Quote:
Originally Posted by arpad_m
Okay, in addition to my personal experience I already shared above, let me put this in perspective and push back on your assessment.
JRE has 194 google reviews with a 4.8 average. I found a total of nine 1-star reviews and two 2-star reviews, none of which made sense, or the shop attempted a good faith resolution, but the customer didn't want to take it. In any business there is always a small percentage (at least ~2-3%) of moronic customers who are irrational and whose behavior isn't justifiable---the customer isn't always right, so this statistic tracks and doesn't really support your argument.
Quips like "I honestly don't think he know what he is doing" are nonsensical, too, when he has hundreds, if not a thousand, satisfied customers with a dazzling wide variety of configurations, even platforms (GM/Ford/Mopar). Mistakes are always made, but they can always be rectified, too, and I've found Ted and his crew one of the most helpful among performance shops (interestingly, the other two were both dealerships where the owner hired rockstars and wisely let them cook).
Finally, in terms of professional capability, I've found them extremely knowledgeable, very careful and conscientious working on the car, and the tune revisions Ted created for my car are close to flawless: power everywhere, fueling and air spot on, drivability is excellent, the realtime data log is like watching an illustrated textbook of how a V8 is supposed to run. Not what you would get from someone who "doesn't know what he's doing":
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I gave him every opportunity to fix his mistake. I lived locally, I visited the shop multiple times. I even allowed him to sell me an intake which I ultimately didn't need, but he was saying that not having the intake was holding me back. (I was not looking for horse power, I needed precise and quick throttle response.)
My setup was super simple, just stock LS3 with ported throttle body. That's it. (Plus intake, as I said above, after he convinced me to pay him more money.)
The truth is, most people don't have the skill to tell if their car is tuned properly. As long as their engine does not blow up, they give him five star reviews. His reputation is not because he is good at tuning. His reputation is good only because he is good at marketing.
He may very well be good at tuning carburetors, I can't speak to that. But we are talking about modern cars here with an ECU and a drive by wire throttle. And he can't tune the ECUs, my 5th gen was a 100% proof of that. At least he didn't know what he was doing at the time.
As I said before, the fact that a cheap mail in tune from Ohio worked infinitely better than his dyno tune, after I gave Ted every opportunity to fix his mistake on his own dyno, is the final proof.