The Twin Turbo Lamborghini Plot Thickens As Dallas Performance Answers Back With Statement – Read It Here


The Twin Turbo Lamborghini Plot Thickens As Dallas Performance Answers Back With Statement – Read It Here

Yesterday, we ran a story about a Lamborghini owner named Billy from Arkansas who brought his car to a shop in Dallas known as Dallas Performance to have it outfitted with a twin turbocharger setup. Bill published a blog about the supposed horrible experience and craftsmanship that this shop provided him and spared no punches in sharing photos of shoddily done wiring work, stories about the car blowing up mere miles after getting it back, and the multiple, multiple trips he had to make to bring the car to the shop after it expired at home. READ THAT STORY RIGHT HERE IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY.

Well, yesterday afternoon/evening the shop responded with a statement of its own and the formerly one sided story grew another one and became way more interesting. Shop owner Taylor Sims recounts his own experiences with Billy and paints a far different picture than the one which Billy painted on his blog. The reasons for the car failing, the attitude that Billy displayed at the shop, the treatment the car got when Billy had it home. How many miles it was actually driven between visits, and some of the stuff Billy admitted to doing to the thing while he had it all seem to indicate that the shop isn’t the one to take the brunt of the blame here.

This is a wild read.

Here’s the full response from Taylor Sims at Dallas Performance – what do you think?

I’ve been getting a massive amount of people contacting me and asking for my side of the story.

After 2 years working with someone you get to know them pretty well and we liked Billy. I never want to make our customers look bad, and I never want a customer to leave un-happy. I have not replied sooner because aside from the internet jury, I still have an obligation to do what I feel is right. I felt like this is an issue between Billy and I first.

I have tried to no end, to figure out a way to make Billy happy, and now that he is no longer responding to me and he has chosen to no longer be a customer, I am just going to lay out the real truth to this mess.

Billy was our second TTG customer. He is a “hands on guy that likes to tinker, and can turn a wrench”. Every step along the way when Billy would get the car, he was constantly messing with things. The car would leave here perfect and when he would get the car back to Arkansas, he would work on the car, disassemble things to see what we did, and then move things around to his liking.

When the car left as a stage one, he was given 4 settings with clear power and fuel requirements for each setting. He also knew the risks associated with a stock engine turbo build. When he brought the car back to us, it was still running and driving but it was smoking. He later admitted that he had beat on the car over and over on the race fuel boost setting when he had run out, and was instead running on pump gas. Then it started smoking. Then he got concerned and brought us the car.

At that point everything was cool, he accepted responsibility for it and since it was still a running car, we both agreed building the engine was the best way to move forward.

During the engine build, we installed an upgraded clutch to handle the added power. Although the street clutches need break in miles to operate smoothly, Billy pressured us to go ahead and dyno the car and let him have it then. I advised against it, but in the end I wanted to make Billy happy and I agreed. The car made great power and we were very happy with it, but when Billy got the car back he was upset with the drivability of the clutch.

He was extremely angry with us, threw this huge fit and we all felt literally threatened by him at this point. It was so bad that one of my employees almost quit over it. We were all without exaggeration, afraid of him, and didn’t know how to react.

Partially motivated by fear, we agreed to install a new clutch for free in his car even though he knew what had happened and he was responsible.

At this point, the car was setup to make 1200whp and it was turned back to around 1100whp, because it had stock axles and a stock transmission. These are known weak links and we did not want to see the car back again for a long time.

Next thing you know, he calls me and is beyond upset with me again because the car broke a stock axle. I calmly told him to bring the car and we would fix it. At this point we upgraded to a set of custom billet axles and we discussed upgrading the transmission. Billy did not want the car down for a minute longer and declined the transmission upgrades. Ok, fair enough, many of guys have been ok with 1100whp and stock transmissions. I told him to take it easy and enjoy the car.

Before he even left Dallas this time, he managed to rev and hold the engine at redline (cold started, without being up to operating temperature) to show off how the car sounded to some people, and he broke a valve spring. This created some other minor damage and we had to remove the engine to fix it. All of which was done for almost nothing, but parts cost to help him out.

We fixed the broken parts from cold revving the engine and sent him back on his way. A few weeks to a month later, I get another irate call from Billy saying the transmission is broken and he is on the side of the road stranded. Again, I told him calmly to bring the car and we would fix it for him.

By now I’ve realized that Billy is going to beat on the car until it breaks and I suggested that we turn the power down. That was not an acceptable answer to him and he actually wanted more power. This is where I should have said no and been done with it.

We seemed to have a better relationship, and although he was always trying to work on the car himself, he had periods where he did listen to us.

I wanted to make him happy, and we expected if he did the correct upgrades this time, it would stay together. So before we would agree to turn the car up, we discussed the necessary upgrades to hold the power. These upgrades consisted of our transmission upgrades, billet drop gears, billet 1-6th, as well as the Tilton triple carbon clutch, larger turbochargers, and we recommended our upgraded cylinder heads. He agreed to do the clutch, transmission upgrades, and larger turbochargers, but he declined to do the upgraded cylinder heads.

We also let Billy know that our billet 1-6th gearsets were not ready yet, so he could either wait, or we could fix the car with upgraded drop gears only, and he could drive it turned down until the parts were ready. He agreed to wait, which shocked me.

The gears took much longer than promised to us, and we ended up waiting for 3 months to get them in. During this time, Billy’s personal power goals went from 1300whp then to 1400whp and all the way to 1600whp. When we got the billet transmission parts and assembled the car, we wanted to make him happy and we made 1600+whp on the dyno for him.

Now it made good power but we are still left with the 2004 clunky egear system and this Tilton race clutch. We made several improvements to the egear system and hydraulics, but in the end it was just very hard to drive. We expected this but just had not tried it before. We knew the same clutch in a manual car drove very nice and so we discussed doing the manual conversion then. Billy was just anxious to drive the car and he took it as it was. The car would jerk violently from a dead stop when you would try to get the car moving, and ultimately ended up breaking more stock parts from pretty much a wheel hop situation.

All of this is very frustrating to me because we had planned to try the clutch on the 2004 egear system knowing its limitations, and we had agreed to do a manual conversion if it didn’t work. Well it didn’t work, but he didn’t want to wait, and as a result it broke more parts.

He went on to have two clutches start slipping in very short time frames after he went and attempted to adjust the pedal and master cylinder himself to his liking. One time it was from him actually pushing the clutch pedal down so far that he broke the factory clutch pedal stop and over stroked the clutch pressure plate.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Billy had specifically asked us if we password protected the MoTeC ECU when we did the stage 1 build. He assured me that he had no intention of messing with it but that he felt if he was paying for it he wanted to have access to it if he needed. I didn’t think much of it at the time but later on I did find changes to the boost settings, fueling, and other parameters on two occasions when we got the car back. The second time this happened we locked the ECU and have since locked every ECU on every build to protect ourselves and the customer. Lesson learned.

Now this all paints a very grim story and a lot of STOCK parts failures. But don’t think for a second he wasn’t having fun with the car, racing anything that moved, and he told us on many occasions how amazing the car drove and the power was unreal. Yes he was mad when parts broke and he was very hard to handle, but these were STOCK parts breaking, and deep down he knew it and he wasn’t blaming us when it was explained to him. After all, it wasn’t like it was any of the parts we built that were breaking here. He also managed to put over 3k miles on the car over this time period (which would be pretty tough to do in 2 weeks as indicated).

After all of these stock driveline parts breaking and finally doing a complete transmission upgrade, Billy had the car in his possession and was driving it again.

During this time Billy started asking me a lot about different engine oils and viscosity and such, and wanted to know if he could try a light weight engine oil for more power. I explained that would be a terrible idea, and not worth any possible very small power gains. I thought he had listened, until he called back a few weeks later with low oil pressure concerns. I advised him to go back to the oil we use and see how it, was but the damage was already done and he had literally run the car with no oil pressure.

Given all the trouble he had previously, I told him to bring the car and we would cover labor if he would pay for parts and expenses. He agreed, we pulled the engine and took to the machine shop and it was disassembled. We did find the bearings wiped and 2 small cracks and we advised him that a new block would be best. Unlike stated in the blog, this was not a blown up engine. The car was running and while it did have low oil pressure all other components were in great shape.

When we told him the bad news, he flipped out and told us to figure something else out. From there everything went downhill, and it was not recoverable. That’s when he told us to have it welded and do it ASAP and he was tired of waiting. I told him that if that was the path he took we could not be responsible for the results and that the power needed to be turned way down to have a chance at living then. The communication got very minimal from here as I didn’t like the plan of action and I felt like I had no choice.

I thought about it long and hard and decided it needed a new block. I actually ordered a new block and told Billy I did not feel comfortable with welding the block and he would have to wait for the repairs to be done properly. At that point he informed me he would be picking up the car. I tried to reason with him and I even offered to do ALL REPAIRS FOR FREE if he would just allow me to do so. He totally stopped communicating with me and sent his employee to come get the car.

Our entire shop stopped to carefully package every nut and bolt. We wrapped all the parts, we assembled the engine short block hand tight so that the crankshaft, rods and pistons were not damaged, and we actually loaded all the parts and strapped the car on the trailer for his employee and wished them well.

I will admit that was a huge relief to see the car leave and all the headaches that came with it.

The wiring pictures look terrible and Billy can pat himself on the back for those. Being the hands on guy that he was, he was convinced that the military connectors we used to connect the stock harness to the MoTeC harness was a bad idea and he or one of his guys “hard wired” them. That is what’s pictured, along with some extra made up stuff that I don’t recognize, I guess in an attempt to make us look bad.

The wiring pictures are insulting plain and simple and it was fabricated/staged to hurt us. Whatever he did with the car he owned in his possession, was outside my control and this stuff was probably done after the car was a shell, to make us look bad. Or heck it might not even be pictures of anything on that car I don’t know.

Then there are pictures of the fuel system showing leaks? Is that a fuel leak or is it from the entire engine being removed from the car and the entire fuel system being apart as a result?? You can even see the SS braided line is off. Fuel will come out when you take a fitting off 

Even still, make it look however you want, there was never a single time where the car went lean or had any sort of damage from fuel or wiring. Personally I don’t think that would be possible if those pictures were not staged or at the very least exaggerated/embellished.

The very last picture he shows a vacuum line folded over and a worm clamp to hold it. Let’s ask ourselves folks, wouldn’t that method be harder than just putting a vacuum cap on the line? Well I guess that wouldn’t be as easy if you don’t have drawer full of them like we do.

Use common sense folks. Read Billy’s posts, and then look at the website. There are inconsistencies everywhere. If you choose not to see it that is up to you.

Even after all of this has been exploited to make me and Dallas Performance look bad, I will still to this day offer to fix the guys car for free 100%. I didn’t want to take 2 hours away from my many customers in the shop, and stop making the best products on the market, to sit here and shred each false point, but I just did.

I would like to conclude stating that I have no ill will toward Billy and I wish only good things for him. If he should desire to take me up on my offer, I will still honor it.

Taylor Sims
Dallas Performance LLC

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE THREAD AT SIXSPEEDONLINE.COM

 

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23 thoughts on “The Twin Turbo Lamborghini Plot Thickens As Dallas Performance Answers Back With Statement – Read It Here

  1. GuitarSlinger

    There are some arrogant asses in this world you can never satisfy . There are also those pretentious do it yourselfers that are convinced they know more than the experts they’ve hired to do a job . As well as more than a fair amount of @$&hats who’s mindset is stuck so deeply into Virtual Reality that they haven’t a clue how to take care of anything thats real and minus a reset function

    Methinks having read both sides of the story this Billy wingnut is all of the above and more

    My suggestion to Taylor Sims ? Cut your loses … tell Mr Billy 15 places where to shove it … including explicit directions on how to do so …. and have a good lawyer in reserve should the little snipe try and come back with a lawsuit because Mr Billy sounds like the type to try … with some sleaze ball 2nd rate hack attorney at his side

    Conclusion ? Mr Billy and his kind are the reason a good 60% of custom and hot rod shops wind up going under

    1. Brian Cooper

      WOW! A logical reply from Guitarslinger! I must have slipped into another dimension.

      As to this Lambo saga; I’m glad I’m not on either side of the situation. I’m glad I didn’t blow a wad of cash on a car that is now lawn art, and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with the idiot that kept breaking the car. Both sides lost on this deal.

      1. GuitarSlinger

        …. aint you just such a clever little bundle of Zero’s & One’s . Nice politically correct – non committal – too afraid to take a stance on your part response as well . Which is to say … I somehow rather doubt ‘ logical ‘ … as well as ‘ ethical ‘ no doubt ever enters into the equation when it comes to your overall thought processes

      2. Rustowner

        GuitarSlinger, please start taking your meds again. We liked you better that way. Also, trying to smote someone’s character using a binary reference isn’t cool; it just makes you look old and out of touch. Thank you. Rustowner

  2. anthony

    Billy should still get him self a z06. He does sound like an arrogant douche though. The shop seems sincere in trying to fix the car.

  3. PAT

    I come from a diesel performance background and have run into customers like this too. Cut your losses. Say thankyou for being a customer but we have come to the point where I am no longer able to service your needs and suggest going to another shop. Be nice dont tell him off, but cut the loss and get out

  4. revhead

    I own a shop, I understand there are all types of customers, but at the same time If you are going to sell a product (900hp upgrade) to a customer, what do you expect them to do with it? It’s kind of like saying I’ll sell you a 600hp nitrous system and install on your Kia Rio and then expect you to never push the button.

    In this case though I think DP’s story is more believable. Either there is no implied warranty or the customer knew he was abusing it otherwise why would he continue to pay for the repairs / upgrades instead of demanding the shop cover all costs?

  5. Don

    What I do not understand is if this was the case why did it take Dallas Performance a couple of days to respond. Also why would Taylor still offer to finish the car? With that said I do not think Billy is being completely honest either. I cannot imagine keeping a car at the shop that long and continuing to spend large sums of cash if everything he told us was true.

  6. Bill Armstrong

    I think DP is trying to maintain a level of professionalism by offering, still, to fix the car. It’s obvious they know what they are doing when they have millions of dollars of customers cars in the shop, this isn’t Vega’s with a big block transplant. Customers that can afford a Lambo and afford to upgrade obviously are financially sucessful, with that they also have the means to sue if shit ‘aint right. If DP is still in business playing it that high dollar rich kid playground then, IMO, they are doing something right. This is just an example of a rich kid who isn’t getting his way and wants to bitch about it. And about two days to respond, it takes time, brains and advice to respond in a professional non emotional manner, like DP did, good job Taylor!

  7. chadb

    let’s face it; just because you can afford horsepower, doesn’t mean you can handle it. some people just don’t have the natural capabilities to handle any kind of power. and too many more don’t realize or understand 1. that you can’t drive a 1000+ horsepower vehicle the same way you would drive a 300 hp one, and 2. the more power it makes, the quicker it breaks.

  8. Wink Dinkler

    I had a bug dick customer just like Billy. He wanted his 460 Ford jet boat supercharged. Wouldn’t listen to anyone or anything. When his stock block, stock head 460 was out run by a small block chevy with a carb it was my fault. I had everything on video telling him it was not just a bolt on accessory and he would have been better served blue printing the jet pump and spending money there rather than a blower. His answer was Blowers look cool. It was his money. But then he bad mouthed me for months till I broke his nose. Case close. .

  9. Schtauffer

    The builder sounds more competent than the owner, I think. Some customers are nothing more than a giant PITA and they generally generate negative revenue.

  10. ratpatrol66

    Since the Lambo power train is not working for BILLY how about an LS swap?
    Oh yeah Billy is a douche!!!

  11. John T

    dunno – I smell the whiff of bullshit on both of them…..ones trying to keep his business going, ones trying to cover his own screw-ups….if I owned a $1,000 car that screwed up this often I’d piss it off. Why buy a car you cant fix yourself in the first place? each to their own but frankly I cant handle `car guys’ that couldn’t change a flat let alone actually do anything constructive to their cars

  12. James Stanley

    All you have to do is read the Lambo owner’s blog… He is a street/ricer tuner with money. The photos posted showcase the type of work you would expect from an Eclipse owner… He admittedly street races as well. The Lambo is not a drag racer…it’s a high performance track tuned machine. In his case, his money was helping him win a few illegal drag races since you can’t buy the skill to drive on a track.

    Bravo to DP for a very professional response. The customer isn’t always right, and I wouldn’t be as diplomatic as you have been.

  13. Jim Powell

    In the time line it says the owner refused to do the manual transmission conversion and then immediately talks about clutch pedal issues???

    eGear cars do not have a clutch pedal.

  14. Matt

    Dallas Performance side of the story is far far far more believable than Billys…thats the bottom line.

  15. RevZ

    Wow, I’ve read both sides of the story and frankly, I only have one question that isn’t related to bashing on Dallas at all, but just out of curiosity..

    What was it that really happened when that guy claimed DP was “working on the ports manually which was just a simple sanding job” or something like that? Given this story it doesn’t sound like the same level of professional work at all so I’m very curious!

    Also, the fact that the blog has been taken down says it all. Just a bulldog who barks at people to intimidate, but once you whack it with a newspaper it’ll back right down.

  16. Peter

    How do you explain that wiring? it was crappy workmanship and dangerous at the very least.

  17. Mike Swann

    I am thinking both sides are BS.

    1. The smoking issue. That block was probably detonated the first time it went on the dyno. DP knew there was an oil leak problem early on and tried to cover for it with gaskets and seals (and more big invoices).

    2. Why would Billy mess with the wiring? Was is right in the first place? Certainly doesn’t look that way.

    3. Billy may be a douche, but he’s out for $150K and now has a basket case Gallardo. He’s trying to document what he found wrong and there are serious problems in the engine and wiring.

    DP, writes this soft letter after the fact, but it doesn’t change the outcome.

  18. marcus

    As with all such stories, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Each of us having been on one side or the other of such a conflict places it closer to one extreme or the other, but the fact is as this relationship soured they both should have moved on. But hindsight is 20/20, and who knew it would take so many iterations to get it to where it is. I think DP showed a lot of class in its response, and do not fault it for not immediately sitting down and firing off what would have been a poison pen letter. These are highly tuned cars to begin with, and you mess with them at your peril.

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