I went perfect touch today and I haven't got good news. Oil spilled everywhere and on a compression test one of the cylinders was down to 100. I took the car in perfectly fine. Yet perfect touch say it is my fault. The car prduced up to 347bhp during their runs which rob told me yet he says the fault lies with the car. How does a faulty car make up to 347bhp with one cylinder down. They refuse to give me a graph of diagnostics for my runs. Yet I have paid. Rob says when the car came in he saw oil on the sip. On hearing this I said why didn't you mention this and why did you run the car? No answer. He said the car was producing lots of smoke on the first run he did. I said why didn't you stop what you were doing? Why didn't you tell me? Why did you carryon? He has no answer to this. I say if you think a car isn't running well enough you would not push it. And I think who is working on the car should let the owner know. Yet he did none of this. Perfect touch are trying not to take the blame and putting it on me. I have asked for graphs and I got nothing. All I get is the car was doing this or leaking that.. yet if the car was such in a bad state why proceed to map it. They also had a new software installed and one of the engineers was there watching the run and I think my car was also used as a guinea pig to test their new toy. I have left the car there and I am here seeking advice. Is the blame with me or perfect touch? On replies I will be contacting my insurance seeking legal advise. Also while I was there none of them would start the car. Yet about half an hour ago Claudio called to say my car was running (On 4 cylinders as when rob done the test it was 100 175 160 165 175. So now he wants me to take the car away running with one cylinder down which wasnt the case when I brought it in. Also before he called to say the car is running he threatened to call the police if I do not remove my car which I said he should and he has failed to do so. On earlier talks with my mum at around 4 sumthing he told her the turbo Im running is to big for the car gt2871r on which she said why did you still run the car and he had no answer. The reason behind all the excuses that have no weight is that the car was fine when I brought it in and the problem lies with who was mapping the car. I think he pushed it to far or his mind was somewhere else and he wasn't watching everthing or what ever happened in the mapping room(as they shut the door and no one goes in) was not my fault. And I dont think I should pay about a grand or more for something that could have been avoided.

I think you need to establish whether or not you can prove it was running ok before you went in.

You have done the smartest thing by leaving the car there. If you'd taken it away they would have claimed that everything was working when it left there. Now there isnt anything else thats happened after they have mapped it. Personally if they said they noticed oil before working on the car then they proceeded, they have set themselves up for a fall. That is going on the info u have given btw.

They cannot charge what they do, then take no responsibility. U pay the money for them to do the job right.

Ross

p.s. the police will do nuthing. Its a civil matter.

I went perfect touch today and I haven't got good news. Oil spilled everywhere and on a compression test one of the cylinders was down to 100.

I took the car in perfectly fine. Yet perfect touch say it is my fault. The car prduced up to 347bhp during their runs which rob told me yet he says the fault lies with the car.

How does a faulty car make up to 347bhp with one cylinder down? They refuse to give me a graph of diagnostics for my runs. Yet I have paid. Rob says when the car came in he saw oil on the sip. On hearing this I said why didn't you mention this and why did you run the car? No answer.

He said the car was producing lots of smoke on the first run he did. I said why didn't you stop what you were doing? Why didn't you tell me? Why did you carryon? He has no answer to this.

I say if you think a car isn't running well enough you would not push it. And I think who is working on the car should let the owner know. Yet he did none of this.

Perfect touch are trying not to take the blame and putting it on me. I have asked for graphs and I got nothing. All I get is the car was doing this or leaking that.. yet if the car was such in a bad state why proceed to map it.

They also had a new software installed and one of the engineers was there watching the run and I think my car was also used as a guinea pig to test their new toy. I have left the car there and I am here seeking advice.

Is the blame with me or perfect touch? On replies I will be contacting my insurance seeking legal advise. Also while I was there none of them would start the car. Yet about half an hour ago Claudio called to say my car was running (On 4 cylinders as when rob done the test it was 100 175 160 165 175. So now he wants me to take the car away running with one cylinder down which wasnt the case when I brought it in.

Also before he called to say the car is running he threatened to call the police if I do not remove my car which I said he should and he has failed to do so. On earlier talks with my mum at around 4 sumthing he told her the turbo Im running is to big for the car gt2871r on which she said why did you still run the car and he had no answer.

The reason behind all the excuses that have no weight is that the car was fine when I brought it in and the problem lies with who was mapping the car. I think he pushed it to far or his mind was somewhere else and he wasn't watching everthing or what ever happened in the mapping room (as they shut the door and no one goes in) was not my fault. And I dont think I should pay about a grand or more for something that could have been avoided.

-----------------------

Sorry Kester, i had to re-arrange your post.. too difficult to read in one block.

Anyhow.. sorry to hear about your car. I guess the only way you're going to know why you have low compression is to take the head off the car. From there you'll be able to see if the car has been damaged due to det or perhaps it was running lean?

I'm surprised that they didn't give you your graphs though. You had paid for them after all.

Where was the oil coming from? And was there enough in it when it was run on the rollers?

I was at rog's on friday and the oil was topped up. Oil was from the air breather side. Passenger side

Did he hear the engine running? Compression test etc?

Ross

By he, do you mean rog? If so he did here it running. No compression test was done though.
I also dont delieve my engine would have made 347bhp if a cylinder was down

Well what kinda power were you expecting?

Ross

While I sympathise with you, there are obviously two sides to this story (I am not in any way trying to suggest you are making things up) but it might be advisable to keep this off the forum, especially if you are going to be involved in legal proceedings to sort the issue out. Although I hope that it doesn't come to that.

I told him If he can get to 350bhp it would be enough. I told him to keep it between 1.3 and 1.4.

Well then. It obviously was ok or they are amazing at mapping, that they can map a car thats 1 piston down to 347bhp

Hope ya get it all sorted.

Ross

Oil where the wheel was
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa189/sm4shk1ng/Image262.jpg

Oil under the air breather area
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa189/sm4shk1ng/Image261.jpg

Oil through the cages
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa189/sm4shk1ng/Image265.jpg

Splashed oil by side of car
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa189/sm4shk1ng/Image256.jpg

Area where leak is from
http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa189/sm4shk1ng/Image259.jpg

I'm playing Devil's advocate here - just to give you a possible view from PTs perspective

An engine with 100psi compression on one cylinder will run pretty well. I know this for a fact, as when I overheated mine, I had less than 100psi on TWO cylinders - it will still produce good power, as the cylinder pressure forces the rings against the bores.

To be honest, I ran my car for a couple of weeks after the overheating incident and the ONLY way I knew something was wrong was that at tickover I could just feel a very slight vibration - anything above 1,000rpm and it felt perfect - even the performance was very good - still sailed off the clock.

I know the temptation must be to blame PT, but there's every chance your car was poorly before it went in.

I'm not taking sides, I'm just alerting you to the fact that there's another possible side to the story

Its entirely conceivable that the engine was already down on compression - it would account for the oil in the intake (bad compression due to rings will usually pressurise the crankcase, causing oil to come out of the breather)

PT wouldn't have known this, but they commented on the oil before the dyno runs. After the run, there would be oil around the intake, although for there to be lots, something else must have failed

I agree with your objective view Nigel, but its totally unlikely that a car with 100psi on 1 cylinder will make the power expected of it. It would be down on power even if it did run ok. The fact that rob's given the figure that kester is expecting, says to me that the engine was running ok at that point. Just my opinion.

Ross

p.s. just as another point. Usually when a company doesnt feel responsible for someones car problem, they are as helpful as possible which kinda shows they have nothing to hide as such. In this case, if the info is all true, they have made it difficult for him by not providing graphs and generally not being open to reason. The OP sounds very annoyed and frustrated, not just disappointed.

I have no side to take here just giving my experience of rolling road tuners. All the good ones that I've been to do a full check over of the engine & general set-up before they start doing anything. Generally they do things like pull the plugs to check condition and normally ask lots of questions about the engine build and so forth. It would be irresponsible (and asking for trouble IMHO) if someone started to tune (attempting to get 50% more power than standard) an engine that wasn't in top nick.

Personally, once they had started to fiddle with the mapping, they take a degree of responsibility for the engine. In this circumstance, I'd be expecting them to have to demonstrate that, on the balance of probabilities, the engine was faulty before they started. They owe you a duty of care to not do anything that might damage your engine - you are, after all, paying them as experts in this subject.

As stated, you are wise to leave the car there and to seak advice. Your insurance company is a great place to start. If you paid by credit card, you might also have a route there too. I'm no expert but just some thoughts and ideas.

Richard

I had my car mapped at perfect touch also.

I checked my car the night before and all was sweet,however it developed an oil leak on the way there which i didnt know
about.

Rob saw this before the first run and refused to run it.I
agreed and aborted the run.

On removing the car from the rollers they ripped off my limited edition front bumper.
They said they would cover the repair bill(fair enough sh17 happends)

Then we found out the filter had come loose so tightened it,cleaned off the residue and carried on.
They took the car from 260 bhp to 300 and without a doubt is the best mod i have done to the car.
rob has great ability and seems to know what he is doing.
However come the end of the day they tried to charge me £750.Even though they said £450 on the phone.

Claudio said it was because they had spent the day cleaning the oil off the car and messing with the Avcr.
However they did quote £450 for a days dyno.
And if i knew they were going to charge me 300 quid for a steam clean i wouldnt have bothered.
So i paid £450 in the end and went home with the same bill i was quoted on the phone and with a steep bill for a new bumper and a respray but on the other hand if they had continued then my engine would have gone bang if the oil leaked out.
And Rob did stay very late to sort it.
Im a big fan of Rob and he seems very honest.
Claudio i feel ripped me off.

I have damaged cars where i work,like i said sh17 happends but we always repair them and the bill doesnt change.

So i paid no more than i was quoted on the phone but you can tell he doesnt like parting with his money even if he is wrong.
Rob and Claudio were very thorough in checking my car,and made it very clear it wouldnt go on unless it was spot on.

so i doubt very much that they would have let your car on the rollers with a oil leak and a smoky engine.

I personally wont use them again.

In your case your car has failed so convincing anyone otherwise will be difficult.But good luck.
It would be interesting to see just how much they pushed it before it let go.
The least he could have done is not charged you for the dyno tbh.

My engine went about a month after it was mapped at perfect touch low compression in 4 and 5 cylinders. I am currently about to rebuild mine but I do have to say that it seems like they stretch the limits a bit to far and not keep it on the safe side. That is my opinion.
Sorry to hear what has happend. There is a 20vt engine going on e bay for 97 quid at the moment.

Why - as I've already said, by the time the car is on boost, the cylinder pressure will force the rings against the bore, creating MUCH better compression.

My car was still ridiculously fast with two bad cylinders - I reckon it would have produced within 5% of its previous good peak power.

Im not disagreeing that you will get *better* compression but after refering to the legend himself, its unlikely it would reach its full level of power.

Ross

I'm not taking sides here at all, but for anyone reading this - if you take your car to be mapped it's your responsibility to check it over beforehand.

That means:

Compression test
Clutch
Oil Leaks
Injectors
Plugs
Fuel pump
boost leaks
cam variator

etc...

You have to get the car running as damn near perfect as you can. It means less time on the rollers, and hopefully no other issues.

Yes but they really should do a compression check before they put it on the rollers. That is the only way to be sure that all is correct before they map it. I am sure that if you did a compression check before you went then A) They/any garage would not except what you say because there is no proof you did it), B) Something could happen on the drive to getting the car mapped.
There is no way they would payout to fix it.

With 100 psi,it depends whats let go.Also how quick it takes to get to 100psi.If your cranking it for ages and it gets to 100 or if it gets there in 4-5 seconds.
That bhp on 100 psi is impossible.1 pot down will directly effect back pressure,engine balance and if its blowing past the rings then it will create a drag and build up of heat.It may also cause injector correction.
Most of the gt28 20vt's hover around the 310-330 mark.
300 bhp is a tall ask on a modded 20vt engine thats running well,let alone one thats not.
But as for pushing it too hard there are a bunch of fccukers from sweeden i think that have 3 20vts running 400+ on stock internals.

In all fairness to pt they use det cans,push the engine to its limit as far as ignition advance goes and then back it off.They have a lot of positive feedback on here and up until now have never pushed a engine further than it will go.
But lets say they did push it too hard,they are tuners,you did know the risk and im not sure where you would start.
Is the responsability theres?Or yours?
Might be worth contacting a solicitor and see what they say.

Yep it defo must have let go on the rollers.

Think carlt does talk alot of sense when he says Leave it alone. I would have saved thousands!

I don't think anyone (edit - i.e. any RR) does this?

Most rolling roads just do a power run, they don't live map it.

Not taking sides, but personally, I think if you're going to stick on a whacking great big turbo and run 1.4 bar you should get it checked yourself before you do anything.

JBT - its a GT2871R, not just a GT28 - this turbo will produce SERIOUS power (as Flea's and my cars will testify).

And I STILL maintain that on a wide open throttle, at 1.4 bar, the compression rings will do their job and be forced against the cylinder walls, creating almost as good compression as a cylinder with no ring wear.

A compression test is done with no combustion pressure, thus allowing maximum blow-by

Well why didnt PT give him any graphs then?

Ross

Probably 'cause they knew they were gonna get sh*t! I don't know whose fault it was, but PT must know by now how the couple should fuel, they must know by now how much boost they should run and they must know by now aprox how much ignition advance they can dial-in given an octane rating for a fuel. I think most people would find it unlikely they'd let it run away deting it's head off 'till it went bang ... that's not to say it didn't happen. I'm guessing that a solicitor would say that if PT can show that they map cars in a systematic way in-line with other tuning shops then they would be on safe ground. I would say that the best outcome one could hope for in this situation is for PT to wave their charge as a gesture of goodwill (with no admission of liability) .... all IMHO of course!

I think the issue is very muddy. I do however think that a tuner is very foolish to commence tuning an engine that they can see isn't in top condition. I say again, the best tuners I've used always do a thorough investigation of the engine before starting. Pete Lander, who found 20bhp out of my normally aspirated, points-ignition, carb'd 60's Alfa twin cam spent longer finding out what he'd got to work with than he did making the improvements. He referred to me constantly, asking loads of questions about the engine build and he was very conservative. Pete's in his 60's and been doing this all his life.

All the stuff about not handing over the figures and threatening to call the police doesn't reflect well either.

Good luck with getting the right outcome - whatever that might be.

Richard

I'm just glad i got my car mapped on the worst fuel and told Rob not to push it near its limits.

It sounds like a rum deal, i cant imagine why they would claim they would call the police unless everything has got very out of hand, they have always come across as being fairly relaxed.

k35t3r what mods have you got and whats the background on your car? Cars developing serious problems while getting mapped is not uncommon at all, i'm just surprised that PT seem to be handling the matter in such an unsympathetic way, as said before it makes them look guilty if its as one sided as you say it is (no offence).

When Rob mapped my car last week i told him that i felt the car was seriously underfuelling before he started so he started making adjustments straight away without attempting to do too many power runs.

My car took only 2 hours to map so my bill was unexpectedly low.

K35t3r - who built your engine? IIRC, you have a VERY similar spec to me - GT2871, flowed head, forged pistons on standard rods etc etc

Minus the flowed head and forged pistons.
Anyway under Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (as amended). I have a fighting chance. In the long run I will let you know how it ends

I'm sure they'd do a compression test - if you asked them and paid for it.

regarding cars running 400bhp on the stock internals - it's not the power itself that will muller pistons - it's det. You can have a car running 250 bhp that's detting and it will mash a piston.

IIRC Standard engine, GT2871R, Evo FMIC, SIP.

Kester do you have an uprated fuel pump and wiring mod? If not it's funny how the car still managed to provide enough fuel at 347bhp!

Can you post your complete spec? (not you Ken!)

ive used pt before and found rob to be a top guy but i was put off a bit by claudio's attitude a bit. i have a few mates in the skyline cokmmunity and rate rob (tweenierob)very highly with there cars as he has done so many! i would have thought that rob has done a fair few coops now that he knows what he is doing with the cars limits!

when i was down there with my last coop rob was back and forth like a yo yo telling me what was going on and luckilly enough i was thourough with my car the day before i went up and all was good. apart from a little clutch slip and my injectors coming close to max at 320 bhp so he backed it off to just under 300!

once my current coop is done i will be taking it straight up there again to be mapped after i have checked and replaced most of the corroded components etc!

i have been in rifts with garages before and its not nice! especially knowing that you are in the right.

i wish you good luck mate.

OK...

Just a quick post from me as i WILL NOT get pulled into any forum flame wars.
Facts time.
I mapped your car roughly 2 months ago (may have been closer) and your clutch was slipping, your car was boosting too high as the actuator is set to 1.2bar min. I told you to get a clutch fitted and that the car was not safe to drive hard until the map was finished. I even went to the length of removing your boost controller to give as much safety as i could to make sure the car came back in one peice. The first thing you told me when you arrived was that the car had been boosting to 1.2bar and you told Matt in the office that whilst your mate had been driving the car the car had hit 1.7bar WTF!
A few points, firstly on removing your spark plugs you have standard heat range spark plugs fitted. Not even 7's, BKUR6 When you brought your car up to me last time i asked you clearly if everything was specced to support the power wanted, you said the only weak link was the clutch which was true and it slipped.
You told me that you had an oil change on friday, after commenting on how black the oil was a few times you said that the oil had been topped up. When i dipped the oil it was .9litres low and only just showing on the dipstick, this was after being filled on friday.
As agreed by everyone in the dyno cell there is/was about 100ml of oil on the floor, ironically the oil on the centre beam was from a golf turbo that split an oil pipe on the dyno on sat. It isnt anywhere near where your breather is.
Lets go with all the oil in the whole cell is from your car, 100ml not .9litres.... In fact, why did your car 'need a refill' on friday...
When you first came in you told me the rocker cover was leaking badly, i had spotted a small 3mm spec of oil on the SIP on the turbo but this was below the rocker cover leak.
I set up my equipment on the dyno, fitted your boost controller again and got started, as usual practise i pull timing so i can work back up again.
I did 3 light throttle drives up to 3500 to check fuelling was close low down, happy with that i reset the boost controller and started the first power run. As boost came up i came off the throttle as i was not happy with the smoke from the exhaust. I brought the car back onto light throttle and there was no smoke but i was not happy to continue. I checked under the bonnet and there was oil from the breather, i then asked if you was happy for me to do a compression test to ses if comp was down. On pulling the plugs i noticed they were the wrong grade for your tune and that plug number one had signs of det on it, there was no det whilt i had the car on the dyno as i had my det cans on and the timing was pulled back.
After a bit of blaming from you i got my own camera out to take some pictures, on closer inspection the oil filter is leaking badly the rocker cover is pissing out. The underneath of the car is soaked in oil (all photographed), when oil leaks on the dyno, the fan is so strong it blows the oil across the floor as will show in a picture you took. Not soak the underneath like tha car has been waxoiled, and certainly not on the other side of the car under the oil filter ;).
You told me that the car had never dropped a drop of oil on your drive, yet the oil filter is soaked/rocker cover pissing out/ sump leaking/turbo oil leak (confirmed by your mechanic)? Come off it!

Your car is running exactly the same as it came in, not missing a beat. It starts and runs fine but as i told you yesterday i am not happy with the breathing. there is no smoke from the exhaust on idle or light throttle, i am not happy to bring the car on boost as there is a problem there as we have found.
A representative from our dyno was updating our software to the new release on a new operating system (down form sunny scotland ) the extrapolation for drive losses was out if i did not complete the run, the dive losses are calculated over a % of the run. As i came off the throttle due to the smoke the run was only to 5000rpm which gave an incorrect power figure. I cleared the run as i always do, this is as i will never give out an incorrect power figure FULL STOP.
The sofware has been configured now and all is fine.
You paid for an hours mapping which would have included a graph normally, however i was not happy to run your car again so you do not have power graph.


If anything everyone reading this can perhaps learn something, if your car is not built by us you need to make sure everything is in place to support the power you want.
If you tuner is happy to bolt on a turbo that is capable of 400+hp try and make sure you
a: have the spark plugs to go with it
b: if you have abnormal oil usuage find out why
c: if you are told the map is not complete and to take it easy until its finished due to slipping clutch, dont let your mate hit 1.7bar
d:if you boost is set to 1.2bar std and i ask you to get it dropped, i'm only trying to advise you what i think is best.
e:understand i am always on the end of the phone for advice, even if your own tuner doesnt want to make the call give me a shout.


This time i will publically state this so there is no confusion! Your car needs the boost dropping, you need the right grade of plugs, you need to sort the oil leaks out and you need to not drive your car hard like i told you!
When i told you this, you stated to me that 'you took too long to get me back in'.
We are flat out at the moment and i apologise for not getting you back in sooner BUT... you knew the score, dont drive the car hard!!!!!!!!

I wont get back on here as i have stated the facts, your car is here ready for collection as you brought it.
You told us yesterday that you are coming today with your mechanic. We are looking forward to talking to him.

Just to make sure all is clear as i havent read through the whole thread, roger from power fiat did not build this engine and AFAIK only topped the oil up. No question at all about his work.

Last but not least, is there a longest post award

Cheers

Rob

You lied to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You and your brother told me you had an engine built to take the power.

Not impressed!!

Rob

All i can say is wow, there is 2 sides to the story.

Ross

If people are talking about legal action, sale of goods act, making allegations against each other, etc, I think the conversation should be taken off line and concluded.

Then if either party wants to come back and post the results then fair play, but you don't need to do your dirty laundry in public. As Ross says there are clearly 2 sides and only 2 people involved, it should stay like that.

I completely agree but feel it only fair that Rob's been able to give he's side.

Suggest this is locked / removed now as it is between 2 parties and for the good of the Forum.

Well although i agree with the comments above, forum is a place for public discussion. Kester has decided to bring this on the forum, rob has decided to answer (even tho there is no need to). I dont think anything has been said which is out of hand, as such, but obviously the truth is out there somewhere.

Ross

I do think its the responsibility of the owner to make sure the car is in good health before getting it mapped, i waited a long time so could co-ordinate getting my turbo fitted then having it mapped the next day to avoid anything like this.

It all comes down to preparation, i tried to make sure everything was spot on for my car so there would be little chance of something going wrong. I think PT are pretty good and i would take my car there again in the future. As i said earlier, your car is under alot of stress on the rollers so component failure can occur, i really dont think that its something that a tuner or owner can fully anticipate so people should be prepared for the worst imo.

Its the price you pay for power!

Exactly....And if its not or you know of problems then your asking for trouble.
Listening to both sides im not sure if there is actually a problem or not,one thing is for sure i hope Perfect touch read these comments and learn from the feedback.As one bad ordeal goes along way on a forum.
And likewise Robs advice for preparing a car before the RR.

First the car was never boosted to 1.7. The overboost only happened once which I took to rog to sort out.
2nd my car doesn't leak oil. Coupes use oil and everyone knows this. The oil needed a topup as you do when you check the oil so it doesn't get low.
3rd, the only thing you said to me the last time was to do the clutch which I did.
4th, me or my brother never claimed the engine was modified. You knew this also from the first time the car was mapped.
5th, you never once consulted me during your runs and I even said to matt, everything must be going well as he hasn't come to see me once. I waited for up to 40mins before you came and said it made 347bhp which you didn't once say was an error.
6th, you refuse to show me any of the graphs or runs you did, even if not printouts, you showed me nothing on the computer
7. All the time I was there you said all the oil was mine and that I should be careful not to slip when taking pictures. You even said I should pay to get it cleaned. So what your saying is all the oil there has nothing to do with my car?
I can go on and on.
Basically your claiming there was an oil leak yet you still carried on the run without telling me. You as a professional didn't use your better judgement. You then say after spotting the oil there was smoke and you carried on without telling me or bringing the mapping to a stop.
You lot are been proper cowboys now. If you made a mistake you should rectify it. All Im asking is for my car to be running as it was when I brought it in. Which is all cylinders working and no leaks.

This thread is either going to be locked or removed at this rate....

If the car was not in a good state to map you would not have mapped it.
Therefore if you mapped it everything must have been ok.
I mean if you say it wasnt right from the start why did you turn the boost up and try and get more bhp?
I came to perfect touch looking to get better performance for my car and my car has ended up worse. Perfect touch as a company should rectify it and not let a customer go away with a faulty car when it was fine when it came in.
I still have no graphs for my runs.

K35t3r - I think if you read Rob's post, he's saying that he did three low power runs to settle the car, then did one full throttle run. During this run, the car smoked, so he aborted before reaching full power / revs. It was straight after this that the oil leak was noticed

Therefore, only one run was performed and even this wasn't complete. this in turn is the reason for not giving you any graphs - there's nothing to show!

Nigel im not going to argue ,but just out of interest whats the spec of this turbo as im very tempter myself.

Go to ATP turbo website - they come in a lot of different trims.

http://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbobygarrett/catelog/Turbochargers/GT28/GT2871R_472560_15.htm

Think this is the one?

Ross

Dare i ask the cost of the turbo?

ATP's site says it's not much more than a GT28RS.

Around the 1k mark.

Ross

Then everything else needs uprating.And who will do the engine rebuilding now barbz is no more

this thread is already being closely watched - please keep it on topic

Plenty of discussion about the GT2871R elswhere - Flea is proof that its good for the mid-400s

Im sure if it stays on topic then it wont be around for much longer.We cant have a forum where theres disagreements.

Oh no, that'll defo get it locked.

Back on topic, hopefully kester and pt can come to some arrangement where both parties are happy.

Ross

While i dont say much on this forum I have read this post and thought i should put my little bit in.

I dont have a coupe, but i have a coupe lump in my punto running DTA pro8 which is an after market ECU as many of you may know.

I took the car to PT late October 06 to have a cold start map. After a week of hearing nothing i called up for Claudio to say that he needed to rewire part of the loom. So i said ok (being a trusting person)all this turned out to be was an inline fuse, the fuse they used was even an old one.

another week later and i call back, he said he needed to FIT an idle control valve, i told him he didnt, but he wouldnt listen and fitted one anyway...which never worked!

He then blamed the ICV not working because of the ECU so he had rob rewire it. Did it work...NO!

all the while i was telling him that the early releases of DTA pro 8 didnt support an ICV and that it would run fine with the throttle position sensor.

after 2months..YES 2 MONTHS they were getting no where so i decided to pick it up. They wouldnt let me have it back without paying for the re-wiring which did nothing anyway, and i was lumbered with a £80 piece of silicone hose and an ICV off of a golf that i didnt need....£500 down.

The night i picked it up was about 6 pm,the car was running terrible and they had it idling at 1500rpm! I then made my way to a place called Track and Road in dartford, I went through £20 worth of fuel to get to dartford from PT which isnth that far, that just shows you how rich it was running.

Once at Track n Road, about 8pm by the time i got there (friday traffic on m25). I was there for 45mins and Steve the guy who runs TnR had it on the rollers within minutes, showed me the map that PT had done, the first part of it was fine if the ECU supported an ICV so in that respect they did it right, but seeing as the ICV was never going to work, the cocked up.

45 minutes later the car was idling at about 900rpm and not guzzling fuel.

Steve called me 5days later to tell me the car had been FULLY remapped and a cold start done not using the ICV.

I had heard good things about PT hence why i took it there, and continue to do so, however I will never take my car back there.

The first thing claudio said to me was that " he never rushes people if they have questions to ask or things to say" well IMO he was the complete opposite.

Be wary is all i can say.

All ill add is thanks PT you've helped me sell alot of engine's. If it wernt for you lot i'd probably not be in utter shortage at the moment.

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.

Well I guess this turbo (since its the same as I use) is good for 347 bhp at low boost, say 1.2 bar or so? I get around 400 with 1.5-1.6 bar

Civic,tried that and all is fine.Changing the plugs soon so might do compression for peace of mind.But shes only done 63k now on the engine but the last few have been a bit hard on her.

If the car was redlined then you would have heard it bounce off the limiter.....

347 bhp at 5000 rpm is about 365 lb ft torque - so its not impossible, but it would have required an ill-advisedly large boost spike to get it!

I can't really comment much on the above, there were only two/three people there on the day who can say what happened and both of the stories conflict. They should really try and sort it out between them, not on a public forum.

There are many scenarios on what 'could' have gone wrong. If the mapping was not finished, then imo you should not have paid.

I think it time to bring this to a close now.

There have been a lot of pointing of finger comments towards PT, with a few people missing out what tweenierob had to say e.g. no power graph due to new software being put on and various things other things.

Obviously people can make their mind up about this suituation and decide for themselves if they will continue to use PT or find alternatives.