raroz28
Forum Member
how much power did he put down and how is the driveability?
Anyone ever use watson racing(brownstown) for tuning?
- Thread starter red2004
- Start date
how much power did he put down and how is the driveability?
nitrouspete
Forum Member
cars real choppy, they said its because of his o2 sensors. he dont even wanna get into the pedal because he doesent feel the tunes right.
a 3 day drop off pick up turned into a week and a half or 2 week wait,
cant say what the car put down cuz he may not want anyone to know, but its bad when you have to go back and ask for dyno paperwork because they dident give it to you.
or when the price over doubles what they told you when you droped it off and they tell you your luckey its only x amount and yoiur getting a discount at that price.
last i heard when he puled into his garage last night it would not restart.
itll be going back to alternative soon. Lideo did a great job with it the first time, hell do a great job with it again.
thats all i can really say unless he wants to go deeper.
a 3 day drop off pick up turned into a week and a half or 2 week wait,
cant say what the car put down cuz he may not want anyone to know, but its bad when you have to go back and ask for dyno paperwork because they dident give it to you.
or when the price over doubles what they told you when you droped it off and they tell you your luckey its only x amount and yoiur getting a discount at that price.
last i heard when he puled into his garage last night it would not restart.
itll be going back to alternative soon. Lideo did a great job with it the first time, hell do a great job with it again.
thats all i can really say unless he wants to go deeper.
I was waiting to hear how this turned out as well . I took my car there to have it tuned as well and was rather dissapointed at the results. The car ran worse when I picked it up that when I dropped it off. Popping,sputtering, etc. some of the things that were done showed lazyness on my car as well. Pulling fuses from the fuse box to use elsewhere and not replacing them, wires cut and just taped back together etc. My price also went wayyy up from what I was told. I was also lucky it was only double cause that was a "deal". They have some younger kids working on stuff that in my opnion should not be. Kim tuned another car for me at his old shop and it was awesome, but that was an older mustang with a carb. He is a good tuner on the older stuff but in my opinion I would look elsewhere for newer computer based vehicles. They did offer to look at it again but, I didn't have the time to take it back for them to "try" again.
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nitrouspete
Forum Member
sounds like the same story.
Amphetamine
Club Member
Kim was part owner at Motor City Motorsports in Riverview.
What he did to me and my car is worthy of condemning him to Hell! Under Watson I don't know. But Kim is pure evil. I hope he rots in Hell.
What he did to me and my car is worthy of condemning him to Hell! Under Watson I don't know. But Kim is pure evil. I hope he rots in Hell.
raroz28
Forum Member
I have heard that for the last 10 years. However, he did excellent work at Kim and Larry's on my motor. I had him do all of my work there until he went to MCMS in Riverview and had some work done there which was good as well.
Has anybody tried to contact Watson Racing to get a resolution that doesn't mean leaving their car for weeks to get tweaked? Specifically, monetary reimbursement? The place looks to be very legit - I don't see why they would want this level of negative press. We have two people saying the exact same thing and not one positive remark for them.
I would be surprised if lid will mess with it after taking it somewhere else.
Anthony
Club Member
Call and talk to chuck. Demand a full refund plus time and trouble. He can't mend what he doesn't know.
I gotta ask why the car was taken out of the shop if the tune/work was this bad?
Ford has them tuning new mustangs, including the gt350 and the current cj.
If it ran that bad it should not have been taken out of shop, now that it has, chuck can't do anything unless he knows of the problem. Does the car owner no good to drag the company through the mud. Without giving the owner a chance to make good
I gotta ask why the car was taken out of the shop if the tune/work was this bad?
Ford has them tuning new mustangs, including the gt350 and the current cj.
If it ran that bad it should not have been taken out of shop, now that it has, chuck can't do anything unless he knows of the problem. Does the car owner no good to drag the company through the mud. Without giving the owner a chance to make good
red2004
Forum Member
This is long and i didnt leave out any detail.Thanks
Ok, started looking into a tune 2weeks before woodward(i know its late to be looking for a tune but the car took a lil longer than expected)so was gonna take it back to lidio but he couldnt get me in until the end of august and i was trying to make woodward since i was registered for mustang alley, plus i was wanting to be a part of the mustang memories show in dearborn since i was apart of last year and had a good time, anyways so i called watson since i knew they tuned and they are local to me plus they do all the work on the cobra jets so i figured i will try them out, so talked to patrick and he said when the car is ready call him and he will get me in(sweet) so get the car back together call him up the week before woodward and he tells me to drop it off on tuesday saying they dont see any problem with having it done by friday in time for woodward, so tuesday comes and try starting the car and have power but wont start....wth.....so couldnt figure out whats wrong so i called patrick and told him gonna have to wait till tomorrow, so later that day i figured out what was wrong i forgot to plug in a harness connector in the passenger fenderwell from a wiretuck i did on the car, no biggy plug it back in and car fires up no problem, cars running fine 0 issues even idles without me in the car (have video), so next day comes me and my neighbor try loading it in his trailer and i just cant get it up the ramp without it stalling out, so oh well get the ratchet straps out and get it loaded, get it to watson and the car is just flooded couldnt start it so me,my buddy, patrick push it to the back of shop, shake hands say see ya in a couple days. So friday comes and i call in the afternoon and kim said the car has issues they couldnt get the car started so they worked on the ignition and found that there was a plug that was plugged into the wrong place so they fixed that and loaded a tune into it so they could move it around the shop and it started but it was popping, sputtering, etc....and asked me if i had the plug wires right, coils, etc...i said yes the car was running fine wednsday before i dropped it off, so he said theres no way it would be done that day, so he said monday or tuesday, ok so i call monday and he says couldnt get around to looking at it he's backed up with work that was here before me so prolly not till later in the week, ok whatever.....so then my daughter had an infection in her face from a tooth so she had to be admitted into the hospital that day and would have surgery tuesday morning which went well and we were there till thursday afternoon, i didnt call watson during that time cuz it wasnt important to me, so got a voicemail wednsday from patrick saying they had some time to look into the issues and they pulled the plugs and 4 were new and 4 were jet black and they found some plugs from the wire tuck that was wrong or not plugged in but the car is running and they werent gonna be able to get it on the dyno till later that week.....so ok wasnt worried about it at that time so i called friday to get an update and talked to the secretary and was told everyone in the shop was gone to norwalk for a race and wouldnt be back till monday so i got mad and told her im coming to get my car and was sick of hearing the b.s. from everyone so she said theres nobody here and if i can wait till monday to come get it....i said no i want it today! so she said she would have to call someone and make sure its ok.....so she called back towards the end of the day and said nobodys calling her back and if i can wait till monday....so i said fine whatever....so i called monday morning and talked to kim and he said the car will be done today, i said fine thats all i want is for the car to be done, so i wait till about 4 and call him back and he says the cars got issues, the alternator is smoking hot and he cant get the maf sensor to be happy where its located but the car made 523hp and i was like why so low....how many lbs of boost....he says i dont know.....(now im thinking like how do you not know, lbs of boost should be one of the things that you remember) so he says well im not in front of my computer right now so let me call you back, im like wtf! ok....wait 30min no call....so i go there and he starts rambling on about the alternator and the maf sensor(vmp hpx) which i knew might cause a small issue but it was last minute since i accidently ordered a aluminum maf flange instead of steel so i had it welded on a 12'' long aluminum 3'' cold air intake tube and just put it in the fenderwell where my old lightning maf used to be just to get all this done and get it to the tuner on time, so i asked him if i should put it closer to the TB like i originally wanted and he said no he will make it work so then i asked him how is the cars driveablility he said perfect smooth, so then i asked him why the hp numbers are a lil lower than expected and he said well its on a 91oct tune and he still has about 4 degrees to pull and what was my goals for the car? I said mininum 550-600 is what i was geussing, so he said well i didnt know you wanted a 93oct tune so i will retune it to 93 and pull the timing out and you will easily hit 550...as it sat on 91 was 523/461, so he starts talking about all the issues they had on getting it started and whatever so i said thats funny because i have 3 different videos of the car running just fine before i brought it here and by now there is a few others in the dyno room with us and the one young guy said oh really? and ofcourse i had to show them the video and they just stood there like they didnt know what to say.....and then kim says well i can hear alot of noise in the cylinders....so im like whatever so he said the car will be done tomorrow....and all he has to do is get the maf happy and retune to 93oct.....so it is now tuesday and i call in the afternoon and he says he got the maf as good as its gonna get but when i pick it up go have the car alighned (I changed over to a tubular k member and coilovers, etc..before taking it to watson...) and bring it back to him for a half of day so he can drive the car and adjust anything if needed, so i said well you tuned for driveability on the dyno right...he said yes and it drove fine but he likes to drive them after to make sure he dont need to change anything....so i said ok i will be there...so i got there and met with john phillips and he took me into the office and showed me the bill and it was 1875.00 and i about passed out, i said why so much, patrick told me 2-4 hrs so im thinking 800 max to pay so john said that they made things cheaper by only charging me for 6hrs dyno time and 9hrs of diagnostic time instead of 9 dyno and 6 diag....so i said thats crazy and said well i cant pay this and told him why wouldnt someone call me when it got over 4hrs and made me aware of the price issue or even asked me if i wanted them to even diagnose the issues cause i would have said no i will take the car back home figure out whats wrong and bring it back instead of paying someone 85hr....and he said well this is what happens when you have a car tuned and that there is people that come there and pay 5times more than my bill.....i said well this is not the first time i've had a car tuned before and he said oh yea who did i use before...i said lidio at alternative and he said yea i know who he is so i said i got there at 8am he had to fix a small fuel leak add a boost a pump and add a mafia to my car and i was out of there at 11:30am the same day and my bill was under a thousand dollars.....so john said well i geuss he isnt into making money...lol....whatever i said.....so anyway he said he would talk to chuck watson and see what he could do and get back to me the following day.....so next morning call and talk to chuck well my wife did at first cause she was beyond pissed off about the whole situation so she got done and i got on the phone and told him my side of the story and he told me that his guys said i was lieing and gave them permission to work on my car and blah blah blah....and said they had to work for 4hrs on the ignition and that there was problems with my o2 sensors (which nobody told me about)and about the price he said the car was worked on the dyno for 3hrs but sat on it for 9 so that could have been money he was making on someone elses car....i said so what thats my fault that they left my car unfinished on the dyno....not my fault. But he did agree with me on that the car shouldnt have been there for 2 weeks, it shouldnt of even been brought there untill they were ready to work on it, that someone should have called and let me know about the cost that was building up, so he said he could knock the price down to 13?? and i said thats still too much so then he got kinda mad and said what do i expect to pay...i told him i shouldnt pay more than 800 but i said 1000 bucks.....he went on about having to pay his employees and he is taking it up the rear on this and etc.....so he said come get your car. So went there and paid and john gave me an envelope with my paperwork and started the car and loaded it on the trailer and noticed my wideband pegged at 20 and lean so dont know what thats about...whatever at this point and get ready to leave and look in my envelope and have nothing about dyno info, etc....so im like wtf.....go back in and tell john i dont have any of my dyno info so he then gets me a copy of a dyno sheet that says 527/466 and i ask did he tune to 93 and he said thats all he could get out of the car and walked away.......so now i just leave because im ready to fly over the counter and do something im gonna regret later.....get halfway home and notice it doesnt say anything about boost, a/f , etc.....nothing so i call john back and tell him i dont have any info about the dyno so he took my email address and said he will email me the file.......wait almost 4 hrs and call back to see whats going on and he doesnt answer so the secretary asked if i wanted to deal with someone else i said let me talk to chuck watson so im waiting and then john gets on the phone cussing and swearing and telling me he will take care of it and to not call back dont call chuck and pretty much hung up on me, so now im pissed and my wife over hears him cussing at me and says f this calls the credit card company and stops payment to them and tells them the whole story and they agreed with us. Then she called watson back and told the secretary to relay the message to chuck that she stopped payment on the card and if he wants to know why to call her back.....havent heard a word since. So i took the car to petes house and did some looking around on the lift and he noticed the twisted to all hell wideband sensor and have a small oil leak at the back of the pan but not there fault...i hope....and showed pete the printout of a thread on svtperformance.com on 8-25-14 about some tuner codes...so maybe they didnt know what they were doing and was searching the internet....so after i left was gonna go get the cars alighnment done at belle tire in woodhaven but they were closed so went home (which from my house to petes and back is maybe a half mile) pull in my driveway and thats the last time it ran......popped fuse at the battery in the trunk changed it went to start again and popped again....so thats where im at right now. Still never recieved any dyno info on my car as of 5:04 pm 8-28-14
So my experience with watson racing was very poor......no communication skills what-so-ever.....maybe someone has had better luck but this is just my own personal experience.
Ok, started looking into a tune 2weeks before woodward(i know its late to be looking for a tune but the car took a lil longer than expected)so was gonna take it back to lidio but he couldnt get me in until the end of august and i was trying to make woodward since i was registered for mustang alley, plus i was wanting to be a part of the mustang memories show in dearborn since i was apart of last year and had a good time, anyways so i called watson since i knew they tuned and they are local to me plus they do all the work on the cobra jets so i figured i will try them out, so talked to patrick and he said when the car is ready call him and he will get me in(sweet) so get the car back together call him up the week before woodward and he tells me to drop it off on tuesday saying they dont see any problem with having it done by friday in time for woodward, so tuesday comes and try starting the car and have power but wont start....wth.....so couldnt figure out whats wrong so i called patrick and told him gonna have to wait till tomorrow, so later that day i figured out what was wrong i forgot to plug in a harness connector in the passenger fenderwell from a wiretuck i did on the car, no biggy plug it back in and car fires up no problem, cars running fine 0 issues even idles without me in the car (have video), so next day comes me and my neighbor try loading it in his trailer and i just cant get it up the ramp without it stalling out, so oh well get the ratchet straps out and get it loaded, get it to watson and the car is just flooded couldnt start it so me,my buddy, patrick push it to the back of shop, shake hands say see ya in a couple days. So friday comes and i call in the afternoon and kim said the car has issues they couldnt get the car started so they worked on the ignition and found that there was a plug that was plugged into the wrong place so they fixed that and loaded a tune into it so they could move it around the shop and it started but it was popping, sputtering, etc....and asked me if i had the plug wires right, coils, etc...i said yes the car was running fine wednsday before i dropped it off, so he said theres no way it would be done that day, so he said monday or tuesday, ok so i call monday and he says couldnt get around to looking at it he's backed up with work that was here before me so prolly not till later in the week, ok whatever.....so then my daughter had an infection in her face from a tooth so she had to be admitted into the hospital that day and would have surgery tuesday morning which went well and we were there till thursday afternoon, i didnt call watson during that time cuz it wasnt important to me, so got a voicemail wednsday from patrick saying they had some time to look into the issues and they pulled the plugs and 4 were new and 4 were jet black and they found some plugs from the wire tuck that was wrong or not plugged in but the car is running and they werent gonna be able to get it on the dyno till later that week.....so ok wasnt worried about it at that time so i called friday to get an update and talked to the secretary and was told everyone in the shop was gone to norwalk for a race and wouldnt be back till monday so i got mad and told her im coming to get my car and was sick of hearing the b.s. from everyone so she said theres nobody here and if i can wait till monday to come get it....i said no i want it today! so she said she would have to call someone and make sure its ok.....so she called back towards the end of the day and said nobodys calling her back and if i can wait till monday....so i said fine whatever....so i called monday morning and talked to kim and he said the car will be done today, i said fine thats all i want is for the car to be done, so i wait till about 4 and call him back and he says the cars got issues, the alternator is smoking hot and he cant get the maf sensor to be happy where its located but the car made 523hp and i was like why so low....how many lbs of boost....he says i dont know.....(now im thinking like how do you not know, lbs of boost should be one of the things that you remember) so he says well im not in front of my computer right now so let me call you back, im like wtf! ok....wait 30min no call....so i go there and he starts rambling on about the alternator and the maf sensor(vmp hpx) which i knew might cause a small issue but it was last minute since i accidently ordered a aluminum maf flange instead of steel so i had it welded on a 12'' long aluminum 3'' cold air intake tube and just put it in the fenderwell where my old lightning maf used to be just to get all this done and get it to the tuner on time, so i asked him if i should put it closer to the TB like i originally wanted and he said no he will make it work so then i asked him how is the cars driveablility he said perfect smooth, so then i asked him why the hp numbers are a lil lower than expected and he said well its on a 91oct tune and he still has about 4 degrees to pull and what was my goals for the car? I said mininum 550-600 is what i was geussing, so he said well i didnt know you wanted a 93oct tune so i will retune it to 93 and pull the timing out and you will easily hit 550...as it sat on 91 was 523/461, so he starts talking about all the issues they had on getting it started and whatever so i said thats funny because i have 3 different videos of the car running just fine before i brought it here and by now there is a few others in the dyno room with us and the one young guy said oh really? and ofcourse i had to show them the video and they just stood there like they didnt know what to say.....and then kim says well i can hear alot of noise in the cylinders....so im like whatever so he said the car will be done tomorrow....and all he has to do is get the maf happy and retune to 93oct.....so it is now tuesday and i call in the afternoon and he says he got the maf as good as its gonna get but when i pick it up go have the car alighned (I changed over to a tubular k member and coilovers, etc..before taking it to watson...) and bring it back to him for a half of day so he can drive the car and adjust anything if needed, so i said well you tuned for driveability on the dyno right...he said yes and it drove fine but he likes to drive them after to make sure he dont need to change anything....so i said ok i will be there...so i got there and met with john phillips and he took me into the office and showed me the bill and it was 1875.00 and i about passed out, i said why so much, patrick told me 2-4 hrs so im thinking 800 max to pay so john said that they made things cheaper by only charging me for 6hrs dyno time and 9hrs of diagnostic time instead of 9 dyno and 6 diag....so i said thats crazy and said well i cant pay this and told him why wouldnt someone call me when it got over 4hrs and made me aware of the price issue or even asked me if i wanted them to even diagnose the issues cause i would have said no i will take the car back home figure out whats wrong and bring it back instead of paying someone 85hr....and he said well this is what happens when you have a car tuned and that there is people that come there and pay 5times more than my bill.....i said well this is not the first time i've had a car tuned before and he said oh yea who did i use before...i said lidio at alternative and he said yea i know who he is so i said i got there at 8am he had to fix a small fuel leak add a boost a pump and add a mafia to my car and i was out of there at 11:30am the same day and my bill was under a thousand dollars.....so john said well i geuss he isnt into making money...lol....whatever i said.....so anyway he said he would talk to chuck watson and see what he could do and get back to me the following day.....so next morning call and talk to chuck well my wife did at first cause she was beyond pissed off about the whole situation so she got done and i got on the phone and told him my side of the story and he told me that his guys said i was lieing and gave them permission to work on my car and blah blah blah....and said they had to work for 4hrs on the ignition and that there was problems with my o2 sensors (which nobody told me about)and about the price he said the car was worked on the dyno for 3hrs but sat on it for 9 so that could have been money he was making on someone elses car....i said so what thats my fault that they left my car unfinished on the dyno....not my fault. But he did agree with me on that the car shouldnt have been there for 2 weeks, it shouldnt of even been brought there untill they were ready to work on it, that someone should have called and let me know about the cost that was building up, so he said he could knock the price down to 13?? and i said thats still too much so then he got kinda mad and said what do i expect to pay...i told him i shouldnt pay more than 800 but i said 1000 bucks.....he went on about having to pay his employees and he is taking it up the rear on this and etc.....so he said come get your car. So went there and paid and john gave me an envelope with my paperwork and started the car and loaded it on the trailer and noticed my wideband pegged at 20 and lean so dont know what thats about...whatever at this point and get ready to leave and look in my envelope and have nothing about dyno info, etc....so im like wtf.....go back in and tell john i dont have any of my dyno info so he then gets me a copy of a dyno sheet that says 527/466 and i ask did he tune to 93 and he said thats all he could get out of the car and walked away.......so now i just leave because im ready to fly over the counter and do something im gonna regret later.....get halfway home and notice it doesnt say anything about boost, a/f , etc.....nothing so i call john back and tell him i dont have any info about the dyno so he took my email address and said he will email me the file.......wait almost 4 hrs and call back to see whats going on and he doesnt answer so the secretary asked if i wanted to deal with someone else i said let me talk to chuck watson so im waiting and then john gets on the phone cussing and swearing and telling me he will take care of it and to not call back dont call chuck and pretty much hung up on me, so now im pissed and my wife over hears him cussing at me and says f this calls the credit card company and stops payment to them and tells them the whole story and they agreed with us. Then she called watson back and told the secretary to relay the message to chuck that she stopped payment on the card and if he wants to know why to call her back.....havent heard a word since. So i took the car to petes house and did some looking around on the lift and he noticed the twisted to all hell wideband sensor and have a small oil leak at the back of the pan but not there fault...i hope....and showed pete the printout of a thread on svtperformance.com on 8-25-14 about some tuner codes...so maybe they didnt know what they were doing and was searching the internet....so after i left was gonna go get the cars alighnment done at belle tire in woodhaven but they were closed so went home (which from my house to petes and back is maybe a half mile) pull in my driveway and thats the last time it ran......popped fuse at the battery in the trunk changed it went to start again and popped again....so thats where im at right now. Still never recieved any dyno info on my car as of 5:04 pm 8-28-14
So my experience with watson racing was very poor......no communication skills what-so-ever.....maybe someone has had better luck but this is just my own personal experience.
red2004
Forum Member
I talked to lidio during this process and he didnt even know watson tuned cars.......but i do have an appt with him september 11, i will be contacting him shortly about all this also.
raroz28
Forum Member
I hope that they do not get a penny out of you.
Your car may be riddled with issues for a long time. You have no idea what they did and troubleshooting those issues is going to be a major PITA.
Hopefully this thread comes up when others google them for services and it costs them some business. Pretty sure nobody on motown will deal with them after reading that.
Your car may be riddled with issues for a long time. You have no idea what they did and troubleshooting those issues is going to be a major PITA.
Hopefully this thread comes up when others google them for services and it costs them some business. Pretty sure nobody on motown will deal with them after reading that.
90SuperchargedLx
Forum Member
That much for a tune wtf!! The first time I took my car to lidio it cost me 550 that includes the sct chip.sounds like they rip people off! for that much I would just buy a fast or holley efi and tune it myself!! Is this a turbo car?
SuperStang90
Club Member
Well, I know where I will never recommend anybody to go to..lol
red2004
Forum Member
I am the type of person that will take my shirt off my back for anyone and to be treated like this was just rediculous. ..very unprofessional, mr watson seemed like an alright guy that just has a few bad apples in his business. He told me that he was just going off what his guys tell him and like I told him I understand that you want to stand behind what your employees say but the stuff there telling you are lies, I have absolutely no reason to lie....not my style.
SuperStang90
Club Member
Well I know you can trust Lidio. I was charged the same (550ish) on my first tune years ago, then my second tune with a completely different setup was only $230. Both times car ran great afterwords, but barely ran before I brought it in.
Good to hear lid is the man when it comes to tuning and no bs with him