Disclaimer:
Many people have had zero issues with The Racer’s Line. However, this was my experience.
Summary:
Noticed late-August that the car was stumbling at times during idle. Not often, about once a week or two. The most obvious times, it felt like the engine would stall because of how badly it was shaking. As time went on, multiple times it was so severe that the CEL would flash. From late-August to mid-October it got progressively worse, to the point that any time I drove, anywhere, it was constantly misfiring/idling roughly.
TLDR:
After this experience, I advise any potential customers of TRL to re-think their plans, as I have lost all trust in TRL’s care for its customers and their property and I want to make sure others are aware why. You’ll need to read the details to get the context and understand why I make this statement.
Timeline:
July 10: Went to TRL for an install of my headers, Flex Fuel kit, and dyno tune with Ecutek.
August: Noticed engine wasn’t as smooth, culminating in the first extremely rough idle event on August 28, where it felt like the car was about to stall. Figured at first that it was a bad tank of E85, but it continued.
Sept. 9: Messaged Neal, gave a description of my issue, asked if running full E85 since the tune done at TRL back in July could be problematic, since I’m new to using ethanol and hadn’t made any more changes to the car since then. Asked if I should bring it in for some fine-tuning (to datalog, double-check if things were correct).
Sept. 12: Neal said I should be mixing 91 more often to clean the system out.
Sept. 17: I messaged Neal to confirm that at this point I’d been running a full tank of 91 since the last time he messaged me, and that this day I had such a severe rough idle that the CEL flashed throughout the roughness until I’d gotten into 1st with the car moving. Let him know that I filled up another 3/4 tank of 91, added E85 stabilizer as well, but neither resolved the issue.
Sept. 18: Neal responded, saying it sounds like I may have other issues going on, asked if there was a code with the CEL. I didn’t have a scanner at the time, so I told Neal that I couldn’t check for any codes.
Neal then said: “It sounds like the car could have been misfiring, and it will record that in the ECU even if the light isn't currently on”
Me: “how serious would that be if it’s misfiring?” (I asked this because I’m not experienced with mechanical systems/engines and figured Neal would know more than me).
Neal: “I cant really answer that without seeing the car and observe what its doing.”
Neal, later that day: “Thats pretty weird. And nothing has changed hardware wise since the tune?”
I said no, nothing different. Neal said to run a couple more tanks of 91.
Sept. 24: I asked about coming in for datalogging. Neal said “yes, but I won't have time until next week”
I checked his schedule using the TRL website scheduler, and he was already booked out for the following 2-3 weeks.
So I messaged back and asked “When can I come in next week?” (assuming he had an idea of a block to fit me in, since he mentioned the following week specifically) since I would need to plan with work to take the time off because TRL is in Concord and I live/work in San Jose, more than an hour drive away, especially during traffic hours.
Emailed to check again about next week, since he hadn’t responded about scheduling me in.
He said, “I have Wednesday next week open at 12pm. Can that work for you?”
Since he originally had said it would be for datalogging, I decided to get an Ecutek Connect dongle so I could do the datalogging myself ASAP, since I was super concerned at this point for the car and it’s my daily. I let him know this, and he asked me to send datalogs to Zach and wait to come in.
Over roughly two weeks, I emailed back and forth with Zach about the datalogs, he asked me to run Techron and more 91 through my system, and determined that it was likely a mechanical issue.
Oct. 9: The issue had gotten progressively worse, such that nearly every time I drove, no matter the distance or length of time it would have the rough idling issue, sometimes quite harshly, and also with the CEL again.
As shown in the previous email, Neal wasn’t the slightest concerned with a mechanical issue that I’d been speaking with him about for over a month. He had suspected misfire as a potential issue back on Sept. 18. Not only that, but at this time his temporary solution for me was to rent a car and not drive my BRZ. By now it had already been nearly a month of Neal knowing/suspecting the general issue I’d been having, if not the cause. Yet he showed no concern.
Neal never sent an email to confirm that he was definitely available Saturday, which I needed to know. I already had vacation plans with my family for the weekend, so I needed confirmation before Saturday. So I needed to know for sure if I should plan to break away from my earlier commitments. Saturday passed, so I sent him an email on Sunday asking if he could get me in sometime that week.
Oct. 15: Neal responded, said he could fit me in on Oct. 18, Friday at 2PM.
Oct. 18: I took time off work for the appointment and arrived at the shop a bit early to avoid traffic, but patiently waited outside until 2PM. Neal was finally able to bring my car into the shop at 2:35PM.
At first, Neal tried datalogging and looking at my spark plugs. He noticed something odd with one of them, so he tried a different one that he had available but it wouldn’t resolve the issue. He also tried revving the car with his laptop plugged in to datalog. He told me he had no idea what was going on.
Since I brought my stock headers, I asked him to put them back on the car, disconnect the Flex Fuel kit, and flash the car back to stock, which I had also asked him to do in an earlier email.
He found that the cat in the JDL header was oddly blown and dislodged. We don’t know if that’s the ultimate cause or not; I need to drive the car a bit more so the ECU can re-learn and get back to normal on stock tune.
The thing is, speaking as an engineer, it would have made sense to do a quality control check of all mechanical components installed most recently from the beginning, especially if the tune wasn’t suspected as being the issue. But this wasn’t even considered as something to check for a month, despite Neal thinking this may be a misfire issue for a whole month.
Since there was nothing left to be done, Neal began backing the car out of the shop and…
He backed my rear passenger side wheel into the lift.. rather, the plate/arm pieces that go under a car’s pinch welds.. I don’t know the technical term.
Caused this damage to the wheel and tire:
At first he tried changing the subject to my brakes, but once outside the shop we looked at the damage and immediately his first thought was that since my tires’ tread was low, I should come back to the shop again for new tires from his distributor that he gets “good deals from” (paraphrasing). And that the wheel can be fixed when that happens. So, basically, pay him/his tire guy for new tires and mount/balance and get the wheel fixed on him.
Also, after the collision happened he continued backing the car out, without offering to get it back on a lift and further inspect the car for damage. It was a big enough shock that it may have upset my alignment/suspension.
(We’ve since resolved the issue of dealing with the wheel damage, which I appreciate Neal being willing to do.)
I expected such a well-known and reputable shop to respect and care for my car like it’s their own. Now I have a damaged wheel due to the shop not taking care to make sure it doesn’t have obstacles lying around the driving path into and out of the shop. Not only that, but the fact that we’re not 100% sure the blown cat in the header caused the main issue, and we don’t know if it could’ve caused other issues as well from reduced airflow.
I don’t think it should have taken nearly a month to make time to check out my car. And there’s no evidence throughout this whole thing that TRL was ever really concerned with the issues my car was having, nor my concern about it. I understand that Neal is constantly busy with a full schedule, but it’s pretty disturbing to me - as someone who paid him over a thousand dollars on a parts install/dyno tune - that it took him so long to find time to bring me in; on top of that, he also never checked in to see if the condition of my car had improved/worsened.
The day after visiting TRL, I checked my engine bay with a friend. The harnesses and plugs for the Flex Fuel kit (still installed, but not plugged in) were loose, with one wire harness just dangling behind the engine, and the o2 sensor plug tossed over a random bar/part of the chassis with no ziptie. DeliciousTuning gives precise instructions on how to route and tie these so they don’t get damaged or cause damage to engine components, and Neal did not follow those. I honestly didn’t check post-original install, so I’m not sure if he did this back in July or on October 18th when removing the headers/unplugging the FF kit wiring harness to flash the ECU back to stock.
The whole reason I went to TRL in the first place and paid the large cost for all of this was because I’m not a mechanic and I felt I should pay a shop to do a professional job and reasonably handle communication at a professional level if there were any issues. I’ll re-phrase and state this again: the point of bringing a car to a shop for hardware installs, let alone a dyno tune, is because the owner is in some way unable to do it themself, whether due to inexperience, time, not having the right tools, or something else.
An install like that makes me question work for something more complex than a $500 dollar sensor/module/harness for ethanol, like a several thousand dollar supercharger install with much more components to change and route carefully.
I went to one shop in San Jose toward the end of this situation to have them just do a basic check for headers/exhaust/air/fuel leaks for me, and they messaged me a week later asking if things had gotten better. And they only charged me for one hour of labor at the time. But they still cared to check in. TRL never did anything in any way to see how things were going, if the issue had improved or worsened at all.
All that matters at this point is that TRL wasn’t concerned about or careful with a customer’s car.
So again, everybody has had their different experiences with TRL and I respect that. I’ll just close out this experience ‘review’ with this: if you want a shop to work on your car and care that it’s running smoothly - especially if you’ve already spent over a thousand dollars there on a single job - and be careful with it in the shop, then sadly in my honest opinion this is not the place.