[TRich2SS]

Originally Posted by EFI Tuning

When I had your photos on my website I was selling on your behalf. So don't imply I'm using your photos to sell my kit. That is false. There is only a generic sensor picture up there right since I pulled the DMS product.

You keep making false accusations. It's getting old.

This is my last reply to this. I'm building my own kit which allow me flexibility your arrangement did not. I'm doing what is best for my business not yours just as you are doing what is best for your business with your margin model on the DSX products.

- Tim

I'm glad you are done arguing, I don't think you have any further need to defend yourself at this point. You have the backing of the community, much of which has to do with how you have selflessly helped others. Do what you think is best. One way you can always tell you are doing the right thing is when people who have no real other reason to support you stand by you.

- DSM

What you are doing is making yourself look very unprofessional. As a business owner of a long standing and successful business I honestly think you dropped the ball here big time. IMO you should just count this as a loss, bite the bullet and move on. All of this could have been easily done in a private message without making a public and embarrassing spectacle. Even if you are right, the way you are carrying this is wrong and bad for public perception. Just my two cents.

[laynlo15]

Wow this got out of hand quick. You guys need to take this to email or pm's. Its not helping anyone on the forum to have this issue flair up as it can hurt both of your businesses.

[62nalide]

I'm still sitting back and enjoying you guys pay damn near double the price when you can build your own.....ouch burned my tongue with this coffee lol

[TRich2SS]

Originally Posted by 62nalide

I'm still sitting back and enjoying you guys pay damn near double the price when you can build your own.....ouch burned my tongue with this coffee lol

We are still waiting for you to update the thread you started with the details you said you were going to post about your kit.

[slick3]

Originally Posted by TRich2SS

We are still waiting for you to update the thread you started with the details you said you were going to post about your kit.

Yep.

[62nalide]

Originally Posted by TRich2SS

We are still waiting for you to update the thread you started with the details you said you were going to post about your kit.

If I do I will get banned, I was already warned if I post more about it I'll get a permanent ban.
Sorry guys they are in it for the $$
Anyone in DFW is more then welcome to see it tho.

[Megahurtz]

Originally Posted by 62nalide

I'm still sitting back and enjoying you guys pay damn near double the price when you can build your own.....ouch burned my tongue with this coffee lol

It's worth it to me to pay someone to build the kit for me. I do all of my own work/installs and tuning and this is a small price to pay IMO.

On a side note it sucks you were threatened with a ban. You would think just doing a write up on a forum to do your own FF kit wouldn't violate any rules. I would still buy a ready made kit but I'd love to see the one you built.

[Dave@DMS]

Since my name was mentioned, I figured I would chime in. This will be my one and only post because NEITHER side of this should have taken this to a public forum without some form of private communication first. That goes for both ends.

Originally Posted by EFI Tuning

Reverse engineer what exactly? I contacted Dave Steck last spring about doing a harness. Do I need to deliver that e-mail trail as well?

There is nothing in your kit that anyone on this board can't procure. You had the physical mockup done in a couple of hours the day the loaner car came in. Hardly an engineering effort.

There are 3 connectors for the sensor... POWER, GND, and SIGNAL to the ECM. I looked at the schematics for all of this 8 months ago on ACDelcoTDS. I'm an electrical engineer. I've worked on things I can't even discuss. Do you think I need your expertise to figure the FF out? Why didn't you guys figure out the FF worked on your own? Seems like you were the beneficiary of my actual engineering work. I actually had to write code to prove out the E85.

Attachment 835498

Tim

Tim,

While you did contact me about making a harness, you said you had the plumbing figured out. I think what is a bit confusing is you later came to us asking to build you the plumbing side as well as electrical side seven months down the line. I don't see what originally asking for a harness has to do with anything. I'm not insinuating anything other than the fact that it is just strange that you'd want us to do the whole thing when originally you said you had plumbing taken care of.

You came to us as an individual asking to build a kit. I appreciate the checking you did on the ethanol content, as I haven't personally had a vehicle to ever do any testing on (which is why I was always gun shy about doing anything without making damn sure it worked on the platform). I think it's a bit unfair to downplay the electrical side of things for wiring, but try to use an Arduino sketch/circuit board as grounds for the engineering that goes into things. I have full TIS access and have used it to develop all of my wiring kits for everything to make things completely plug and play, and three years ago, I made my own signal generator to manually map out the pins on the E38 (which was already known anyway), E67, and E40 ECMs for flex fuel. I would have actually just given you a signal generator had you asked for one given what you were trying to check. I don't understand the conflicting statement of "do you really think I needed your expertise" when you asked us/me (on two occasions) to facilitate the physical components. Mentioning writing the code is borderline begging for validation, especially since it's been done before. Sorry, but I wanted to make that point. I just think that angle of your attitude towards us is unfair and unfounded.

https://youtu.be/jvL0TkG59Gs

Side note: I saw your code. While it works, there's a good bit to be done to consolidate it into a smaller sketch. Bit banging a port on timers is essentially what I do with mine with an external trigger to toggle between settings. Lingenfelter actually is selling a device that does this now... Guess I missed the boat on patenting that one. Also, you actually have the pulses flip flopped on what they're for. The pulse where the sensor pulls to ground is actually what indicates temperature.

Even after you showed scanner logs, I was still extremely hesitant about the whole ordeal just because I didn't personally have the ability to deal with it first hand. However, we proceeded and supplied you (as an individual) with a well discounted kit. We then proceeded to sell them and offered you the standard discount. Yes, it is not a big margin, but it's what I chose as the margin to try and prevent resellers from dropping the price super low to protect the value of what we sell. By discouraging people with low or no overhead from only making five or ten bucks on a sale, it cuts down on other vendors from contacting us to complain about it. There are things we get from various companies that only have 8% margin. Some are 30%. It can vary pretty wildly. Most shops use it as a tool to make a few bucks on parts that then gets coupled with labor for installation and tuning. Having said that, our biggest reseller actually doesn't do any part installs, which is pretty interesting (at least to me).

I think your reaction about the Black Friday ordeal was a little out of place, but I can see how it's confusing. No, we didn't discount flex fuel kits for suppliers for Black Friday. Yes, we did bundle them with injectors which creates a scenario where we eat the margin on the injectors. Black Friday wouldn't have been applicable to the sixth gen kit due to this bundling. I feel like you think you were wronged by the Black Friday advertisement, but I think it's just a misunderstanding. I wish you would have contacted us directly about it before taking to the internet to tell the world how horrible we are.

Originally Posted by BowtieRocket

Let it go Dedicated-Matt, you called someone a liar without even knowing what you were talking about, if that is even the case. Makes me question your manufacturing at this point to me... Certainly makes me question your ability for customer service. You were proven wrong and have defaced a customer with limited knowledge. Again, if that is even true.

Originally Posted by BowtieRocket

Sounds to me more like you didn't know wtf you were doing until Tim figured it out for you...

I'm not sure what there is to question about our manufacturing. Please refer to above. I literally had ECMs sprawled out on my dining table with wires going to individual pins mapping the inputs to find the flex fuel pin on various ECMs. While we sincerely appreciated Tim verifying that the ECM was correctly compensating based on frequencies, it's not the only piece to a puzzle. The terminal location was known from GM Service as other E92s are already flex fuel capable, and plumbing gets pretty simple when it comes down to it as long as you have appropriate fittings for the application you're trying to build. Personally, I prefer using 316 stainless tubing for everything, but for the 2016 SS, it just didn't make sense because there'd be no flex anywhere to compensate for vibration (which will wreck metal).

Believe it or not, we actually get a lot of praise about customer service because of fast reaction times and the fact that somebody will answer the phone when you call. I can see how this scenario paints it all in a bad light, but I genuinely think this was a big misunderstanding from both ends.

Originally Posted by Megahurtz

You accused Tim of being a liar and a copier. He never bad mouthed your company. He proved you were rather ignorant about that information. I get the whole business side of things. no contract, no writing, nothing owed.

I don't buy the "far less per hour than your employees" line. Maybe company paid salary is less and maybe you working longer hours than your staff waters down your rate, but surely you're paid your portion of the profits from being an owner. Who would stay in business and do this as a living making scraps? Sounds like BS to me. That's the kind of side mouth statement that doesn't sit well with me.

The only way you're going to get any respect around here is to man up and admit you were ignorant and maybe made some comments that were assumptions. Then, leave Tim alone and let him do his own thing. He has the evidence to support his stance more than you. You think he didn't help you as much as he thinks he did...well that is a subjective point of view. I can see both sides of this. From a business stand point you didn't owe him anything. But you also didn't give him any charity either.

All of that said and aside from the DMS FF kit, its only the dishonesty that does not sit well. The greed comment may have been overly aggressive and i take it back with apology. But I still think you're in the wrong some here in this situation.

I don't own any portion of the company, but I have a good working knowledge of what's going on. If you consider hourly rates, Matt does get paid less just because he's here 12 hours a day Monday through Sunday. He likes it. I think he's nuts. Being a new business (slightly over a year old), surplus money typically goes back into the business. That's why we have a 4000hp Mainline hub dyno, a lot of fabrication and welding equipment, and a huge facility. I suppose it's building for the future.

Try to see this from our end of the bridge...

1. Individual asks us to build a complete kit for him for a vehicle.
2. We build and supply the kit (discounted).
3. We sell the kit to the public and offer the individual the standard discount on resale.
4. Individual becomes a business entity.
5. Business entity doesn't like the discount and is suddenly going to manufacture kits after requesting us to build it.

When the scenario is stripped down to the basics, you can see how it might be taken as a "it's just going to get copied" assumption. Matt came out of the gate hot and likely shouldn't have, but I ask that you reason with me to at least acknowledge how it might look to us at first glance. We do this every day, and I fill my kids' lunch bags from the money I earn doing this stuff. It's not a side business run at night or while at a desk job (which I used to do). All of us here rely on it. There's naturally going to be a defensive reaction to some degree. I apologize for the responses that came out thus far.

Originally Posted by AndyUK

Instead of which, without doing any fact checking whatsoever you've come on to a forum and decided to start throwing loads of accusations at someone who actually helped your business and helped sell your product.

You've managed to do far more harm to your own business than Tìm ever could have done.

Gratz.

(And yes as a business owner I don't go around bad mouthing my competitors, suppliers, customers or trading partners in any form)

I think public lashing was a poor first move from either side... can't hold a double standard here.

Originally Posted by TRich2SS

- Tim

I'm glad you are done arguing, I don't think you have any further need to defend yourself at this point. You have the backing of the community, much of which has to do with how you have selflessly helped others. Do what you think is best. One way you can always tell you are doing the right thing is when people who have no real other reason to support you stand by you.

- DSM

What you are doing is making yourself look very unprofessional. As a business owner of a long standing and successful business I honestly think you dropped the ball here big time. IMO you should just count this as a loss, bite the bullet and move on. All of this could have been easily done in a private message without making a public and embarrassing spectacle. Even if you are right, the way you are carrying this is wrong and bad for public perception. Just my two cents.

I've highlighted one item in bold... I just want to make note that Tim didn't contact us at all before taking to the forum to put us on blast. Again, there can't be a double standard.

Originally Posted by laynlo15

Wow this got out of hand quick. You guys need to take this to email or pm's. Its not helping anyone on the forum to have this issue flair up as it can hurt both of your businesses.

It should have never started off as a public crapfest and shouldn't have been continued as a public crapfast. I am annoyed that I'm even posting anything myself, but also don't plan to do anything after this post.



Tim, I wish you would have contacted us before doing anything... or at least contacted me. I think the initial "done wrong" feeling could have been squashed and cooler heads would have prevailed in a positive light for everyone. It's not too late for everyone to just say "this didn't go down well" (and that includes our end). There's no need for everyone to keep s***ting on each other. It's just harder for us to stand our ground here given that DMS had never signed up as a vendor (we really didn't have products that warranted paying advertisement fees here), and as a result most of these people probably know nothing about what we do or what we've done. Here's the original funzies about getting flex fuel going through HPT from 2013:

http://www.hptuners.com/forum/showth...om-OS-Addition

My phone number is 314-322-3283. Feel free to pick up the phone and call me to talk about this. I'll just be out tuning a cammed C6 Z06 that we just converted to flex fuel... Should be picking up about 20whp!

[AndyUK]

Originally Posted by Dave@DMS

NEITHER side of this should have taken this to a public forum without some form of private communication first. That goes for both ends.

Tim, I wish you would have contacted us before doing anything... or at least contacted me.

Tim did try to resolve this in private first, your guys completely rebuffed him and when he had to source from elsewhere to be able to offer black friday deal that you'd refused then advertised via direct sales your guys then came on to the forum to accuse Tim of stealing your product.

Tim didn't say anything negative about the product, or you guys, until you started calling him a thief and a liar.

[bigsapper]

First post here but a couple should recognize my screen name.

My question is why is this different than the C7 kit? Same motor/ECU. Color me confused.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Dave@DMS]

Originally Posted by bigsapper

First post here but a couple should recognize my screen name.

My question is why is this different than the C7 kit? Same motor/ECU. Color me confused.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

(Ok, breaking my rule, I'm sorry)

Fuel line routing/placement.

[laynlo15]

Dave thanks for chiming in and I hope you guys get this worked out. How is Daniel? Hope the wheels are going gangbusters. Tell him greg said hello.

[EFI Tuning]

Dave I will give you a call tomorrow. My AFM delete PCBs came in tonight and I need to get them built up and tested ASAP.

[TRich2SS]

Originally Posted by EFI Tuning

Dave I will give you a call tomorrow. My AFM delete PCBs came in tonight and I need to get them built up and tested ASAP.