About 10 months ago I decided to have Tommy at Outrageous Performance build me and install a long block for my Lightning. I dropped the truck off in early December at his place. Was told the truck should be done in about 3 weeks which would have been around New Years. I thought wow not a bad holiday gift for myself. Well, New Years came and New Years went with no finished truck. I didn't mind much as I would rather have the truck done right and didn't want to be that pain in the butt customer. Well, weeks and weeks went by and still no finished truck. Was always told it was gonna be done soon, soon. Come February I was starting to get a little upset and worried that Tommy was never gonna deliver a finished product. My worries were subsided the end of February when I was told the truck was all set. Myself and two friends decided to go pick the truck up late on a Thursday night. When we went to go pick the truck up, the truck did not like to run, stalled several times when going onto the trailer. Tommy said he needed to make some adjustments to the tune so he did and we were on our way. I was excited to have my truck back and wasn't thinking about anything else. When we got home I quickly took the truck of the trailer and brought my friends home in the Lightning. Truck just wasn't running too great. Felt like it had misfires and would stall. It only got worse and worse. Talked to Tommy and he says he will get back to me. When we finally speak again it it Saturday(2 days after picking the truck up). He says he thinks something got screwed up with the inserts he put in the spark plug holes and that he will need the truck again. So there I am on Saturday afternoon with my truck back the trailer going to Tommy's. Oh yeah did I say I have only had my truck for 2 days>??? Great feeling. Also keep in mind it costs about $90 in gas to make this trip down and back. Get down there and he checks out the truck while I wait. He first blames the chip now and replaces it, no good. Then condemns the computer. So he says I have to buy a computer. I say ok(I just want my truck fixed). A few weeks later he tell me the truck is all set. I had planned on picking the truck up on a Tuesday so I could go racing at Atco, Tommy was going to come to the track and was supposed to swap my Bogarts on and change my oil. Neither was done when my friend and myself arrived in Jersey. Tommy tells me he can't come to the track, so I decided against going at all. I ask to drive the truck before loading it up. We go for a ride. I get on the gas and truck feels good, then at the top of second doesn't feel so good anymore. I get out of it. He says get on it again so I do. Truck feels like crap. Now I am saying to myself what is going on here>??? We get back to Tommy and the truck stalls and WILL NOT start back up. Now I am upset. We start pulling plugs, if memory serves my right every plug on the driver side was burned several plugs had blackness on the porcelain like combustion was leaking past the threads. Tommy says I need to leave the truck of course. Not I am starting to get a little worried as I have paid for a spot to race at the SSOTN spring event and it is a few weeks away. Tommy promises the truck will be done and says if for some crazy reason it is not he says I can race his truck. Well, my truck does not get done of course and I am stuck racing my Avalanche going 16.00's when I should have been racing a Lightning and going 10's. Takes a lot of the fun out of a great event. By now my confidence in Tommy is going away FAST. Finally the truck is ready for pick up in May. I get the truck and it just doesn't feel very strong and blows a decent amount of smoke and has many drivability issues. You could not get into the throttle at ALL from an idle without the truck dying and backfiring when you restarted it. Not safe at all when trying to pull out in front of traffic. I talk everything over with Tommy and he tells me my intake manifold to head gaskets are leaking. I wanted to go to FFW Etown and it was a few days away. He says if I want to bring the truck to him he will try and get it done. I decided to do the job myself so I knew it would be done in time. I order the gaskets and tear the top of the motor down. My gaskets arrive late(of course) and I am racing to get it done on Friday night. I get fed up and decide to finish it on Saturday. I finish it up on Saturday morning and what do you know, I still have the SAME problem. So the last 2 days are a waste. Since I obviously needed a tune adjustment I decided to put the truck on the dyno that Saturday so I could send Tommy the sheets when he worked on the tune which he wanted me to do anyway. The dyno shop has a spot for me and I go. The truck is pig rich at 10.0 almost the whole run. The smoking is getting worse. I had been talking with Anthony at JDM about my problem and he said if I wanted to I could bring my truck down there and they would check it out for me and tune it the right way. I called Anthony from the dyno and he said bring the truck down. So I left from the dyno and headed for Freehold. Anthony met me there on his day off and help get the truck unloaded and in a safe spot. I was told it may be a couple days until the truck got tuned but I was ok with that since it has been 6 months now and the truck still wasn't right. I was suprised when I received a phone call stating that Jim did not want to tune the truck. I talked it over with Jim and he said Tommy's tune was washing the cylinder walls down with fuel causing my smoking. He said if we got a safe tune on there the rings may still be ok. He put it on the dyno and did his thing. I explained to him my stalling problem and he said he would look at it. After many phone calls and much A LOT of time on his part we realized there was something wrong with the truck which was causing the problem. He could make it go away but then the truck didn't want to idle(when Tommy fixed my idle problems that is when the stalling problem came up). Jim went above and beyond the call of duty with great service(which is a whole nother story in its self). Now I am very pissed as the truck has to go to Tommy yet again! Tommy pulls the heads off the truck and finds a couple bad valve guides and he replaces the inserts for the plugs. He assures me this will fix everything and stop my smoking. The truck goes back together and Tommy says it is all set and good to go. He calls me later that day and says the smoking has returned. Now I want to cry. Tommy tells me the motor is going to be pulled and and redone. I agree but at this point really want a refund of my money so I can move on. Put I decide to give him another chance. Silly me. Tommy calls me a few days later and says all the cylinder bores are distorted and that he doesn't think he should have to warranty this. When I ask why(getting VERY angry) he states that there had to be a lot of heat in the motor to cause this problem. I told Tommy the truck as never been right from day 1 and if there was enough heat to distort a cast block then why are the heads not melted. He says the heads are fine. He agrees to fix the motor. We keep and touch. I am told about a track rental on September 1st and Tommy says the truck will be good to go so I buy a spot. I get the truck back in late August and it feels good.

 

Go out to breakfast the Sunday before the track rental. Leaving the diner my brother is in front of me in the Cobra and he lays down a nice set of strips. I have been taking it pretty easy on the truck but now it has around 400 miles or so on it and I decided to get on it. Truck pulls pretty hard sideways on the 1-2 then at the top of 2nd the truck noses over. I immediately lift and coasted to the side of the road. I have no power steering and the battery light is on. I figure I just threw a belt and I pot the hood. I look down to see my harmonic balancer and lower pulley on the verge of falling of the truck. Looking more, I see the bolt that holds the balance on the ground under the truck. Hmm, now how is that gonna just loosen up>??? If you ask me it was left loose. Now I am pissed as I could ever be. I had just paid $150 for a spot at the track rental and my truck is broken yet again! I have the truck towed to my shop. Put it on the lift and do an inspection. The crank is scored up bad and part of the key way is broken, not the whole front half so it is quite apparent the balancer came forward from the loose bolt then the key way broke. Once again the truck goes down to Tommy's. He says the key way broke and that is what backed the bolt out and that I have to pay. Now I am angry yet again. I make one comment and the first words out of his mouth are "take me to court." He agrees to eat the labor and I pay for parts. Knowing damn well I do not want to dump money into another motor I agree. Silly me. He promises the truck back to me on my Birthday(Sept. 14th). Well that day came and went with no truck. I finally go get the truck when it is done on the 25th. I give the truck a quick look over and notice the balancer on the truck is completely different from the one that was on there when it spun. They are both supposed to be the same SFI balancer but the new one is a nice billet looking finish whereas the other looked just like a stock balancer. Did I even ever get my SFI balancer from the start>??? The truck now has the same stalling problem again when leaving the line and now even if you try and get on the gas after a coast. Truck is also smoking again. Contact Tommy yet again. He blames the O2 sensors. I immediately replace them so there are no excuses. The truck is still smoking and running ****ty. I get home that Monday leave the truck running and as I walk around the truck to go open the garage I see smoke coming from the right front wheel well, pop the hood and smoking POURING out of the breather cap and it is smoking pretty bad out of the pipes. Pull the truck in the garage and the truck feels like it is misfiring bad. I walk into my house with disgust. Next day I bring home my scanner to scan the truck since the engine light came on. Truck has a rich code and does not want to stay running now. I emailed Tommy telling him my problem and asked for a refund as I cannot do this anymore and need to get the truck fixed right by someone that knows what they are doing. He quickly starts to point fingers at me, the MAF, Injectors or Fuel Pumps. The MAF and Injectors kept my stock motor alive with no problems. He installed the fuel pumps. He also gave me the "High Performance parts don't come with a warranty." Now I can understand that if the truck was fixed right 10 months ago and had no problems and had another 10,000 miles on it. But none of those things hold true. The truck has been back down to him atleast 5 times and was NEVER fixed right. I am not one to come on here and bash as I don't believe in that, but I cannot sit back and let this happen to anyone else in the Lightning community. Tommy has made me hate my truck to the point of wanting to turn it back to stock and sell it. I can't even do that though because he ruined my stock crank shaft taking the balancer off. The truck is now at JDM to get a quote to FIX it RIGHT. Jim has offered me what I feel is a very good deal on labor to pull the motor, tear it down, rebuild it and reinstall it. The final numbers will be determined by the parts it needs. I am so upset right now words do not describe it. I don't have the money laying around to go and throw in a 2nd built motor and I don't feel that I should have to. I know if I treated my customers like this when I rebuilt their transmissions I would be out of business in a few months. You just don't do business like that. I don't really have much more to say besides I hope I can fall in love with my truck again and can afford to fix it. Otherwise keep an eye on the classifieds for a 01 Lightning with no motor for sale and A LOT of parts. I am sure I have left so things out as this has been going on for a long time and my memory leaves a lot to be desired. I will add to this as I remember. Sorry for the LONG post, but I feel it had to be made. I will listen to any comments, suggestions and or questions. -Mat-

In case anyone was wondering, all these events are why I have not been posting over the last several months.

 

Wow sorry to hear your misfortune! Good luck man I'm sure JDM will hook you up right.

-Sly

 

Sorry for your troubles, SVT. Don't listen a second to the "no warranty on racing motors" bit. Unless you explicitly agreed to the contrary, every product sold has an implied warranty of fitness and merchantability. As you correctly point out, we are not talking about a motor that broke under the stresses of racing, we are talking about a motor that never ran right from the first time you hit the key.

If you are thinking of taking legal action against Outrageous, you need to make sure that JDM documents and photographs the teardown. Also, have JDM make a complete report as to any defects that they find.

I recently helped someone from these boards who had almost exactly the same problems as you receive a partial refund from the original builder. I am convinced that the excellent documentation and photographs (from highly qualified shops like JDM) were what made the difference.

One last thing -- be careful what you say here. You may be well advised to leave this thread where it lies. You need to be able to control the body of evidence and allegations, and making any further comments here without the assistance of counsel may ultimately undermine your position.

 

Wow this is very upsetting to hear that you have been screwed over by a tuner. And by Tommy at Outrageous Performance by no less. I also did quite a bit of business with Tommy (Built Short Block, Cams, Hardware, ect.). The only reason I did business with Tommy was because of how nice a guy he seemed. He always took the time to answer my questions since i did the job myself and this was my first motor build/swap. I had two problems with business with Tommy. First was the fact that I got my motor a month after when it was promised. This was not a big deal because it was during the winter months. Next and the part that pissed me off the most was that i did not recieve a chip until after I was completely done with the project and it turned out to me junk. I desided i was only going to give him that one chance so i got my money back for my chip. I went with JDM's tune/combo with injectors and Pro M. My truck is running great I have probably made 50 or more good passes. My first 6 passed being 12.0's and 113-115.5in 55 degree weather!!! This is all with 13psi boost on the eaton. My best pass ever is 11.94 in 75 degree weather.

I would say had my ups and my downs with the Outrageous Perf experience however in the end it turned out pretty well.

It just really sucks to hear that such a nice guy could do such a lousy job on your truck.

Hope everything turns out for the best.

Zach

 

WOW What a nightmare! I don`t think I`ll sleep good tonight after reading that. I can`t believe what a horrific story that is. This guy handled this better than I could ever. I would be in jail right now. Good luck with your truck bro, It must be discouraging to have to go through that. I really thought Outragous was more reputable than that.

 

Mat, I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience.

Tommy has been a good guy to me in the past, so I'm surprised to hear all of this. From what you said, you have been a more than understanding customer. The situation is between the two of you, so I won't comment on it other than that.

I know how you feel about being so frustrated with the truck that you just want to give up.

In my case nobody treated me badly, but I was ready to drive my truck off of a cliff just a few months ago.

I'm writing you this post from Freehold NJ, your truck is maybe 40feet away from where I'm typing this. It's on a lift being worked on right this very minute.

the people at JDM have been great to me, and I know that they'll get you up and running at full speed in no time.

alot of Lightning owners on these boards have been through the ups and downs of modding these trucks to the extreme and having alot of money and hard work go down the drain, so we know were you are coming from.

but your truck is in good hands, and I'm sure that very shortly, you'll actually enjoy owning and driving your truck again.

good luck.

later,
chris

 

This thread is the perfect example of why I am afraid to go nasty with my truck. I couldn't handle this kind of situation without stomping someone out.

 

Wow.................what a nightmare.....but I am sure Jim will get it right. Keep your head up and......SUE SUE SUE his pants off.

 

Damn dude; I really feel for you. I have been threw about the same thing as you, but with superchargers for my truck. Starting with a bad stock one, going to a underpowered ported one, then a MP that had to have not one, but two snouts replaced(still not fixed). Add all that to a bunch of vendor lies, and problems. I was ready to demod and sell the truck; it got that bad several times.

But, I got a KB on it now and it is running great; pulled a 7.55@91.5 out of it last night and I am loving the truck again. Get it fixed, and you will fall in love with it again.

 

I was actually wondering that. Dam, that whole story really sucks. It has been almost a year for this crap.

 

Mat,

I could not say it better than Jim
And I agree with Grimace 100% too

All I can say is, I'm sooooooooooooo sorry to read this BRO
AND you sure do have A HELL OF A LOT OF PATIENT
Cause if this happen to my L, and someone's lack of knowledge
and workmanship prevented me from driving it for @ a yr,
and they told me (and I quote) sue me, dragging the builder into court WOULD BE THE LEAST OF HIS WORRY's

Sometimes you have to help someone GO OUT OF BUSINESS
so this can never happen to someone else


So Sorry Bro....

And for all the people that are about to say
BUT WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY,
THERE IS NONE, Mat bought in a perfectly running Lightning,
spend prob close to 10K, and prob won't drive it again for a full yr (since this nightmare started), and will prob cost him another 5-10K. In my world YOU GET EVEN, WHAT EVER IT TAKES................

EDIT
A MOTOR JOB SHOULD TAKE NO MORE THAN A FEW DAYS PERIOD
Ok maybe you can be nice and give them 2 weeks,
(just in case they are only spending 1 hour a day on it)

 

damn man, These are the negative feedback posts we need so we can know who is doing **** work.

 

This is disgusting. Makes me sick to put myself in your shoes. I'm having some trouble with my truck now so I know how you feel, but it's going to JDM soon and i have confidence they can take care of it, just like i'm sure they take care of you. I just hope that that the majority of the parts on there is still salvagable.

Anyways, good luck in your situation. I'm always down to help a L brother out but I have to admit, there's not much I can do for ya here. Good luck again.

Don

 

is this 'underpowered ported one, the ported blower you sold me?