BAD and UGLY: My tale of the GSM experience...

[1bad4dr]

Where to start? The beginning I suppose. lol Pull up a chair, have some popcorn and a drink.


Most all of you know about my first two motors. Yes, the weekend I got home from having my S/C installed 2 years ago, I had torched my motor. Some of you still doubt that it was my fault. Well, it was. In short, my A/F gauge lost its calibration (unknown to me at the time) and was reading 7.4 the entire ride home from SoCal to NM. My buddy (at the time) Randy was my shotgun and we pulled out the Innovate CD and looked at the trouble shooting guide. It basically said that the gauge had to be free air calibrated (Pull the O2 sensor out for 8+ hours). While reading we saw a highlighted section that said an "On the road" calibration "Could" be possible. We tried that 5 or six times with no luck. We decided at the time that the gauge was fine and that for some strange reason the ECU lost its tune. Anyway, we retuned the next from being home and got the A/F near the 11.1 mark. Two days later we decided to fine tune. By the way, the sled was running like a raped ape. haha We disconnected my A/F gauge and put my friends handheld a/f gauge. This is when we realized that the tune was fine from the beginning. lol A/F read 16.8. YIKES! We began dumping fuel back in. Once we were done, BOOM!

Second motor was the dealer. They did not clip one of the valves into the rockers. Got into SoCal on vacation and BOOM! No, the S/C was not installed at the time.

During the two motor episodes, I must say that GSM was very good to me. They covered many costs that they did not have to. Not saying that the shipping and communication was very good, cause it wasn't. Yup, first motor I got 2 left sided heads. New intake manifold came with no TB or Aux injector spacer. So yea, I did haveegistic issues. But again, Scott did not charge me for many parts or he charged me at cost! This was thankful in itself.

Fastforwarding... Scott and I obviously became friends and throughout times Scott did take care of me with misc. items that I wanted or needed. He did not have to, but he did.

Fastforward some more...

Comes Spring Festival 2008. This is where I began to have doubts. About a week or two before SF 2008, I coordinated with Scott on getting my car Direct Port tuned and to have my R&D 1/2 Shafts swapped with the production models (no retainer clips in the R&D set which allowed one of them to shift causing leakage). Told Scott that we would be in SoCal on Tuesday and needed the car back NLT Wednesday at Noon. Hell, I was on vacation with Maureen and wanted to go do some site seeing and visiting friends. Not too much to ask, right? lmao NOT! Tuesday comes and the car is in the shop and many things are going on. Scott is not there, but is available via cell phone. Scott tells the guys what needs to be done with my car and they are off. Now, Hal and Cindy are due in Wednesday and I got authority from Hal to use his car while mine is being worked on. Sweet. Thanks Hal!

Wednesday morning we discover that one of the 1/2 shaft cv boots is torn. UGH! Take that one out and I go to get it repaired. Of course it takes a couple hours. Upon my return in the early afternoon, nothing else has been done to my car. Come on now, one would think they would continue to perform the scheduled work? I begin to get fumed! Of course they never finish my car Wednesday and blame it on the torn cv boot. hmmm

Thursday was suppose to be the day that Maureen and I celebrate our 14th year of marriage, so we do, at GSM. Yes, Maureen is PISSED! But what can we do? lol Thursday morning, Scott is nowhere to be found and the guys are not really working on MY car! ****! We do, however, have a great lunch with Steve (SGTStanko), Hal and Cindy, and Jeff and his wife (From Mopar Supercenter). Finally, Scott shows up, my car is strapped to the dyno. Takes another hour for Scott to start tuning. UGH!

Tuning begins. WooHoo. Of course Scott is rushing it now and I am PISSED and have already exchanged some words with Scott. It's nearly 7:00pm. I noticed that Scott was NOT pulling the car past 5800 rpm or past 9psi (I run 12psi). Top end numbers are low, but below the curve is awesome 50 - 75 whp gain. Scott starts to rap things up. WTF? I am not happy, but I HAVE to get out of there before Maureen castrates me. Nice way to celebrate and anniversary. lol So I settle with that and make an agreement with Scott that he will finish my tune via email when I get home.

The car is definitely pulling harder. Oh yea, the extra fuel line (for the Aux injectors) and the Aux injector spacer were never removed. I had Scott send me the replacement TB to Aftercooler hose and did it myself.

Fastforward...
About four weeks ago I learned from Erik (Hemi31) that he was going to put in a S/C. Nice! I offered to send him my tune to give him and Mike a start on his tune. Ugh! A couple days later, Erik calls me and informs me that Mike had saw that my tune was running as a 1 bar map. YIKES! Erik also explained that many things within the tune were jacked up. ****! I ponder on this for another day or so and finally go to get a second opinion (sorry Mike, no offense man ) So, I send my tune to DynoSteve. Steve calls me the next day and asks me WHY my motor is still in one piece. lol I scratch my head and ask him why? Steve explains that it appears that my tune is done to a 1 bar map. Woops, guess Mike was dead on as well. Thanks buddy.

Sooooo, I get the part number for a two bar map from Erik, go to my dealer and order it. Two days later, I have my new sensor. I pull the old sensor and install the new one and all of the codes and limp mode issues I was having with Steve's tune went away. lol I then took the old 2 bar map sensor to my dealer and have the parts guy do a check on the part number that was on the old sensor (mind you the part number is on a sticky label). Parts guy can't find anything on that number but does state that since it started with a "P" it used to be an older Performance part number. hmmm I then notice another number under the labeled part number, so I pull the label off and what do I find? Yup, the SAME EXACT part number that was on my new sensor.

Great, now I am really confused and PISSED! I write Scott an email (just don't want to talk to him at this point) and explain to him what Mike and Steve found in my tune. Scott writes back and says that he LOCKS his tunes and that is why it appears to be a 1 bar map. I then reply and tell him about the two different part numbers. Scotts reply is that his sensor was a Performance part (yea, I gathered that already) and that Diablo folks looked at my tune and agreed it was a good tune. Which COULD use some changes. I then tell Scott that his map sensor is a two bar. Scott comes back that his sensor is a 3 bar map sensor scaled down to a 2 bar map.

So, I write back again and tell Scott he is missing the point. I told Scott that my NEW Map Sensor and GSM's map sensor are the SAME fricken sensor and what Scott did was scaled a 2 bar map down to a 1 bar map. ****!

A HUGE thanks goes out to Erik, Mike, and of course Steve for finding the bad tune and getting me back on track.

I would also like to APOLOGIZE to everyone for not sharing this sooner. I do have my reason, which I still can not talk about, but I do feel better now.

Thanks to the few of you who have talked to me and listened to my story over the phone. You guys are GREAT people and I value all of you as GREAT FRIENDS!

Cam, kiss my ass. lol Had to get that out of the way first. hehehe

Please feel free to ask questions if I you did not understand some portions of my story. Also, I did leave some legistical stuff out, but I wanted to give you guys the gist of the story and not bore you much more with those left out items. lol

Thanks for reading.

Ron

[Hemi31]

Glad I was able to help Ron.

[Cam]

Cam, kiss my ass.

[Trojan]

Nice Ron, Good news here is your running strong as ever! Sorry about your troubles, Kudos to Erik, Mike, Steve !!

[Super T]

So what, not like the MAP sensor needs to be accurate...

[Hillbilly]

Good to see you got things going the right direction Ron. You know, for me, this story just reafirms my interactions with GSM. It's like they don't want you to know what's really going on or are trying to hide things. I can not say I have had one pleasant interaction with them. Not trying to throw them under the bus intentionally but that's just the honest truth. One example that I just can't get over is a few years ago myself and another gentleman made arrangements to drive 8 hours to visit with Mike and discuss a distributorship investment. We get about 2 hours from the place and I call Mike to let him know where we are and he tells me he's not going to be there and to come back another day. WTH?!?!? You have 2 guys coming down to see you willing to plop down $300k to start to build some facilities from the ground up and you blow them off without even a phone call. We figure since we drove all that way already might as well drive over there. We caught Mike there luckily and cornered him into spending some time with us to answer some questions. He's reluctant to answer any pointed questions that an investor would like to have some information on and Scott is walking back and forth between offices and can't take the time to spend 5 mins to introduce himself to us (I had already met him some weeks before). WTH?!?!? We figure on the way home it was a lost cause but I still didn't give up and try to follow-up with phone calls to Mike. He basically tells me to go pound fudge. The way I'm looking at it is you have two gentlemen willing to lay down some serious change to start building facilities in 3 different locations that would greatly and directly expose your products to thousands of people first hand and this is how you treat the situation? We probably would have invested $1mill in the first year or two and been touching alot of places that they were not already doing so.

I unfortunately set this up before I found out about the track record they had. I guess we got lucky the way it worked out and didn't throw all that money down the drain. Afterwards I reluctantly made a couple of purchases to see how they would go and they failed miserably. To this day I am amazed they can continue to do business the way that they do.

Not to hijack the thread.....since that time I have made some other inquiries with other vendors looking to see if they would be interested in similar proposals. I swear they think they don't need any extra exposure or support. I either get....."show me what you got and then maybe we can talk" or I just get no more correspondence after the initial inquiries. We're just looking to do something fun, make some money at it, help people out and in the end make the vendor more money as well. If you got a legit businessman looking to make anywhere from a few hundred thou to who knows how much as an intial investment you'd think they would be more receptive and interested in persuing it more. Instead we get the "my sh!t don't stink attitude and who are you that I need to spend my time on response. My partner in now convinced that the majority of "car guys" that run businesses like this are not businessmen looking for growth and would basically be considered your backyard mechanic kind of guy. No offense to you backyard mechanic kind of guys as some of you know your sh!t.

Sorry for the rant but when GSM is mentioned this is the first thing that comes to mind. Again, Ron it's good to see you have people getting you going in the right direction instead of someone playing games with you. Some people just use you for as much money as they can get out of you with no long-term genuine interest in helping you out.

[Rollin on Dueces]

Man these stories on GSM gets crazier and crazier. Glad I have a v6 because I would have pissed alot of money away with them by now.

[MattRobertson]

Ron, I'm glad you got this worked out, buddy.

[1bad4dr]

Good to see you got things going the right direction Ron. You know, for me, this story just reafirms my interactions with GSM. It's like they don't want you to know what's really going on or are trying to hide things. I can not say I have had one pleasant interaction with them. Not trying to throw them under the bus intentionally but that's just the honest truth. One example that I just can't get over is a few years ago myself and another gentleman made arrangements to drive 8 hours to visit with Mike and discuss a distributorship investment. We get about 2 hours from the place and I call Mike to let him know where we are and he tells me he's not going to be there and to come back another day. WTH?!?!? You have 2 guys coming down to see you willing to plop down $300k to start to build some facilities from the ground up and you blow them off without even a phone call. We figure since we drove all that way already might as well drive over there. We caught Mike there luckily and cornered him into spending some time with us to answer some questions. He's reluctant to answer any pointed questions that an investor would like to have some information on and Scott is walking back and forth between offices and can't take the time to spend 5 mins to introduce himself to us (I had already met him some weeks before). WTH?!?!? We figure on the way home it was a lost cause but I still didn't give up and try to follow-up with phone calls to Mike. He basically tells me to go pound fudge. The way I'm looking at it is you have two gentlemen willing to lay down some serious change to start building facilities in 3 different locations that would greatly and directly expose your products to thousands of people first hand and this is how you treat the situation? We probably would have invested $1mill in the first year or two and been touching alot of places that they were not already doing so.

I unfortunately set this up before I found out about the track record they had. I guess we got lucky the way it worked out and didn't throw all that money down the drain. Afterwards I reluctantly made a couple of purchases to see how they would go and they failed miserably. To this day I am amazed they can continue to do business the way that they do.

Not to hijack the thread.....since that time I have made some other inquiries with other vendors looking to see if they would be interested in similar proposals. I swear they think they don't need any extra exposure or support. I either get....."show me what you got and then maybe we can talk" or I just get no more correspondence after the initial inquiries. We're just looking to do something fun, make some money at it, help people out and in the end make the vendor more money as well. If you got a legit businessman looking to make anywhere from a few hundred thou to who knows how much as an intial investment you'd think they would be more receptive and interested in persuing it more. Instead we get the "my sh!t don't stink attitude and who are you that I need to spend my time on response. My partner in now convinced that the majority of "car guys" that run businesses like this are not businessmen looking for growth and would basically be considered your backyard mechanic kind of guy. No offense to you backyard mechanic kind of guys as some of you know your sh!t.

Sorry for the rant but when GSM is mentioned this is the first thing that comes to mind. Again, Ron it's good to see you have people getting you going in the right direction instead of someone playing games with you. Some people just use you for as much money as they can get out of you with no long-term genuine interest in helping you out.

WTF? WOW!

We need to talk.

[CoolVanilla]

My partner in now convinced that the majority of "car guys" that run businesses like this are not businessmen looking for growth and would basically be considered your backyard mechanic kind of guy.

In my experience, that attitude prevails in this HEMI market almost exclusively. The occasional "big guy" that peers into our small pool just doesn't see the same potential that the great big ocean they're coming from, has.

Its a very small pond, we all swim in. Some of us puffer fish like to forget that, and hate being reminded otherwise. Hurts the ego, I guess.

Ron, very sorry to read all this. But also VERY glad to see you've come out of it relatively unscathed.

[Guest]

I'm sorry... I have watched your saga unfold from the beginning, and we have PM'ed about it a few times. I know that you tried giving Scott the benefit of the doubt for a very, very long time in hopes he would make everything right for you. It's a shame that throughout all of that you even befriended him and he still screwed you over repeatedly.

I am so amazed that LXForums continues to honor the vendor contract with these idiots. It's like giving the seal of approval for these guys to destroy people's cars.

I don't want to run off on a bash-fest here, everyone knows how I feel about Scott and about GSM, but I do wonder why they just don't make things right from the beginning? Or at least when they discover an issue, why they do not make things right after the fact?

This is all like a bad movie, and unfortunately Ron you have been caught up in it. You have spent more money on your modifications than MANY here have spent on their fully loaded brand new SRT8's (to give this some perspective) and you have had more issues than anyone I know. It's great to see the community (guys like Erik and Cam) stepping up to help out. Maybe they should buy GSM and then it could be turned around into an honest organization.

[CoolVanilla]

I am so amazed that LXForums continues to honor the vendor contract with these idiots. It's like giving the seal of approval for these guys to destroy people's cars.

I don't want to derail this thread. I also don't want to speak for Dave, the owner of this forum. But this deserves some kind of comment, so...

If I had to guess... GSM is still a vendor here because LXF simply cannot be in the business of qualifying vendors. There are a hundred reasons why that's the case, but quite simply the biggest is the resources required by such a task just are not there.

GSM continues to pay their dues. They continue to abide by the rules. Therefore, they're allowed to continue conducting business here. Its up to you guys, the members of these almost entirely self policed forums, to inform, warn and protect.

That's if I had to guess, you understand.

[Guest]

Gotcha. I won't add any further commentary, thanks for the reply.

[1bad4dr]

I'm sorry... I have watched your saga unfold from the beginning, and we have PM'ed about it a few times. I know that you tried giving Scott the benefit of the doubt for a very, very long time in hopes he would make everything right for you. It's a shame that throughout all of that you even befriended him and he still screwed you over repeatedly.

I am so amazed that LXForums continues to honor the vendor contract with these idiots. It's like giving the seal of approval for these guys to destroy people's cars.

I don't want to run off on a bash-fest here, everyone knows how I feel about Scott and about GSM, but I do wonder why they just don't make things right from the beginning? Or at least when they discover an issue, why they do not make things right after the fact?

This is all like a bad movie, and unfortunately Ron you have been caught up in it. You have spent more money on your modifications than MANY here have spent on their fully loaded brand new SRT8's (to give this some perspective) and you have had more issues than anyone I know. It's great to see the community (guys like Erik and Cam) stepping up to help out. Maybe they should buy GSM and then it could be turned around into an honest organization.

This means a GREAT deal to me Bandit. Thank you!

And yes, we have shared PM's. Unfortunately most were negative (on my part). For that I apologize to you! Glad you never took it to heart.

[Guest]

I knew what you were going through, and I knew why you were saying/not saying certain things at the time. I just thought it would be best for me not to post at the OC because of that. I'm too easily tempted to "go off" sometimes, especially where these guys are concerned.

No apology necessary, but appreciated all the same. You're a good guy who paid good money expecting quality, and unfortunately someone took advantage of that.