dnaps

So not long ago i wrote my very first thread about issues i was having with a rotary shop in the Chicagoland area. The problem was concerning the fuel pumps that were installed in my FD. Now i refrained from exposing the shop who rebuilt my RX7 because i gave them the opportunity to correct all the issues. Well as you know that **** didnt happen so now we're here. Im not one to put ppl on blast but the level of disrespect this guy has shown me has pushed me to the edge. SAL owner of ELITE ROTARY is a complete sack of **** and i will post pictures of the nightmare work hes done to my car. im posting this to inform the rotary world the ugly truth about this guy and giving solid proof on why you need to stay away. This story is fairly lengthy so ill try and keep it short and straight to the point. in march of 2019 Sal completed the rebuild of my 93 rx7 after about 1yr+. After figuring out what he called a "miscommunication" on the quote he had given me at the beginning and having to pay 7k over i was finally able to drive her home. So first i would like to point out that Howard Coleman performed the lovely work in rebuilding my motor before my fd was sent off to ELITE. Secondly I had a completely new wiring harness made by Chris Ludwig down @ LMS-EFI LLC to replace the old oem harness. So everything started with the fans shorting out and completely breaking off causing my fd to overheat. i luckily got the car safely home and inspected the issue under the hood. This is what i found

elites fans broke after 1hr of leaving shop

i towed my fd to Elite for fan and radiator replacement. i was given a new fan and a used radiator. soooo pissed about that!!! but wait it gets better!!!!
a couple weeks after i was scheduled for my first tuning session with Nelson. the session was a FAIL and Sal blamed the car was not responding as it should. i was left with more questions than answers. i had no time for games so i left the dyno with my wife riding shotgun and on the way home we started experiencing what seemed to be fuel cut issues. the car ends up shutting off right in the middle of the interstate ( i know ****** dangerous!!!!). somehow she turned back on and got us within 15min of home. i had just enough momentum to pull into a speedway gas station. The fd was completely dead. i started trouble shooting and i noticed the pumps werent priming when i opened ignition switch. After about 4 hrs of searching and tracing wire back this is what i found...my wife and i are lucky we didnt go up in flames.

the 2 fuel pumps were wired with only one inline fuse .

i noticed that the fuel pumps had this odd clicking sound so i decided to pull them out the very next day. i covered this in my last thread so i wont get into great detail. this is the hack job i found and man ohh man!!! the walbro pumps themselves could not be authenticated by TI Automotive and i brought the issue up to Elite. Sal swore they were legit and insisted that he'd fix the issue. so that went on two separate times and him and his team could not get it right.



exposed wires in the tank.




see i was stuck on having to be friendly and try to work with elite because i paid him so much money to do all this 100% right and if i didnt atleast try id lose all that money. yes thats what ended up happening anyways but again im doing this to look out for you guys.i know exactly what you guys are thinking lol but lets continue. so after the whole fuel pump issue im driving back from elite rotary and as im driving i happened to hit a pothole and boom my damn hood flys open smacking the windshield and almost causing me to total the FD. now sal took it upon himself to send my fd to paint shop so the engine bay can be repainted . remember that extra 7k that was misquoted well thats park of it. now we all know in order to respray a engine bay the hood had to be taken off and bay stripped of most things which possibly includes even the hood latch cable!!!! well that was the case and Sal even admitted there was no cable but it still wasnt his fault . at this point is when i stopped being so friendly and man did i lay into him over the phone. this is the damage done by the hood that i had to pay out of my own pocket. after going back and forth over the phone for about a week Elite tells me theyll discount me a couple gauges for the inconvenience. yea ok that was a bunch of bs too.



that hood and fender damage besides the crack windshield

Elite also left harness slack for the ignition coils rubbing against steering shaft which caused this headache. causing the haltech ecu to kick into safe mode shutting car down.


the list is just never ending!!! i reported elite to the BBB and Sal swore he was right on every single thing.
Sal is just bad news for the rotary industry. he does his clients dirty and hes not ashamed of it. damn he'll even swap out your very own parts for others. as he did with all my original parts that were replaced with his junk. he even swapped my turbo which i just recently found out after taking the entire drive train out of my car exactly 1 year after it was built by Elite. here are the pics. first and pic is the one i personally bought for my car. 2nd pic is the one Elite installed in my car. notice they have different serial numbers. now this is all types of wrong aint it!!! the 4th pic is the turbo Elite installed but zoomed out so you can see theres no b.s here.




original turbo i purchased from JRP inc for the rx7 (notice the s/n)

the turbo Elite put into my car. (not the same s/n as the original)


zoom in on the serial number plate

closer look


so there you have it rotary world! ELITE ROTARY is just not the ppl you want working on your cars. its all a nightmare with these guys. ill be posting more on all the crap i find so stay posted. i tried uploading mp4 videos of alot of what i mentioned but it didnt work. heres some snap hots of vids


this is both inline fuses after elites and attempt at fixing my pump issue. notice theres no arc inside fuse in this photo

arc inside fuse and very hot to the touch


i know many wonder are going to wonder on how much i paid so hell idc ill post the invoice below. go through the list tell me what you guys think






at the first dyno event with Elite rotary. Sal in background

Zepticon

iTrader: (1)

Heard stories about them before so im not surprised about this either.
Can you take any legal actions?

chino_rx3

iTrader: (3)

Wow crazy , well I know someone personally that works on Rotary cars that’s stop by the shop years ago and said that the work these guys do is shity and they cut many corners to get **** done . He has fix some issues elite has done or couldn’t figure out . They sell good product and I’m sure that’s why people think they are good . Product is one thing but work ethics is another .
small claims court
and for that price you could of gone to a real shop drag racing shop . The person who told me about elite is a master mechanic and bad *** in electromechanical **** . So I believe him .

TomU

iTrader: (11)

Shitty workmanship is negligence. Replacing parts is fraud

iceman4357

iTrader: (2)

IF you paid by credit card, I would open a dispute for the entire balance and give them the same info you posted here. That kind of work is unacceptable. You will probably have to pay just as much to un-F*uck what they messed up. Thank you for posting as I was considering purchasing items from them, but after seeing multiple horror stories I will not.

ItalynStylion

iTrader: (1)

My thoughts exactly. Although the exposed wires in the fuel tank gave me a freaking heart attack. That's the scariest thing I've ever seen.

I know there's always two sides to a story so I can't wait to hear Elite's side....because what's been posted looks pretty damning.

FourtyOunce

iTrader: (15)

@Fritz Flynn

JuSanBee

iTrader: (3)

That's straight up theft and mechanical negligence. I hope you didn't sign anything saying you can't sue them for improper craftsmanship... In court that sounds like a loss/degradation of property,endangerment and theft especially if you had to fix the car after the fact. I'd take it to court that's intense if you can prove it maybe you can recoup some of your monetary losses. Hope you can get this all sorted out.

I hate when this stuff happens because it freaks me out to think a shop would do that to anyone. Also someone pointed out something interesting... why does banzairacing.com goto elite rotary shop and banzai-racing.com go to their actual website that's a sick re-direct if I ever saw one.

Natey

iTrader: (19)

I hate hate hate to say this, but this is pretty much par for the course these days. If you search my latest threads you'll find that I got basically the same treatment from a different rotary shop a couple years ago. I know my thread isn't very recent, but keep in mind it took me over 2 years to figure out all the things they fucked up and how to go about fixing them.

20k for a rebuild? check.
2 years of headaches (and thousands more dollars) until the car was road worthy? yep.
old rusty parts in place of the new ones you bought before the ordeal started? yes.
Blown off, ignored and even blamed by the shop? uh huh.
Zip ties IN the engine? god damn.

I don't even know if Addicted is still around, but if so, my advice is don't send your car there to get sorted out. Seems like most rotary shops are gone and a lot of the ones left are playing Monopoly with our money these days..

cr-rex

iTrader: (114)

I think a lot of this could be averted if shops made an effort to document the maintenance done. If you requested pictures or even videos of everything being done to the car, theres no way there would be any "miscommunication" about what went in or what was done.

full detail Automotive down in Tampa actually does exactly that. They're not specifically a rotary shop but the owner does specialize in rotary stuff. They do all 90s Japanese cars. I know for some shipping your car across the country for work may seem a little extreme but keep in mind,the value is only shown at the end.

would you pay less to have it worked on locally and get a product like this or pay a little more and receive a car with zero issues, properly sorted and 100% photo and video documentation of what was done along with constant communication?

The owner at full detail Automotive gives his cell number to all of his customers and is only ever a phone call or text away. He doesnt ever not answer his phone. Maybe you guys might want to check them out next time you're looking for a build or something.

not relevant to the issue but I figured I'd share just so people know there are shops out there that care more about putting a quality product than getting paid. Which in all reality, I think is the primary difference. If the only thing they think about is money then the work will show. If they care more about the car and the quality of the work instead of the money, I believe that will show as well.

I've had my own trouble with elite and sal but on an infinitely smaller scale than this. Those guys are definitely into some crooked stuff over there. It always baffles me how these types of people end up in situations like this. Like why a person like sal ended as the owner of a rotary shop. Why a crooked, lying, sack of donkey *** is in a position to provide ANYTHING to the rotary community...

its sad

Fritz Flynn

iTrader: (263)

Elite like most rotary shops out there today is a disaster. It would seem they've not improved since destroying my car

Talented individuals rarely decide to work on a limited supply of old rotary cars. Sad but true.

dnaps

Ive actually looked into taking legal action but id spend just as much playing the court game. i can literally rebuild my car a 2nd time with the money id spend taking that jag to court. trust me i want to do it so bad just to teach him a lesson but i have to play this **** smart. @TomU I completely agree this is absolute fraud. @iceman4357 i have gave that some thought and i have to say disputing the balance could be worth a shot. i can just do that and see what credit company does. ill be completely honest with you guys. the original thread i made last night consisted of 24 pictures of all the stupid **** Elite did. i didnt know the limit on a thread was 12 pics so i had to erase half of them before posting so @ItalynStylion its pretty much a one sided story here as Elite Rotary is a shop there to provide services to paying customers and they owe us that 100% in everything they do. they fall very very short of that and its fraud and negligence what their committing. i have so much documented proof the back up what im saying. HELL ILL EVEN POST SCREEN SHOTS OF THE FACEBOOK MESSAGES and trust me thats a WHOLE other ugly half. trust me the **** work Sal has done almost killed me a couple times so thats something i wouldnt lie about. @FourtyOunce i hope he does tune in lol. @JuSanBee Id love to take it to court but again i think id end up wasting just as much trying to. and nope i never signed anything waiving the right to sue. ill try and keep up with the responds as much as i can . right now i have to go figure out this deal with the turbo elite gave me that isnt mine

ItalynStylion

iTrader: (1)

@cr-rex I agree, that was my experience with Chris at Rotary Performance recently. We ran into a number of issues with incoming parts not being proper and or things we didn't plan for...but he kept me updated on everything. The lengthy emails he'd send me with pictures and explanations of everything going on were more than just documentation; they were educational. If we something came up unexpected like needing a part we didn't discuss he'd always call and explain (in extreme detail) why it was needed. Heck, I'd typically get a bit of a rotary history lesson to go along with it. Were there delays? Absolutely. But at no point was there a doubt in my mind that the quality of the work was going to be top notch.

@dnaps does your state require the defendant to pay legal fees if you take them to court? I know that's the law in Texas. If it's like that in your state you should absolutely pursue it. Also, if you've got damning FB messages, post them. If in fact they screwed you don't let there be ANY doubt for someone to point to later on. Post the entire paper trail so no one can refute the story. If they really did all that stuff and you can prove it I'd say it's your civic duty to the RX7 community at large to post the evidence. That way the forum can remove them as a sponsor helping make sure no one else gets screwed too. Just my opinion.

iceman4357

iTrader: (2)

Agree on the legal if necessary. I believe he paid via Credit Card and I have actually had great experiences with credit card companies pulling money from companies who do **** like this. Its free and they end up doing all the work. With the documentation he has, I am sure he can recover the labor portion of his investment.

ItalynStylion

iTrader: (1)

^^Yep. Time to give your credit card company a call. They employ people specifically for stuff like this. Spend some time on the phone, it will be worth it.

Narfle

iTrader: (16)

Wait, what?

FourtyOunce

iTrader: (15)

Please share your experience, Fritz. As an elder statesmen of the community, your experience would be greatly appreciated.

Spirit-RE

iTrader: (25)

Its been known that Elite has been shady from the start. Sadly not enough people know about it.

Here's a thread detailing some history.
https://www.rx7club.com/midwest-rx-7...x-7-a-1090876/

And something else shady, they have a redirect for the domain of: www.banzairacing.com goes straight to their site. Of course we know Banzai's actual site is www.banzai-racing.com

RX7 RAGE

iTrader: (22)

And this is why everybody LS swaps

FourtyOunce

iTrader: (15)

I did a whois search and the banzairacing.com domain was initially established 2008 and recently renewed in 2019. It's registered privately, so owner is currently hidden from public view.

aplscrambles

iTrader: (7)

Care to elaborate? Just had Zach/addicted do some work/ tune my FD

LoU "hOw Ya Do"

iTrader: (7)

and this right here is the truth that and a lot of people bail on projects because finding good shops is a nightmare

lawless

iTrader: (4)

I had problems with them as well. I actually cursed them out several times. Car wasn't done when I got it back and it was super nasty.

aplscrambles

iTrader: (7)

I don't like to bad-mouth a shop I have so little experience with in a public forum, but I doubt I'll use them again. I have no personal issue with Zach, but I think things were rushed, and what I asked for was not delivered, certainly not for the money spent. Day off work, uhaul trailer rental, 2 nights in a hotel, fuel, wear and tear on my truck, plus addicted's bill. Call it $2500 for a boost leak test and a mediocre pfc tune. Lesson learned.

Howard Coleman

iTrader: (6)

i just posted this in the 3rd Gen Discussion Section and thought it might just find someone relevant here:

I may have your missing (since 2016) 13 B-REW motor!this is sort of a weird post but i hope it will help TWO FD owners to retrieve their 13B-REW motors. i received two motors from Elite Rotary Shop for possible rebuild in 2016. i was not told who owned them but one motor is from a Right Hand Drive FD and the other came from a Black FD. i disassembled them, inspected them and then waited for further instructions. which never came. during the following four years i have repeatedly asked the proprietor of the shop to come pick them up.

obviously i would like to see them return to their owners. i really hope that this post will find a way to them.

if you own a RHD FD or a black FD and are missing the motor that was in the car when you delivered it to Elite in 2016 please contact me.

Howard