the engine.

So last night i thought ill take the starlet out a run as she has been sat in the garage a good few months, thought it would do her good to stretch off.

Went through the usual warm up procedure etc checked all fluids all clean topped up etc etc and then moved off out the garage onto the roads, for the first time in a while.

Had a bit of steam coming from the exhaust and i had put this down to condensation build up due to being sat for so long, but that was last night and all today i have been driving it and even putting some proper boost through it and it clears for a bit once i do that as if i have blown it out but then starts again after normall driving. So surely it cant be condensation

Now some of you will know i had a similar problem when i changed my turbo last time and it turned out i had spun the bearing in the turbo, surely not again, car was ran at 1.3 bar and is smoking white puffs when cruising and declaration on idle slightly and when i finally come to a stop at lights a second will go by then puff again.

Spoke to Mike @ Td today and he said he would honestly not worry about it as the car is running perfect was missing at over a bar of boost early this morning but it has cleared after a few miles. the car is driving perfectly as mentioned before but i cant have smoke coming from the back of it, i know mike knows his stuff but its hard to explain to someone who is on the phone tbh.

It is definetly not right anyway, checked the water,oil,under oil cap, in the exhaust for obvious signs, it was actually worse when i started it this morning as opposed to last night, mike said dropping the decat down probs wouldnt show anything up really

I understand it is winter, its a decatted car with a 2.5" system but its not a normal amount of smoke really, smells of general carbon/suity exhaust smell but not fuel

Any help with this would be appreciated as its frying my head and cant be condensation as it just will not clear

Cheers ! Chris

I beg to differ. The fuel in the tank might be cooler, but the fuel going into the engine wouldn't be as it would be sat in the rail until used.

If the return line isn't big enough then the min base pressure will be higher.

I wouldn't worry about the size of the return line. I would dead head the fuel rail as well personally, meaning put the fpr on the pressure side as this keeps the fuel cooler and keeps octane high.

We were back yesterday. Sent you a PM.