Christmas came early @ Equilibrium
11-24-2010 | 08:42 AM
#1
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 48
From: West Marin
Car Info: 2002 WRX Wagon
Christmas came early @ Equilibrium
Hey Everybody,
About 4 or 5 weeks ago I cam across what seemed to be the perfect 2002 wagon, I got in contact with the owner and it turns out that he lives where I used to go to school in So Cal. We spent like 30 minutes the first time we spoke, just speaking about cars and what we have owned, this guy seemed really cool.
I asked him repeatedly, "does this car have any modifications done to the engine that you know about?" he would repeatedly say " you are not going to find a cleaner 2002 wrx on the west coast" and that seemed about true considering I was looking for 6 months all the way from San Diego to Seattle and as far out as New Mexico for a clean stock wrx. He did say that the fuel rails had been done and the exhaust has been replaced with a meineke exhaust becasue the old one had rusted. I repeatedly said that I had no problem taking it to a Subaru tuner that my friend was familiar with in the area. the owner just kept saying it was the cleanest one I would find. I used to work right next door to the buisness he owns and I even remember buying car parts from him (yes he is in the auto industry, should have been my first red flag) **** to even make me feel more comfortable he even knew one of my good friends from down there. So at this point we have been talking back and forth for a little over a week, the car had a very short listing on craigslist so I figured it wasn't going anywhere. After I made two calls again to reiterate that i was looking for a stock wrx or at least a stock engine.
One of the conversations we had was about how I had a lot of experience with cars and motorcycles and even though I did not know a lot about the wrx, it would only take me a few days to learn almost everything about it.
At this point me and the guy are pretty cool, he even plans to come up to the bay and have me take him to some surf spots I now about in west marin I tell him that if this works out he can even come stay at my house. He was even familiar with my fathers work ( a pretty well know green architecture publisher) and was really stoked to meet him.
I make one last call to the guy, I explain that I am not in huge hurry to get a car (****, I have been saving up for 3 years) and go over what has been done to the car, he again says the cleanest stock car you will find, I AGAIN ask him " Hey, has anything been done to the turbo?, because I believe that you should not alter this engine, when you start swapping out turbos and exhaust, there is a lot of other things that need to be done, and quite frankly most people never do that" I again ask him if he minds me taking it to my friends tuner just to make sure that it is all as good as he says and he almost gets a little bummed that I don't trust him, so I tell him I can put a deposit in his account so he can hold onto the car, he's like "dont worry bro, this car is yours" he kept saying "this is just the first step on a long path bro"
So I take $9500 out of the bank rent a car, a hotel room and drive the 6 hours it takes to get there, I sleep in the worst hotel bed ever and wake up to go check out the car. the guy had sent me some pictures and I even asked about the turbo, to me it kind looked modded but I wasn't all that familiar with the engine bay of the wrx so I could have been wrong, again he assured me that I would not find a more stock one.
I meet the guy and we go take the car out for a drive, I give it a good look over no major leaks, no huge wrinkles in the frame or underbody suggesting a huge wreck, I check the carfax and it is super clean.
We hung out for a few hours talking about surfing and taking bong hits, I try to get him down a little bit from his price but he just keeps saying " bro! you are not going to find anything better or more stock and babied" I give him the cash we sign the pink and I'm on my way.
I get back to the bay and take it down the street to get smogged, the mechanic asks me if the car is modded, I say only the exhaust and the fuel rails, I come back after 30 min to find my car not done being smogged, the mechanic seems kinda of pissed and he quickly snaps at me " this car is heavily moddified, you lied to me" I take it down the street to a guy who used to pass my old corollas with newer engines in em.
he takes one look at he engine and he is like, "I think this is not the stock turbo setup"
at this point I am pretty ****ing pissed, I get on the phone and talk with the guy who just sold it to me, he is like "that intake is completely stock bro!" but he does offer to buy me any parts I need to make it right, at this point I figured out that this guy is trying to **** me over.
I make an appointment with LIC for the next week, but turns out the next day I found myself in Novato near LIC, I dropped by and one of the owners looked at the car, he told me that the guy had totally lied to me and the turbo looked pretty bad. I call the previous owner and at this point I am pretty pissed.
One thing that I do know is that the car is not smoged so this whole sale cannot be finalized until it is smoged, the guy again offers to get me any parts I need and if I want, he can illegally smog the car for me down there while my car is still up here. At this time I am not getting any sleep, I am not eating as much as I should, and my fiance and I are arguing a lot. so a few days later one of the owners calls me from LIC and tells me that they cannot work on it because it is so screwed up they dont want to become responsible for such a poorly modded WRX. He does advise me that I should get my money back or let him smog it himself and dig himself into a deeper hole.
At this point I am losing my mind, I really want to get the car checked out to just know what I am working with and so the next time I call the guy who ripped me off I can read him a list of how he lied to me and screwed me.
The day that I was supposed to go to LIC I got a call form the previous owner, we talked and I confronted him on all the **** he lied to me about and I told him how I knew that the car had been painted, which I had kinda suspected, but the guys at LIC made it obvious to me. I told him that I felt like I had been the victim of fraud but I was more upset with the fact that this guy lied directly to my face and took me for a moron and I cannot lie, at this point I look like the dumbest human ever.
Enter Equilibrium Tuning, I had spoke with Brendan a few weeks prior because I was looking at a car in fairfield, he took about 20 minutes and told me almost everything I should look for without the aid of a car lift of compression/leakdown tests. I ended up forgetting about the car in fairfield after I met this guy down south. So after talking with LIC I called Brendan, he was honest and said "if those guys don't want to touch your car then you might get the same answer from us" but he did say why don't you bring it up here and we can run it through all the tests that we do for someone inspecting a car for purchase. that same day Ed messaged me and asked if I needed some help with my problem.
I made an appointment for friday morning
I called the guy who ripped me off and told him that I want my money back, I told him I was taking him to small claims court and after I win in small claims, I am hiring a lawyer and suing him and his buisness for all the time and money I wasted. . .
here is the best part, he switches into a russian accent and tells me he is going to gut me like a pig, I tell him "**** you bro, you just ripped me off for $9000 and you think I'm going to be scared that you are now threatening my life?" I hung up and decided I was going to call him after I go to fairfield.
So last friday I drove it up to Equilibrium and prayed that I did not get myself in to deep.
Here is was what they found.
- Crappy maybe 10 year old turbo
- Compression shows ring wear, with a 17psi swing
- Spark plugs overtorqued
- Boost vac line routing run incorrectly or set on purpose to wastegate boost
-A/C belt is toasted
-throttle cable loose
- Turbo has shaft play and appears to have been scraping the wall
- PCV is routed wron into catchcan thats doing nothing
- MAF relocated into fender well directly after filter
- BAD oil leaks: at front and rear main seals,
Turbo return line, both valve covers, cyl#1 spark plug gasket, shifter seal
MY FAVORITE!- fresh silicone around oil dipstick at oil pan, possible last minute fix.
- RR la link bent - possibly from previous dyno
- RL outer CV boot ripped and bone dry
- FR wheel has light play, possible tie rod
- LH timing covers rear and front, broken and missing bolts
- Possible rod knock coming from engine, but hard to tell.
I thanked those guys for their work and got on the road, twisted up a swisher, smoked it to my head and called the scumbag who ripped me off while driving home on the 37.
I told him that he could either (A) give me $6000 so I could fix the car in order to get it smoggable (B) he could give me back $500 less than I payed him ill bring back the car and we will forget this horrible thing ever happened, he told me he was going to call me back in a minute. I figured he was just packing his bags for mexico and counting out my money.
Instead he called me back and says he will meet me in king city, he will give me back $500 less than I payed him because I had already put on 2200 miles since I purchased the car from him. We agreed a time to meet, I called up a buddy to drive down there and give me a ride home as well make sure all went smoothly.
We met up, he took the car on a spin tried to complain that the engine was rattling and the idle was low. I told him flat out, "this car is in fu*@%ng better condition than when you gave it to me, Equilibrium are some of the fu*@%ng best Subaru tuners in Nor Cal"
he pulled out a stack of $100's and i counted my money about 6 times in front of him and just to make sure he knew he was losing that cash, I made him count it out one last time.
I cannot thanks Brendan, Ed, Sonya and the crew @ Equilibrium tuning enough, I have dreamed of the bugeyes ever since they came to the US. I purchased that car and drove home thinking that it was all a dream, I could not believe that I had finally got the car of my dreams. That all turned into anger and sadness, at one point last week, I looked at the silver wagon and thought how much I hated these wrx's now, how my dreams had been crushed because I was too quick to trust someone and when red flags were going up I didnt pay attention.
Thinking about it, maybe I should have been stuck with that car in order to teach me a lesson. . . . . wait, f*@k that! I deserve a beautiful wrx!!!
Thanks Equilibrium!!!!!! you have a loyal customer for life!!!!!!
Evan.
p.s. sorry if i made to office smell like tree, had to smoke on a few ones while I awaited the news!!!
I picked up a Blue 2003 Sedan yesterday w/82k, stock engine!!! passed smog!! gonna call you guys and make an appt.
Ev
About 4 or 5 weeks ago I cam across what seemed to be the perfect 2002 wagon, I got in contact with the owner and it turns out that he lives where I used to go to school in So Cal. We spent like 30 minutes the first time we spoke, just speaking about cars and what we have owned, this guy seemed really cool.
I asked him repeatedly, "does this car have any modifications done to the engine that you know about?" he would repeatedly say " you are not going to find a cleaner 2002 wrx on the west coast" and that seemed about true considering I was looking for 6 months all the way from San Diego to Seattle and as far out as New Mexico for a clean stock wrx. He did say that the fuel rails had been done and the exhaust has been replaced with a meineke exhaust becasue the old one had rusted. I repeatedly said that I had no problem taking it to a Subaru tuner that my friend was familiar with in the area. the owner just kept saying it was the cleanest one I would find. I used to work right next door to the buisness he owns and I even remember buying car parts from him (yes he is in the auto industry, should have been my first red flag) **** to even make me feel more comfortable he even knew one of my good friends from down there. So at this point we have been talking back and forth for a little over a week, the car had a very short listing on craigslist so I figured it wasn't going anywhere. After I made two calls again to reiterate that i was looking for a stock wrx or at least a stock engine.
One of the conversations we had was about how I had a lot of experience with cars and motorcycles and even though I did not know a lot about the wrx, it would only take me a few days to learn almost everything about it.
At this point me and the guy are pretty cool, he even plans to come up to the bay and have me take him to some surf spots I now about in west marin I tell him that if this works out he can even come stay at my house. He was even familiar with my fathers work ( a pretty well know green architecture publisher) and was really stoked to meet him.
I make one last call to the guy, I explain that I am not in huge hurry to get a car (****, I have been saving up for 3 years) and go over what has been done to the car, he again says the cleanest stock car you will find, I AGAIN ask him " Hey, has anything been done to the turbo?, because I believe that you should not alter this engine, when you start swapping out turbos and exhaust, there is a lot of other things that need to be done, and quite frankly most people never do that" I again ask him if he minds me taking it to my friends tuner just to make sure that it is all as good as he says and he almost gets a little bummed that I don't trust him, so I tell him I can put a deposit in his account so he can hold onto the car, he's like "dont worry bro, this car is yours" he kept saying "this is just the first step on a long path bro"
So I take $9500 out of the bank rent a car, a hotel room and drive the 6 hours it takes to get there, I sleep in the worst hotel bed ever and wake up to go check out the car. the guy had sent me some pictures and I even asked about the turbo, to me it kind looked modded but I wasn't all that familiar with the engine bay of the wrx so I could have been wrong, again he assured me that I would not find a more stock one.
I meet the guy and we go take the car out for a drive, I give it a good look over no major leaks, no huge wrinkles in the frame or underbody suggesting a huge wreck, I check the carfax and it is super clean.
We hung out for a few hours talking about surfing and taking bong hits, I try to get him down a little bit from his price but he just keeps saying " bro! you are not going to find anything better or more stock and babied" I give him the cash we sign the pink and I'm on my way.
I get back to the bay and take it down the street to get smogged, the mechanic asks me if the car is modded, I say only the exhaust and the fuel rails, I come back after 30 min to find my car not done being smogged, the mechanic seems kinda of pissed and he quickly snaps at me " this car is heavily moddified, you lied to me" I take it down the street to a guy who used to pass my old corollas with newer engines in em.
he takes one look at he engine and he is like, "I think this is not the stock turbo setup"
at this point I am pretty ****ing pissed, I get on the phone and talk with the guy who just sold it to me, he is like "that intake is completely stock bro!" but he does offer to buy me any parts I need to make it right, at this point I figured out that this guy is trying to **** me over.
I make an appointment with LIC for the next week, but turns out the next day I found myself in Novato near LIC, I dropped by and one of the owners looked at the car, he told me that the guy had totally lied to me and the turbo looked pretty bad. I call the previous owner and at this point I am pretty pissed.
One thing that I do know is that the car is not smoged so this whole sale cannot be finalized until it is smoged, the guy again offers to get me any parts I need and if I want, he can illegally smog the car for me down there while my car is still up here. At this time I am not getting any sleep, I am not eating as much as I should, and my fiance and I are arguing a lot. so a few days later one of the owners calls me from LIC and tells me that they cannot work on it because it is so screwed up they dont want to become responsible for such a poorly modded WRX. He does advise me that I should get my money back or let him smog it himself and dig himself into a deeper hole.
At this point I am losing my mind, I really want to get the car checked out to just know what I am working with and so the next time I call the guy who ripped me off I can read him a list of how he lied to me and screwed me.
The day that I was supposed to go to LIC I got a call form the previous owner, we talked and I confronted him on all the **** he lied to me about and I told him how I knew that the car had been painted, which I had kinda suspected, but the guys at LIC made it obvious to me. I told him that I felt like I had been the victim of fraud but I was more upset with the fact that this guy lied directly to my face and took me for a moron and I cannot lie, at this point I look like the dumbest human ever.
Enter Equilibrium Tuning, I had spoke with Brendan a few weeks prior because I was looking at a car in fairfield, he took about 20 minutes and told me almost everything I should look for without the aid of a car lift of compression/leakdown tests. I ended up forgetting about the car in fairfield after I met this guy down south. So after talking with LIC I called Brendan, he was honest and said "if those guys don't want to touch your car then you might get the same answer from us" but he did say why don't you bring it up here and we can run it through all the tests that we do for someone inspecting a car for purchase. that same day Ed messaged me and asked if I needed some help with my problem.
I made an appointment for friday morning
I called the guy who ripped me off and told him that I want my money back, I told him I was taking him to small claims court and after I win in small claims, I am hiring a lawyer and suing him and his buisness for all the time and money I wasted. . .
here is the best part, he switches into a russian accent and tells me he is going to gut me like a pig, I tell him "**** you bro, you just ripped me off for $9000 and you think I'm going to be scared that you are now threatening my life?" I hung up and decided I was going to call him after I go to fairfield.
So last friday I drove it up to Equilibrium and prayed that I did not get myself in to deep.
Here is was what they found.
- Crappy maybe 10 year old turbo
- Compression shows ring wear, with a 17psi swing
- Spark plugs overtorqued
- Boost vac line routing run incorrectly or set on purpose to wastegate boost
-A/C belt is toasted
-throttle cable loose
- Turbo has shaft play and appears to have been scraping the wall
- PCV is routed wron into catchcan thats doing nothing
- MAF relocated into fender well directly after filter
- BAD oil leaks: at front and rear main seals,
Turbo return line, both valve covers, cyl#1 spark plug gasket, shifter seal
MY FAVORITE!- fresh silicone around oil dipstick at oil pan, possible last minute fix.
- RR la link bent - possibly from previous dyno
- RL outer CV boot ripped and bone dry
- FR wheel has light play, possible tie rod
- LH timing covers rear and front, broken and missing bolts
- Possible rod knock coming from engine, but hard to tell.
I thanked those guys for their work and got on the road, twisted up a swisher, smoked it to my head and called the scumbag who ripped me off while driving home on the 37.
I told him that he could either (A) give me $6000 so I could fix the car in order to get it smoggable (B) he could give me back $500 less than I payed him ill bring back the car and we will forget this horrible thing ever happened, he told me he was going to call me back in a minute. I figured he was just packing his bags for mexico and counting out my money.
Instead he called me back and says he will meet me in king city, he will give me back $500 less than I payed him because I had already put on 2200 miles since I purchased the car from him. We agreed a time to meet, I called up a buddy to drive down there and give me a ride home as well make sure all went smoothly.
We met up, he took the car on a spin tried to complain that the engine was rattling and the idle was low. I told him flat out, "this car is in fu*@%ng better condition than when you gave it to me, Equilibrium are some of the fu*@%ng best Subaru tuners in Nor Cal"
he pulled out a stack of $100's and i counted my money about 6 times in front of him and just to make sure he knew he was losing that cash, I made him count it out one last time.
I cannot thanks Brendan, Ed, Sonya and the crew @ Equilibrium tuning enough, I have dreamed of the bugeyes ever since they came to the US. I purchased that car and drove home thinking that it was all a dream, I could not believe that I had finally got the car of my dreams. That all turned into anger and sadness, at one point last week, I looked at the silver wagon and thought how much I hated these wrx's now, how my dreams had been crushed because I was too quick to trust someone and when red flags were going up I didnt pay attention.
Thinking about it, maybe I should have been stuck with that car in order to teach me a lesson. . . . . wait, f*@k that! I deserve a beautiful wrx!!!
Thanks Equilibrium!!!!!! you have a loyal customer for life!!!!!!
Evan.
p.s. sorry if i made to office smell like tree, had to smoke on a few ones while I awaited the news!!!
I picked up a Blue 2003 Sedan yesterday w/82k, stock engine!!! passed smog!! gonna call you guys and make an appt.
Ev
11-24-2010 | 09:21 AM
#4
Registered User
iTrader: (1)
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 401
From: Fairfield, CA earning my stripes
Car Info: 2011 WRX Sedan
daaaaamn thats a long and sorted tail, but thanks for telling it. Passed some time at work. Sorry you had such a messed up ordeal, but glad EQ could get you sorted. I have more and more respect for that shop every day lol
11-25-2010 | 02:15 PM
#9
Registered User
iTrader: (2)
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 459
From: Turlock, CA
Car Info: EQ Built/Tuned WRX
Damn bro, glad to hear it all worked out in the end for you!!! Can't say enough about EQ as they also re-built my motor after I got screwed over with my first build... They are a great, and very knowledgable group of people...
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