IR Performance (IRP) > PF Supercars... by a TON!!!!
IR Performance (IRP) > PF Supercars... by a TON!!!!
Hello Rotorheads -
Before I get into this review, you should know this is a GLOWINGLY POSITIVE review of IR Performance, and not a blanket condemnation on PF Supercars and its proprietor, Ray Wilson (despite my soon to be typed snarky remarks & vitriolic comments).
That said, what I've learned over my recent ordeal with my 93 CYM (52k, DP, CB, 99 Turbos, stock ECU, at the time of the work) is that there is really only ONE place to take your Rx7 to if you live within a 600 mile radius of Northern New Jersey - IR Performance in Metuchen, NJ - run by your very own GoodFellasFD3s (Richy Rich Farrell) and RotaryExperimentSeven (Ihor Hulking Huk).
Here's the story, how it went terribly wrong, got even worse at PFS, and how it went amazingly right at the end thanks to the boys at IRP (for the car, not my wallet).
I bought a car with a bad motor - low 70's compression on all faces on both rotors. I drove it gently for a few years before deciding to go all-in on a rebuild project. I pulled the motor myself, tore it down, cleaned it up, and spec'd it out as a prime candidate for a stock port rebuild. However, before I actually ordered any rebuild kit, my 33 year old wisdom got the better of me, and I decided that for the very little money I'd save doing it myself, and the very high likelihood of my f*cking up something by .1mm and having to do it again, I decided to buy a Mazda reman from Ray Crowe at Malloy. Smart decision right? Turns out I was dead wrong - and the faulty engine from Ray was only the start of it.
Before I go any further, let me tell you that the reman I got from Ray was bad (vibrated excessively), and that he did EVERYTHING in his power to both get it warrantied (which he did), and get the labor for having IRP swap it out and put the new one in covered (which he was not able to do). Ray is a beast and I will continue sending him all of my money for everything but an engine.
So now you know a critical part of the story - the engine turned out to be bad. However, before the boys at IRP used every diagnostic capability they had to discern that, I had installed my own motor (along with some other goodies like a clutch, intercooler, PowerFC with a base map, etc) and a not so good experience at PF Supercars.
When I installed the motor, the car started right up & turned right over. However, it would not boost properly and vibrated like crazy. At 2500 RPM, it vibrated so hard that if I were a chick, I would have had multiple orgasms on the way to Frederick to drop it off (about 45 minutes from my house). After doing some of my own troubleshooting, I called PF Supercars and spoke with Ray Wilson and told him I needed the car sorted out and tuned. He was happy to do it, so I brought it up and to work he went.
Lets fast forward probably 2-3 weeks. In that timeframe, the typical problems with PFS apply - ones that have been well covered that I don't need to reiterate in any detail other than to say the guy is IMPOSSIBLE to get a hold of - both at his shop phone and via email. But all I wanted to do was find out if I needed a new motor or if he had sorted the problems.
We went back & forth a few times, his communication was good in spurts and terrible in others (he did send me pics a few times of some of the work he was doing which was very cool), but finally he tells me that he's got the car tuned & ready to go. Naturally I make the Mrs. drive me to the shop the next day. Now Ray did a lot of work on my car - broke my hubs apart to put in spacers, fixed some "DIY" grade stuff that I did that would not have lasted, did some fancy welding of my new intercooler pipes, and the tune (probably some miscellaneous stuff I am forgetting). The bill was $2,800 (give or take) and while I was shocked, I was happy to have a perfectly running machine..... or so I thought.
Ray pulls the car out front, and as he's handing me the keys says "my guy says it has some pretty serious vibration - especially at higher RPM's. It's probably the diff brace you have on it, but I didn't drive it so just an FYI." Now I'd love to go ape-**** here and tell you all the reasons everything he said was so frigging wrong, but I own part of the liability here in that I didn't ask him if the vibration (which was better than before but still awful), was something more than the diff brace - or if he even looked into it. I got in the car & figured I could just remove the diff brace and all would be fine.
Well I drove it home and it was loud and vibrated like crazy - to an unacceptable point. Naturally I got home and yanked the diff brace, ETB, and anything else that made the car stiffer to see if I could get the vibration to stop. I couldn't so I called Rich at IRP.
In no time, we were talking on the phone, and he was giving me all kinds of possible causes that I try before I drove it the 4 hours to his place in NJ (for FREE!). I tried them, but to no avail. Since it was clearly a bigger issue, I made an appt to bring the car to IRP.
The moment I got to IRP, the first words out of Ihor's mouth were - "Don't worry Steve. it can only be one of a few things, but we'll fix it no problem." Both true, but also famous last words. Ihor suspected the vibration was coming from my alignment of the PPF and that it was running up against the body. I told him to check it out, and to give my car the once over while he had it and fix anything that needed fixing (in for a penny in for a pound right?).
After about 2 days, the emails start flying. Not the PPF, so they dropped the tranny. Tranny is good but the throw out bearing was installed wrong (my bad), so they fixed that. They looked at the diff, the engine mounts (which were theirs by the way and are AWESOME), the drive shaft, and everything else in the driveline where they came up the following:
"Steve - we've literally tried EVERYTHING that is not the engine to nail down this vibration and we can't find a cause. It's the engine."
...... **** .....
"I'll call Ray in the morning and see about getting this warrantied." (which they did).
Now - I am CONVINCED that if I and called Ray (Malloy) to try to get the engine warrantied, he would have told me to Go F. Myself. But because IRP buys about 900 engines a year from him, Ray convinced Mazda to warranty the engine and to ship it to IPR for FREE. He did not however, convince Mazda to cover the hours and hours of troubleshooting and re-installation (and retuning) of the motor. BONER.
About 3 weeks later, with exactly 137 phone calls from Rich between the warranty conversation and my picking it up, and about 95 emails from Ihor asking me if he was OK to replace anything that would or could go bad, (which I gave him permission to do) and 6 hours of road tuning, I drove up to NJ to see my newly fixed baby. BONER (good kind this time).
After a 4 hour car ride we arrived on a Saturday morning at 9:15 where Ihor came to the shop just for me and showed me my car. He even said he DROVE IT and it was amazing.
Boy was he DEAD WRONG. The car could not have been any further from amazing. It was so far beyond amazing, the only words to describe it are ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!! Vibration? Gone! Power delivery? MUCH better. Little nagging things: FIXED! (They even fixed things I didn't ask them to!) Ride quality: SUPERB (even with the Diff brace!). But most importantly, EVERY LITTLE THING THAT COULD GO WRONG, WAS FIXED. My CYM is BULLETPROOF
Now the last part of this story - once I had gotten all this work done I called Ray Wilson to talk about it. Getting a hold of him took 2 weeks, and me getting back to his return call took 2 more. Finally, I gave him the story and after asking me a bunch of questions to prove it was the motor, I told him to call Rich & Ihor. He said he would - he never did. In fact, he never even called me back to tell me he never did. Just the worst way to treat someone who just gave you the better part of $3,000.
To sum up my long-winded narrative, if you are considering taking your car to someone on the east coast to get it fixed, tuned, ported, modded, beefed up, or just plain washed - take to IRP.
I have been to the competition and they f*cking suck. Does PFS know the 7? Yes - mostly. Are they diligent in their efforts? I did not have that experience. Do they care about their customers? Not even enough to return a phone call.
Every place where PF Supercars failed (communication, expectations, not driving a car before returning it, price, and worse yet - not doing the diligence to provide a working car back to a customer), IRP excels.
Rich & Ihor - thank you. Sincerely. The car went from being a laggard with its pitfalls to be being a shining mechanical example of what a stock-ish FD can be. You guys are amazing in every facet of your business, you know these cars inside & out, and you won't stop until the car can be everything your customer wants it to be, and then some.
Now I just need to fix that suspension & get it painted...
I AM an IRP fanboy, and everyone else here should be too.
Steve
Before I get into this review, you should know this is a GLOWINGLY POSITIVE review of IR Performance, and not a blanket condemnation on PF Supercars and its proprietor, Ray Wilson (despite my soon to be typed snarky remarks & vitriolic comments).
That said, what I've learned over my recent ordeal with my 93 CYM (52k, DP, CB, 99 Turbos, stock ECU, at the time of the work) is that there is really only ONE place to take your Rx7 to if you live within a 600 mile radius of Northern New Jersey - IR Performance in Metuchen, NJ - run by your very own GoodFellasFD3s (Richy Rich Farrell) and RotaryExperimentSeven (Ihor Hulking Huk).
Here's the story, how it went terribly wrong, got even worse at PFS, and how it went amazingly right at the end thanks to the boys at IRP (for the car, not my wallet).
I bought a car with a bad motor - low 70's compression on all faces on both rotors. I drove it gently for a few years before deciding to go all-in on a rebuild project. I pulled the motor myself, tore it down, cleaned it up, and spec'd it out as a prime candidate for a stock port rebuild. However, before I actually ordered any rebuild kit, my 33 year old wisdom got the better of me, and I decided that for the very little money I'd save doing it myself, and the very high likelihood of my f*cking up something by .1mm and having to do it again, I decided to buy a Mazda reman from Ray Crowe at Malloy. Smart decision right? Turns out I was dead wrong - and the faulty engine from Ray was only the start of it.
Before I go any further, let me tell you that the reman I got from Ray was bad (vibrated excessively), and that he did EVERYTHING in his power to both get it warrantied (which he did), and get the labor for having IRP swap it out and put the new one in covered (which he was not able to do). Ray is a beast and I will continue sending him all of my money for everything but an engine.
So now you know a critical part of the story - the engine turned out to be bad. However, before the boys at IRP used every diagnostic capability they had to discern that, I had installed my own motor (along with some other goodies like a clutch, intercooler, PowerFC with a base map, etc) and a not so good experience at PF Supercars.
When I installed the motor, the car started right up & turned right over. However, it would not boost properly and vibrated like crazy. At 2500 RPM, it vibrated so hard that if I were a chick, I would have had multiple orgasms on the way to Frederick to drop it off (about 45 minutes from my house). After doing some of my own troubleshooting, I called PF Supercars and spoke with Ray Wilson and told him I needed the car sorted out and tuned. He was happy to do it, so I brought it up and to work he went.
Lets fast forward probably 2-3 weeks. In that timeframe, the typical problems with PFS apply - ones that have been well covered that I don't need to reiterate in any detail other than to say the guy is IMPOSSIBLE to get a hold of - both at his shop phone and via email. But all I wanted to do was find out if I needed a new motor or if he had sorted the problems.
We went back & forth a few times, his communication was good in spurts and terrible in others (he did send me pics a few times of some of the work he was doing which was very cool), but finally he tells me that he's got the car tuned & ready to go. Naturally I make the Mrs. drive me to the shop the next day. Now Ray did a lot of work on my car - broke my hubs apart to put in spacers, fixed some "DIY" grade stuff that I did that would not have lasted, did some fancy welding of my new intercooler pipes, and the tune (probably some miscellaneous stuff I am forgetting). The bill was $2,800 (give or take) and while I was shocked, I was happy to have a perfectly running machine..... or so I thought.
Ray pulls the car out front, and as he's handing me the keys says "my guy says it has some pretty serious vibration - especially at higher RPM's. It's probably the diff brace you have on it, but I didn't drive it so just an FYI." Now I'd love to go ape-**** here and tell you all the reasons everything he said was so frigging wrong, but I own part of the liability here in that I didn't ask him if the vibration (which was better than before but still awful), was something more than the diff brace - or if he even looked into it. I got in the car & figured I could just remove the diff brace and all would be fine.
Well I drove it home and it was loud and vibrated like crazy - to an unacceptable point. Naturally I got home and yanked the diff brace, ETB, and anything else that made the car stiffer to see if I could get the vibration to stop. I couldn't so I called Rich at IRP.
In no time, we were talking on the phone, and he was giving me all kinds of possible causes that I try before I drove it the 4 hours to his place in NJ (for FREE!). I tried them, but to no avail. Since it was clearly a bigger issue, I made an appt to bring the car to IRP.
The moment I got to IRP, the first words out of Ihor's mouth were - "Don't worry Steve. it can only be one of a few things, but we'll fix it no problem." Both true, but also famous last words. Ihor suspected the vibration was coming from my alignment of the PPF and that it was running up against the body. I told him to check it out, and to give my car the once over while he had it and fix anything that needed fixing (in for a penny in for a pound right?).
After about 2 days, the emails start flying. Not the PPF, so they dropped the tranny. Tranny is good but the throw out bearing was installed wrong (my bad), so they fixed that. They looked at the diff, the engine mounts (which were theirs by the way and are AWESOME), the drive shaft, and everything else in the driveline where they came up the following:
"Steve - we've literally tried EVERYTHING that is not the engine to nail down this vibration and we can't find a cause. It's the engine."
...... **** .....
"I'll call Ray in the morning and see about getting this warrantied." (which they did).
Now - I am CONVINCED that if I and called Ray (Malloy) to try to get the engine warrantied, he would have told me to Go F. Myself. But because IRP buys about 900 engines a year from him, Ray convinced Mazda to warranty the engine and to ship it to IPR for FREE. He did not however, convince Mazda to cover the hours and hours of troubleshooting and re-installation (and retuning) of the motor. BONER.
About 3 weeks later, with exactly 137 phone calls from Rich between the warranty conversation and my picking it up, and about 95 emails from Ihor asking me if he was OK to replace anything that would or could go bad, (which I gave him permission to do) and 6 hours of road tuning, I drove up to NJ to see my newly fixed baby. BONER (good kind this time).
After a 4 hour car ride we arrived on a Saturday morning at 9:15 where Ihor came to the shop just for me and showed me my car. He even said he DROVE IT and it was amazing.
Boy was he DEAD WRONG. The car could not have been any further from amazing. It was so far beyond amazing, the only words to describe it are ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!! Vibration? Gone! Power delivery? MUCH better. Little nagging things: FIXED! (They even fixed things I didn't ask them to!) Ride quality: SUPERB (even with the Diff brace!). But most importantly, EVERY LITTLE THING THAT COULD GO WRONG, WAS FIXED. My CYM is BULLETPROOF
Now the last part of this story - once I had gotten all this work done I called Ray Wilson to talk about it. Getting a hold of him took 2 weeks, and me getting back to his return call took 2 more. Finally, I gave him the story and after asking me a bunch of questions to prove it was the motor, I told him to call Rich & Ihor. He said he would - he never did. In fact, he never even called me back to tell me he never did. Just the worst way to treat someone who just gave you the better part of $3,000.
To sum up my long-winded narrative, if you are considering taking your car to someone on the east coast to get it fixed, tuned, ported, modded, beefed up, or just plain washed - take to IRP.
I have been to the competition and they f*cking suck. Does PFS know the 7? Yes - mostly. Are they diligent in their efforts? I did not have that experience. Do they care about their customers? Not even enough to return a phone call.
Every place where PF Supercars failed (communication, expectations, not driving a car before returning it, price, and worse yet - not doing the diligence to provide a working car back to a customer), IRP excels.
Rich & Ihor - thank you. Sincerely. The car went from being a laggard with its pitfalls to be being a shining mechanical example of what a stock-ish FD can be. You guys are amazing in every facet of your business, you know these cars inside & out, and you won't stop until the car can be everything your customer wants it to be, and then some.
Now I just need to fix that suspension & get it painted...
I AM an IRP fanboy, and everyone else here should be too.
Steve
I don't get into discussions regarding other shops, but I am glad you are happy with our services Steve. If you need anything in the future don't hesitate to ask.
Last edited by IRPerformance; Nov 7, 2013 at 12:18 PM.
Ok I feel like you are telling my story up to a certain point. My car has been at PFS for 11 months, it was there for 3 months the first time after I bought it, (93 R1, single t88, PFC) I took it there to have them look over the car and ensure that everything in on the up and up. Three months later I get a call saying its done, so I make the drive (1.5 hours) and I show up and it’s still on the dyno. Two hours later the car is done, but now the driver side rear tire is flat… Ray helps me put the spare on it and then hands me the bill for $2800 to replace a wastegate, motor mount, fuel filter, tune and fix a crack in the manifold. Says that the rear rotor was a little low on one side but it was ok to tune anyway. I then had to find a place that could fix the tire in the area and drive it home nice and easy due to traffic. Due to weather I was unable to drive the car for a few days but then it got nice out. So four days after I got the car back I took it out on 95 third gear under 80% throttle she popped. Done, sitting on the side of the road, get it towed back to the house, do a compression test and 0, 0, 0 on the rear and very low on the front.
I call Ray and get him on the phone a week later after well over 100 calls and emails. He states that the engine needs to come apart and be rebuilt, not sure what happened but might have been the low rear rotor. I have the car shipped to his shop in January and pay half of the cost up front and was told by April it will be done. April comes and nothing, after many, many calls and emails he says he wasn’t able to get to it yet due to the line of cars he still has to complete before mine. Says by mid-June for sure, June comes and goes and nothing. Basically it has been like this since the car went to the shop, six delivery dates have come and gone with nothing to show for it. But he did ask for additional fund about a month and a half ago so I paid another couple grand and really haven’t heard from him since. I am beyond frustrated, basically I paid what I feel was top dollar for this car over a year ago, I am another 10k into the car with more to come I’m sure and have only drove the car six times and less than 200 miles in over a year.
I call Ray and get him on the phone a week later after well over 100 calls and emails. He states that the engine needs to come apart and be rebuilt, not sure what happened but might have been the low rear rotor. I have the car shipped to his shop in January and pay half of the cost up front and was told by April it will be done. April comes and nothing, after many, many calls and emails he says he wasn’t able to get to it yet due to the line of cars he still has to complete before mine. Says by mid-June for sure, June comes and goes and nothing. Basically it has been like this since the car went to the shop, six delivery dates have come and gone with nothing to show for it. But he did ask for additional fund about a month and a half ago so I paid another couple grand and really haven’t heard from him since. I am beyond frustrated, basically I paid what I feel was top dollar for this car over a year ago, I am another 10k into the car with more to come I’m sure and have only drove the car six times and less than 200 miles in over a year.
Marshallbc - Holy crap dude. Thats a terrible story. So many things wrong with it!
Funny how he warned you about the rear rotor then it pops less than 100 miles later. What a coincidence?!
If I were you I'd do the following:
- Get a trailer & a truck (rent one if you have to).
- Drive it straight to PFS (don't call first)
- Ask Ray for the printout to all the work that has been done to date and settle up
- Have Ray load the car onto your truck
- Drive it straight to IRP in New Jersey and give it to Rich & Ihor.
I wouldn't waste another second calling him or another dollar funding his practice of not returning calls or servicing customers. I'd get out now because chances are even when the car is done, it won't be right.
At IRP, the timeframes are true (barring something unforeseen), the work is amazing, and they will find and fix things that I know Ray wouldn't, as well as fix things that may become an issue in the future.
You're spending the same money either way - its your call if you want to be aggravated & do it twice, or do it fast and do it once. Seems like a no brainer to me.
Steve
Funny how he warned you about the rear rotor then it pops less than 100 miles later. What a coincidence?!
If I were you I'd do the following:
- Get a trailer & a truck (rent one if you have to).
- Drive it straight to PFS (don't call first)
- Ask Ray for the printout to all the work that has been done to date and settle up
- Have Ray load the car onto your truck
- Drive it straight to IRP in New Jersey and give it to Rich & Ihor.
I wouldn't waste another second calling him or another dollar funding his practice of not returning calls or servicing customers. I'd get out now because chances are even when the car is done, it won't be right.
At IRP, the timeframes are true (barring something unforeseen), the work is amazing, and they will find and fix things that I know Ray wouldn't, as well as fix things that may become an issue in the future.
You're spending the same money either way - its your call if you want to be aggravated & do it twice, or do it fast and do it once. Seems like a no brainer to me.
Steve
