Quote:
Originally Posted by classicswede
I do not like your rush rush atitude and prefer to do a job well and have it done properly. You have no paticance and that does not bide well with me. Standing oversome while they are working on your car is how mistakes are made and how you ended up with the petrol gaige wires not connected. Turniing up to collect the car when you were told it was not ready and that I needed no interuption so that you job would not get put back any further does not help.
Threatening someone with IF YOU DO NOT DO EXACTLY WHAT I WANT I WILL POST UP ON THE FORUM THAT YOU ARE A BODGER AND CON MAN will not make me do what you want.
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The above quote comes from this thread
http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=159255 and needs addressing I think as it is more than a little disingenuous.
Some background; a friend of mine owns a rather nice, well kept, immaculately tidy P1 V70 T5. He bought is a couple of years back and has gradually worked his way through it to turn it into a really nice example. It’s had Koni suspension a Rica chip, the interior has been sorted out, the car got a set of reconditioned Propus C wheels with new Yokohama tyres and we fitted an R bumpers front and rear.
The final thing on the wish list back when he bought it was to get it LPG converted. The question then was who was this work to be entrusted to?
Various people were spoken to, questions were asked and one of these people was Dai. Rick pointed out to him that the car had been chipped and specifically asked whether that was an issue. He was assured it was not. Good news clearly. Dai assured him done loads of them, he is the Volvo LPG specialist, the car would run on LPG perfectly. Just what the man wanted.
Consequently a dare was booked and the two of us drove to Wales. First cost 450 mile round trip with my S80 D5 and a trip with the V70 @ 225 miles one way. That was OK though because the car was going to THE specialist right? Read on.
The car was to be done in 3 or 4 days, but Rick told Dai to do a really tidy job, make sure the car ran absolutely perfectly. Drive the car round, make sure it is OK. The two of us stood there and chatted to Dai. I specifically asked Dai what injectors he would use. I asked “will you be fitting Keihin injectors as used by Prins?” and Dai answered yes. We had no reason to disbelieve that. After all his price list, edited Jan 23rd 2012 specifically stated Premium kit with high presision (sic) Japanese injectors as used by Prins.
We also handed Dai a full gas tank we’d removed from another T5, indeed we had the full system but Dai told Rick the system he’s acquired wasn’t a lot of good and the gas tank very small. Rick was going for QUALITY so he said, fit a new tank. He discussed the price list with Dai and asked about the Prins system Dai offered. He was told “No, use my premium system, same injectors as Prins but a much faster ECU.” Fair enough, after all Dai is the specialist.
Three weeks later the (that’s weeks not 3 days as promised) the car was ready. Rick was told Dai wanted a bank transfer before he collected the car and he did so. After all Dai is the specialist. When he got the car back it was indescribably filthy. The interior was covered in sticky ice cream finger prints from very short people, but Rick said nothing about it. After all he had told Dai to use the car. The outside was filthy but the hose pipe ban has been lifted so never mind. Rather less amusingly the rear bumper had been backed into something, but we know how to paint and this would be a cracking job right?
( Running transport total £80 ticket to Holyhead and 225 miles home)
Once home the car ran like a bag of nails. It sprang 2 different gas leaks, one because a hose was so short it simply wouldn’t reach and we found a pool of coolant under the evaporator because the hose clamp hadn’t been done up. We were starting to wonder...........Had Rick’s £1340 been bank transferred wisely?
We looked a bit harder and we took the car for a test drive. Go to overtake something, kick the auto box down and the LPG system goes Beeeeeep and switches to petrol. We looked a bit harder and found 2 more gas leaks and noticed the injectors were made by HANA; which was decidedly odd as we’d been promised Keihin injectors. A quick Google showed Hana are in Korea and Keihin are in Japan. It also showed us you can buy a HANA injector for £17 whereas a Keihin will cost you £77 give or take. That’s £300 difference on 5 injectors.
We looked a bit harder, the ECU promised to be faster and better than a Prins is an Oscar N, and it’s about as cheap an LPG ECU as money can buy well under £100 retail.
However neither Rick nor I are LPG specialists so we took the car to a local specialist who posed the simple question “What did you pay for that conversion then mate.” We looked a bit embarrassed and slightly abashed and answered £1340. “That’s £700 quid worth of gas conversion mate, those bits are the cheapest of the cheap. He also told us he’s rarely seen a scruffier job
Three of the injectors were just cable tied to a bracket
We didn’t want to believe that these components were so bad, so we rang around and the news got no better, ‘utter junk’, ‘ultra cheap’ and ‘useless’ were but a few of the adjectives we got.
We looked a bit harder, Dai managed to drill into the fuel tank, the boot panel has had its hinges removed so there is now a large sheet of loose plywood in the back of the car, the installation is horribly untidy and worst of all it won’t run properly.
But hey this is a premium conversion and there is a 3 year guarantee so it’ll be fine right? Yeah right..... By this time Rick was rather irate, so I got involved. I asked Dai just what the point was in choosing his premium conversion. After all he advertises his Prins kit for £1650 and his premium kit for £1375. That’s a difference of £275 and just getting the Keihin injectors that come with a Prins kit is worth more than that.
Dai’s first response was to deny that he ever offered the Keihin injectors and he edited his price list the same evening to make it so. Korea isn’t Japan last time I looked.
Meanwhile he claimed the gas system was fine, the car had an ignition issue. Rick therefore ordered 5 new plugs, a cap a rotor arm and new ignition leads from the dealer. Despite the fact that the ones the car had weren’t very old. That wasted another £200 or so....
Meanwhile the car had been driven back to Wales, (on petrol because it would barely run at all on gas)
I spoke to Dai and we concluded that the only reasonable thing to do was fit a Prins system to the car. That would give Rick the premium system and Keihin injectors he’d paid for. Rick, being a reasonable guy, offered to pay the price difference between the 2 kits despite the fact that he’d been given el cheapo injectors but he wanted a solution.
The next morning I git a PM from Dai, completely ignoring our discussion and with a price for substituting a Prins kit for his bodge job.
Fit Full Prins VSI (not silverline) front end kit
Extra equipment cost £425
Fitting £350
Rick declined to give Dai an additional £775 to give him what he’d paid for in the first place, a premium gas conversion.
DO NOT GET YOUR CAR CONVERTED BY THIS GUY! That’s my advice.
Expenditure so far to get a badly running, untidily converted LPG V70
£1340 for the conversion
1 used gas tank full of gas
1350 road miles
Three £80 train tickets
£200 worth of unnecessary ignition parts
Innumerable phone calls
Heaps of fustration