After ~2 years of my car being in multiple shops, I thought I had finally landed someone who could wrap up the job of building my show NSX. Due to the delays of trying to get custom parts from over seas, my project got repeatedly sidelined at his garage. The waiting should have been worth it as this guy was supposed to be a true perfectionist.
So I get a call today from the landlord of the shop. Jack Honse, my fabricator and painter, has disappeared. He has left to go somewhere in Mesa, Arizona (we guess) to work at a hotrod custom shop and has left behind four custom car projects. Mine included. My aluminum body parts are scattered behind his shop and *we believe* my car is inside under lock and key.
Here is the kicker. A fellow Prime member wrote me yesterday saying that he saw a black NSX parked outside of Best Buy here in Columbus. A convertible NSX with temporary tags. <sigh> I can't help but fear the worse, as two black convertible NSX's in Columbus Ohio seems a bit odd. I am trying to stay calm and collective about the whole issue, but I think I'm about to snap.
My friends call my car the Curse and even the Myth. The Curse because in the last 4 years I have spent 20 - 30 G's on parts and lack luster service and never get to drive my car. I think I may have driven it 5 times in the last 3 years. The Myth? Because most of my friends have never actually seen my car as it is always in the shop for one reason or the other. This is mostly my fault (mod fever crossed with go-fast crack pipe), but who else here on Prime has paid $1800.00 in labor just to have the clutch changed out, taking the service center 2 months to complete, and returning your car with a badly dented left front fender while claiming it was like that when they got it?
How about having your new Wilwood BBK's installed and then your mechanic takes a grinder to your new calipers so he can get your wheels to fit over them? Not to mention the fact he installed one of the PADS backwards and caused irreparable damage to one of the rotors.
Or how about having a support bolt in the suspension strip out of its socket (hey, it's aluminum!) and your right rear suspension folds into the wheel well at a 90 degree angle requiring a whole new rear cross beam assembly? Not to mention finding that one of your cams is grinding in its journal because of unexplained oil starvation and now you need to replace the entire front bank and drop the bottom end to check for metal shavings.
Hey, and how about having your stereo shop mess with your new brake calipers (yes, again) and forget to put one of the retaining bolts back in so on the way home your caliper locks up between you powder coated custom Work wheels and your rotors causing your car to block a freeway off ramp in a downpour of rain and requiring a tow truck to drag your car (the wheel is still locked!!) up onto its bed? Forget the fact that said stereo shop has practically sat on my car project for 6 months because they were handling "quick money small jobs". And the fact that my installer was fired half way through the job for selling stolen goods out of the stereo shop to street customers.
Maybe I can tell the story of how I fought with Mike Constantine from Speed Within Reach (now rightfully defunct!) for months to get reimbursed thousands of dollars for clutch cores and returned Clutch Masters' twin disk clutches that would never work properly thus resulting in the $1800.00 service bill mentioned earlier? I'm sure some of you Prime members might find that story interesting. Hmmmmm???
For years I have been an avid NSX enthusiast and supporter. I have kept my chin up and just looked past everything with a twinge of annoyance at the incompetence of others who work in the automotive field. But I am burnt out. I must decide whether to aim to finish my car as I have been trying to do for years now, or cut my losses and part out my car and escape with whatever funds I can pull out of the ashes. I just wish I could have found someone who was willing to share the ambitions I had for building my show NSX. Now I just await to find out if it is still behind the locked doors of a body shop located 2 hours north of me and if so, what to do with it.
So I get a call today from the landlord of the shop. Jack Honse, my fabricator and painter, has disappeared. He has left to go somewhere in Mesa, Arizona (we guess) to work at a hotrod custom shop and has left behind four custom car projects. Mine included. My aluminum body parts are scattered behind his shop and *we believe* my car is inside under lock and key.
Here is the kicker. A fellow Prime member wrote me yesterday saying that he saw a black NSX parked outside of Best Buy here in Columbus. A convertible NSX with temporary tags. <sigh> I can't help but fear the worse, as two black convertible NSX's in Columbus Ohio seems a bit odd. I am trying to stay calm and collective about the whole issue, but I think I'm about to snap.
My friends call my car the Curse and even the Myth. The Curse because in the last 4 years I have spent 20 - 30 G's on parts and lack luster service and never get to drive my car. I think I may have driven it 5 times in the last 3 years. The Myth? Because most of my friends have never actually seen my car as it is always in the shop for one reason or the other. This is mostly my fault (mod fever crossed with go-fast crack pipe), but who else here on Prime has paid $1800.00 in labor just to have the clutch changed out, taking the service center 2 months to complete, and returning your car with a badly dented left front fender while claiming it was like that when they got it?
How about having your new Wilwood BBK's installed and then your mechanic takes a grinder to your new calipers so he can get your wheels to fit over them? Not to mention the fact he installed one of the PADS backwards and caused irreparable damage to one of the rotors.
Or how about having a support bolt in the suspension strip out of its socket (hey, it's aluminum!) and your right rear suspension folds into the wheel well at a 90 degree angle requiring a whole new rear cross beam assembly? Not to mention finding that one of your cams is grinding in its journal because of unexplained oil starvation and now you need to replace the entire front bank and drop the bottom end to check for metal shavings.
Hey, and how about having your stereo shop mess with your new brake calipers (yes, again) and forget to put one of the retaining bolts back in so on the way home your caliper locks up between you powder coated custom Work wheels and your rotors causing your car to block a freeway off ramp in a downpour of rain and requiring a tow truck to drag your car (the wheel is still locked!!) up onto its bed? Forget the fact that said stereo shop has practically sat on my car project for 6 months because they were handling "quick money small jobs". And the fact that my installer was fired half way through the job for selling stolen goods out of the stereo shop to street customers.
Maybe I can tell the story of how I fought with Mike Constantine from Speed Within Reach (now rightfully defunct!) for months to get reimbursed thousands of dollars for clutch cores and returned Clutch Masters' twin disk clutches that would never work properly thus resulting in the $1800.00 service bill mentioned earlier? I'm sure some of you Prime members might find that story interesting. Hmmmmm???
For years I have been an avid NSX enthusiast and supporter. I have kept my chin up and just looked past everything with a twinge of annoyance at the incompetence of others who work in the automotive field. But I am burnt out. I must decide whether to aim to finish my car as I have been trying to do for years now, or cut my losses and part out my car and escape with whatever funds I can pull out of the ashes. I just wish I could have found someone who was willing to share the ambitions I had for building my show NSX. Now I just await to find out if it is still behind the locked doors of a body shop located 2 hours north of me and if so, what to do with it.
