I must admit on that note,where i work we have alot of electrical and running faults.
Most of the time we get them right.We cant always justify the time we spend on cars and dont expect the customer to do so.
On some jobs i personally spend days checking wiring and i can only invoice 3-4 hours.Or about 250 quid inc vat.I should invoice about £600 a day per technician.
Where i think Claudio fails is no matter what the circumstances are he charges full wack.
All cars are different and i have made judgements to condem ecu's looms etc when its turned out to be something else.This error in judgement is paid for by us not the customer.

Thats the only way to gain good feedback and a good trust.

but i know of alot of people who swear by pt and have bad experiences at Pts and vice verser.

I was considering taking my car car to PT in the future, not now

Rich dont let this put you off,like i said despite my problems its still the best mod that i have done to the car.Smoother ,runs better,better on fuel,and has never missed a beat since.
Ring Claudio get a price (fixed) make sure the car is sound before you go and stick to the budget.
As far as these problems go the sun will never shine forever on anyone and perfect touch have had the coupe tuning market for some time.
Despite this you could have 100 happy customers but you always hear about the 101 st customer who had the problems.

its each to thier own at the end of the day.

I thought it would be wrong of me not to share my experience with them.

They had a chance (2months) to secure me as a loyal customer...they failed. Im now loyal to TnR.

Here I go with my 2p.

I use a different mapper for my coupe to PT so I have no experience of them and no firsthand knowledge of their practices.

The tuner I use does turn cars away without even putting them on the dyno. If he isn't satisfied they are safe to run then he will not run them. End of story. I have been there where an owner was f'ing and blinding about it but at the end of the day it is for the good of the owner.

But the reason that so many engines go bang is because the tuning takes priority over the maintenance or because the conventional stages of doing the tuning properly are missed. Basically don't run before you can walk and don't walk unless you know your legs aren't broken ?!

The compression test will show a weakness in a cylinder. You may not feel it on the road because the rings have a chamfer that forces them out and therefore improves the compression in effect. That isn't to say it isn't there. Our engine is renowned for not feeling this.

The owner of the car should do the compression & leak test IMHO not the mapper. Unless the mapper is being paid to do a healthcheck then he doesn't have a responsibility to do it. That said, the mapper has a requirement to do due dilligence that it is safe to perform the mapping on the car. If it is pissing oil then yes s/he shouldn't map it. If there is a drop it could easily be residue from a previously fixed problem.

Please let it be a lesson to all of us. Don't take your car for mapping unless you have just had a full service and validated the health of your setup. If you do that and the engine then dets on the rollers, blows x,y,z etc. then you have some recourse. Otherwise you pretty much do not
And don't take your car for mapping with a big f*** off turbo on it on std pistons - we all know they're not good for the power that turbo produces and arguably neither are stock rods. Follow the std stages of tune, they aren't there to sell anyones wares they are there to make sure you don't blow up your engine.


John

certainly hasnt put me off using them!

give me 3 months and my car will have the perfect touch treatment, again. lol

and i agree with johns ive just spent over 2k on my car binning anything that leaks and uprating as much as possible hoping that i can reach my desired power... reliably!

Good day for PT then!

Not.

What I'm not clear on out of all this (regardless of the ins and outs of this case) is what happens if you get a properly-built and serviced car and the tuner STILL blows it up? How do you set about proving whether the defect was existing or caused by the work? By the very nature of what's being done, you're asking various components to operate outside their designed stress levels. Yet it still might be the fault of the tuner.

The only company I've seen adequately address this is the guys that did the re-map on my smart roadster. They tested the car and then warranteed EVERYTHING as part of the job. It made the re-map expensive @ £600 but covered everyone's backside in case something failed.

I am amazed at this thread.

Unless PT went bonkers and revved your coupe for hours at 7000+ rpm or stuck the boost at 2 bar and went for a joyride in town, then I dont see how you can blame them. Anything can break at anytime, just because PT have it when it breaks does not make the instantly liable for an engine rebuild.

If you tune something there is a good chance it will break. If you dont want it to break, then dont tune it. You stuck a big turbo on your coupe and then your suprised when it breaks.

And like a few have commented on here, its your responsibility to check the condition of the engine before it goes onto a rolling road. If it blows up then its just bad luck, rebuild and try again.

just my two pennies worth.

Det would break a ringland and cause 100psi compression. If it was weak it wouldnt take much however.

Ross

I think he is saying that a fault developed whilst on the rollers that was obviouse and therefor pt are at fault by carrying on.

Clear as mud, not.

(I just) don't get modding, period.

When you enter a marathon, or even a fun run, does a doctor do a full medical on all the entrants? Nope, its up to the individual to satisfy themselves that they are fit to run. Unfortunately, as with the Great North Run, not all are capable, and there were some (heart)failures.

Lets look at the options...

1) PT assume your car is mechanically sound and hook it up to the rollers - if they find a problem, they will abort the run and tell you. If the problem is terminal or ends up breaking something, then how is this their fault?

2) PT INSIST on performing a full mechanical health check on every car before it goes on the rollers - this will add hundreds to your invoice.

If this was the case, there would be a thread on here saying how PT are robbing b4$t4rds because they insist on checking stuff that you know is OK.

Now we know why the likes of me have spent many thousands of pounds making sure EVERYTHING on the car can handle the power. When I went to Barbz just over a year ago, I had just cooked my 300bhp setup and killed the compression on two cylinders. I told Barbz I wanted 400bhp AND that I wanted to use it everyday, rain or shine, commuting and dragstrip. It needed to be a monster when I wanted it to and a cruiser when I needed. It was an immensely tall order, but Barbz listened and told me what I needed to do. I bit the bullet, followed his advice and spent four grand on building an engine that would last and last.

I've now done 35,000 miles running 1.6 bar for most of them (I rarely run anything other than Channel4 on the blitz). Its returned as little as 8mpg on track and as many as 36mpg on the road. Its still tractable and its still quiet (when I choose) The only ill-effect for a year's VERY high performance motoriing is a noisy ticking tappet - soon to be replaced by Motormech.

As JohnS has said, simply whacking a big turbo onto totally stock internals is going to make something fail fairly soon.

And finally, I repeat what I said much earlier - there is EVERY chance that the compression was already down on the one cylinder BEFORE the car went to PT. The Coupe, like many cars, is designed to push the compression rings against the cylinder walls when under power. I could hardly notice ANY ill-effects on my car, and by all accounts, it was at least twice as bad as K35t3r's car.

There will be a simple result to this thread

PT will soon be asking all customers to sign a disclaimer, saying that their car is capable of being run on the rollers - its NOT down to PT to use their X-Ray vision to determine whether your engine is up to the strain.

If you are unwilling to state that your car is in good health, you won't run. Simple.

My coupe runs also a gt2871rs, and it broke down also in the rollers after giving 380 or so horses...I dont know if you have standard internals, but if so, they are way too weak for the power our turbos produce, but of course several run a lot of boost with std internals and have gotten away with it for a while now...

The only problem is that PT's assumption has caused a major problem here Nigel. If they werent charging for the service then you cant blame them. But aren't they £110 per hour? That kinda premium expects a certain level of service. The same way you pay barbz £4k for an engine.

Ross

I'd happily agree that the car could have been knackered before it went on the the rollers. My first coupe ran a novitec and 1.6 bar (sigh) transient spikes of overboost, which eventually cooked no.5 piston. It managed a 14.2 sec 1/4 mile before the damage and... hey presto it managed a 14.2 with low compression (the symptoms of which I didn't recognise until a while afterwards). The only thing I noticed was the way the engine didn't burst into life so enthusiastically when starting (either hot or cold).

Going back some time before that, Sl0ggs' car had low compression on 1 or even 2 cylinders just before out Power Engineering dyno day and he hadn't noticed, in fact, the operator had to do one run before he twigged something was up.

completely agree same thing happened to me and it was civic that pointed it out (sluggish starting)

Errrrm.....now im worried...When you say sluggish starting do you mean it turns over for longer than usual.........
Or slow to turn over.

I think it means when the engine starts, it takes a while from the catch to actually full idle?

Ross

Thats okay then,mine just turns over longer some times,but its due for some new plugs and a service

I think we should all keep in mind that PT have mapped a good few cars on here (including my own) with pretty much no problems. The only other cars associated with them that have gone bang that I can think of are Kenno's (aux belt failure) and yellow_coop's (which looks like it was a dodgy rod) i.e. nothing to do with their mapping. I would say that the weight of evidence suggests that they are very good mappers indeed.

Regarding their customer service ... Rob revised my map for me free-of-charge when I had a problem with a boost leak - so I would have nothing but praise for them on that front ... although they can be a little slow on the old email

Having said that, best of luck to the chap with the broken coop.

Mine took longer to catch than normal turned out piston 4 was cracked.

Ok when you say longer to catch, what do you mean? Getting worried here as mine always starts fine but then hunts for revs and sometimes dies...a bit of gas for couple secs and all is normal...only on startup :|

BIG turbo + standard internals = PROBLEMS.

I've been there and I've also lost count of the number of pistons Barbz broke and replaced on his coupe. The ring lands will be damaged and either it was in a mess before going on the RR or that was the straw that broke the camels back. Doesn't soound like it was run hard at all on the RR.

End of the day its up to the owner to prove the car was A1 (ie supply comp tests etc b4 running it) and prove the damage only happened during the RR.

Going from what I've read and using personal experience take it as a lesson learnt. Trailer the car to Rog and get him to strip it down. Might be lucky, might just be a damaged ringland and no cylinder damage. Fit a set of forged rods and do all the auxileries correctly.

You are going to be hard pushed to get PT to admit liability and get anything back from them, but they shouldn't have charged you and I def wouldn't have paid.

BTW is the car still running standard injectors?

or they will refuse to map coops! theres a company down by me who wont even let a coop on its rollers to do a power run as it went through a simular scenario as this!

im hoping to put a gt28rs on mine and run std internals, i ran std internals last time around! im not aiming for silly power i'll be happy with whatever rob can get out of my car reliably! i have spoken to many people on here about my plans etc and all have said that what im doing should be reliable and quick.

first thing i did when i got back from picking the car up was to comp test it as if the engine was dead then i would have binned it for the money i paid for the car! the results were consistent accross the cylinders! whick was 10.5 bar iirc which i more than happy with.

Goose - compression tests don't tell the whole story. I've got a smokey car (it's not the turbo) and have 155-160psi accross all cylinders.

well the turbo i took off was mint no smoke and no play and i get no smoke!

to be honest i think this engine is in better nick than my red one was!

and most of the bay is stripped out with everything being renewed and at the same time!

im being optamistic here kenno shhh! lol

In my opinion perfect touch have blew your car up on the rollers and there behavior afterwards is very suspicious to say the least, if I were you I wouldn’t pay them a penny and I would consult my solicitor, again I agree with the others there is no way if one of your cylinders was at 100 psi you car would have produced 347 bhp, I have seen a coop with 120 psi on one cylinder and the car drove like shit, sounded like a subaru and went from 270 hp to about 150 hp, so if you have the graphs to prove that you had 347bhp before they started messing around with it, an independent expert will be able to clarify this which should mean a court ruling would go in your favor, another point is it’s most defiantly up to installer to see if the car they are mapping is in good enough condition to accept the map ,they are the professionals and they are not doing the mapping service for free, they have supposadly had the training, experience and are insured, you have not had the training or experience so how would you know what to even check for? imho it is ridiculous to suggest that you should check your own car to see if it’s ok for mapping, this is why you take your car to the professionals and pay your money which in most cases works just fine although after reading about the events today this depends were you take it.

JBT - just do the oil filler cap test (undo it with the engine running) - if it puffs, you have problems.

As for the starting, instead of it going 'chur chur chur chur BRMMMMM' it went 'chut chur cheeeeeee chur BRMMMM' - obviously where one piston had low compression.

A point I'd like to make that no-one seems to have picked up on. It seems everyone is of the assumpton that PT didn't really 'stress' the car with only ONE full throttle run and a few low power runs. This is because Rob has stated he backed off on the full throttle run at 5000rpm. Now without running say 1.5bar+, you will not get 347bhp at 5000rpm.

Either the car was redlined(if it had been, this was probably more than once)at a lower boost setting hence the 347bhp headline figure or it was running silly boost to produce the 347bhp at 5000rpm. The latter seems more unlikely as surely PT should know better than this! Even then it is almost impossibleto produce that power at that rpm level.

So it could be that the car WAS redlined and THEN it went pop. PT didn't want to give the graph as it shows exactly what rpm level it was taken to. To say you can't give 'incorrect' graphs isn't true as I have a graph of my car genuinely having to be stopped at around 5000rpm during a mapping session due to a leaking wastegate. I still asked for a graph and got it.