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.......

My Coil Over Plug Setup cont-1

Took a few minutes today to get my 2007 GSX-R pencil coils fitting snug in their new homes.

I had an old set of Accel 300+ ignition wires down in the garage. They were still in good shape, but I'm hoping I won't need them.

First I took the rubber grommet off the GSXR coil and took the Accel ignition wire apart. That allowed me to get the upper valve cover grommet off of it



Then I simply cut the top off the ignition wire grommet and was left with this.


After cutting the tops off the ignition grommet, I also had to bore out the inside diameter so that the coil would fit. Very messy job with a Dremel tool and a 60 grit cartridge roll. After that was done, I put some dielectric lube on them and stuffed them in their new homes. Snug as a bug in a rug. No need for a long aluminum mounting bracket when they are done this way. ;~)



When all was said and done. I spent $35 for a set of 2007 pencil coils. Took approx. 1.5hrs of my day to cut up a set of used ignition wires And they look like new. Tested the resistance on each coil and all is good on that front as well.

Piecing together my Coil Over Plug setup

Here are a couple shots of something I have been piecing together & working on, here and there, for quite a while now.







It's coming together quite well so far. Hopefully a COP, OBD1 ECU with a modified OEM distributor bench test will be in the near future. Fingers crossed!



Waiting on some more sample electronics stuff from those great electronics manufacturers out there. :thumbsup: 2 - Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., Intersil & Mill-Max MFG Corp.

Cheers :beer:

13" Maradyne fan 2 Civic 1/2 Rad

Took a few minutes to figure out how to mount my 13" Maradyne Universal S-blade rad fan to my Koyo Civic 1/2 rad.

Started by mocing up a 1" aluminum bar and machining it to the rad mounting points.



Mounted the bracket with a few bolts and cut out the small area for the drain cock.



Lined up the other mounting points and bobs your uncle!



had to take a shot of the fan and bracket from the other side...



So with the bottom full bar mounted in place it was time to fab the 2 upper mounts.



Got the first mounting point done now it's time to line up the rad mounting point.



Now it's time to shave it down and give it the Chappy Aeffec!



The other top side was exactly the same.

Stay tuned for more.........................

Little preview of my cylinder head cleanup!

Well as I wait for some welding and shop supplies to arrive to finish my hood mod. I went back to working away on my engine.

I decided to do a little shaving.

Before:


After:


This is how you do a power steering delete for real...lol

Before:


After:


Still need to fill in/weld the holes and clean up a bit.

Same with EGR delete:

Before:


After:


I threaded the EGR port and I was going to use a 7/16 set screw. However, I will probably weld this opening shut instead. I will also be filling/welding & polishing the EGR opening inside the #4 exhaust port as well.

Cheers

Secondary Fuel Injector Setup

Got to finally work on my car again.

Got the secondary fuel injectors mocked up.

I am using the stock fuel rail from the 2003 GSX-R1000 Throttles.

Bit rough right now but they are still in the build phase.



The height on these/distance from throttle plate is a manual adjustment.


Before

After

Not quite as refined & polished as Kinstler's aluminum setup. The rods and injector brackets, once finalized, will be powder coated.

Civic 1/2 Rad installed into a CD5

I did manage to get my half rad mocked up & mounted.

Started by removing the stock lower rad mounts.



Drilled out the spot welds and they came off with no problems.
They are a little bit rough but with a quick sand blast and a coat of fresh paint they should last.



I had to cut out the socket in the cross member that was used to hold the A/C condenser. It was in the way of my new mount location. You can see in the first image that it curves out from the front bulkhead approx 1/2".



Had a piece of pre-bent steel that was the right thickness and pretty much the perfect contour, cut it to size and tacked it in place.



After that I mocked up the rad to mark where all the mounts were to be welded and holes drilled for screws.



At this time I heated up the replacement plate and the cross member to bend them into shape. Welded the seams and the bulkhead was better than stock with the newly located lower mounts welded to it.



Drilled and welded nuts to the underside of the upper cross member for the upper rad mount. Just have the one finished in this pic. I used one of the stock CD5 upper rad mounts and bushings for the single mount on the Yanaka half rad.



I used the rubber bushings from the CD5 A/C condenser for the lower rad mounts. I had to drill out the inner diameter of the bushings a wee bit to get them to fit over the Yonaka posts. I also had to bore out the lower rad mounts to accept the larger bushings.



Securely mounted and ready for hoses.



With more than enough space between the front bulkhead and the rad.

Chassis and Suspension Parts

Chassis and Suspension Parts



KYB struts and Kaizenspeed balance shaft eliminator kit.....

Well here is what I have been working on putting together for the last little while. I didn't want to post pics after each part was blasted and coated so I figured I would post them all at once.

Front beam and radius rods


Center Beam


Rear Beam


Rack and tie rod ends


Front suspension - should go nice with my red KYB's


Rear suspention