Possibly The worst Customer Service in North America

So to make a very long and drawn out process short. It was one year ago yesterday that I bought into Kevin Murase's Lightweight Crank Pulley group buy on Gen5Alive.com. None of the paying customers have received the part to this date. Nor will he publicly give any information on it's whereabouts. It has been one story after another on how this shop and that shop aren't working out.

If you care to read all about it you can read it here. TSM Pikachu = Kevin

http://www.gen5alive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10882


Here is the latest

Quote:

Originally Posted by Email Sent, From: GhostAccord Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 1:04 AM To: Kevin@gen5alive; Brian@gen5alive; Allen@gen5alive; sales@gen5alive Subject: Parts Inquiry Good morning everyone, Just wondering if there are any updates on the production of the light weight crank pulley yet. Any information you can pass on would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, GhostAccord P.S. Is your shop number still 562-229-9131?

And to my astonishment he actually replied.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Email reply, From: Autosport sales To: GhostAccord Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 7:28 PM Subject: RE: Parts Inquiry Mark, Yes our office is that shop number, I recently went through a couple upgrades on our office line. I’d much rather not discuss this over email, could you give me a call perhaps? This is just due to the nature of the transaction and I’d much rather talk to you over the phone rather than just shoot you a blind message. -Kevin Murase Gen5Alive Autosport, President 13429 Pumice street Norwalk, CA 90650 562-229-9131

To me this actually sounded like he wanted to talk about what is going on with this part that is now over a year into production?????? On March 10th at 11:32 PST, I placed a call to Mr. Murase's place of business. There was no answer, Therefore, I left a short and polite message with my Name, phone number, with the area code, and to what the call was in regards too. I than asked him to return my call. As of tonight, 3 days later, I still have not received a phone call from him.

I guess it's time to start hounding the brains behind this parts production as well. But then I've been hearing that getting in touch with **** has been kind of hard lately as he's very busy. I highly doubt that Kevin's store/shop is so busy he can't return a phone call.

Oh well I'll wait the weekend and give them both a call on Monday.

**** I will leave this persons name out for now until I give them a chance to answer my questions. Even though I have sent them & their sales representatives numerous emails. too which I have received no replies.

White Housed Headlights

There was no way that I was going to go and put black housed headlights and signals on my car. It's way to overdone. So I decided that I would go White 1987-88 HN512 Polar White to be exact.

First thing was to remove the headlight from the mounting bracket.


After a few dark-n dirties, a long soak in penetrating oil and a bit of muscle. They finally came apart


Most headlight DIYs don't mention to remove the mounting bracket. I wanted to because some of the hardware looked rather rough.


This is what both of the main adjusting mounts looked like. Part numbers added to the always growing "Parts Required List".

After washing the years of dirt and grime from the Headlight it was time to bake them in the oven at 230F for 5 minutes and separate the lenses from the housings.


Then it was time to carefully mask off the portion of the original reflector that I wanted to remain. Then sand and prep the unmasked portion of the housing for primer and paint.

Hanging from the painting line I have strung across the ceiling of my garage. Sanded and ready to go.


Gave the garage a good dusting and turned the heat up a little bit and threw a couple coats of primer on.


Then gave them an adequate dosage of Polar White. 12hrs of dry/bake time and I unmasked them to reveal my new white housing headlight.


The taping, prep and painting was the easy part of this project. Getting the lenses from a state like this,


To the end product was the tough part. They were in such bad shape it took more than a few hours of wet sanding and polishing. Just to get one too look like this.


Started with a bucket of warm soapy water and 400 grit wet dry, then onto a 1000 grit, 2000 grit, then it was the white buffing paste and loose cotton buffing wheel. To finish it off I used Mother's Gold three stage wax system. It was a hand application of step 1 cleaner, Step 2 sealer conditioner and then step 3 carnauba wax.

I had to get another headlight from the junkyard, because one of mine had a little bit of weld spatter/ a hole in it. That one is still in the wet sand stages. $30 lesson learned, no welding while the plastics are still on the car...lol

Update!

Finally got around to finishing my headlights tonight.

Testors 1257 Transparent Blue day/high lights.

After two coats of paint, 48 hr cure time, good cleaning, few minutes bake time in the oven and this is what you get.

The white housed corner lights are still on hold until I get a new set.......