Originally Posted by rhythmnsmoke

I just figured it wouldn't be long before you came and put your 2 cents into it. And...yep, I was right.

Originally Posted by Dyltone

Cute but no.

I have a personal issue with ZPI and all of their fanboys. They have cost me 18 months with my car, they have cost me 6k+ for their craptastic products and they have cost me 15k plus to get my 17k car built the way it should have been built from the start.

They took over 2 weeks to install my “custom” kit, excuse after excuse... I let them all slide because I was a fanboy.

I flew home after the first 5 days and flew back a week later only to have to wait another 4 days up there for the car to be "finished". Less than 10 miles out of town (on my 1000 mile trip) I call Kenny to tell him that the exhaust and the cold side IC piping are rubbing up against each other and it’s making this horrible sound. He tells me it’s not going to hurt anything and to go home and he’ll figure it out over the phone. I’m still a fanboy so drive all the way home.

Per Kenny, I take my car to a local exhaust shop who laughs at the job ZPI did and charges me 500 dollars to shorten the IC pipe and extend their S-pipe and put real mounts on the rest of the exhaust so it will hang right and move properly under engine load. Kenny refuses to pay any of this because even though he installed every part of the exhaust, he informed me that he is not an exhaust guy.

1000 mile trip home and 1500 miles later, the car started blowing oil out of somewhere all over the valve cover and cold side of the turbo. I call Kenny and he tells me that it must me a blown seal in the turbo. He sends me a new turbo (pre clocked for his kit). After installing the new turbo, I start the car and oil sprays all over the engine. Upon removing the turbo and the center clamp, I find that there is a small pin that should have been removed by Kenny as he clocks the turbo’s in the opposite direction as they are intended so he can sell 1 kit to stage 0 and 1 people. By him failing to remove this pin, the turbo was never properly sealed (as sent by him) and just shot oil all over the engine bay.

At this point I removed the entire kit except the intercooler and sent it back to them. Every pipe was coated with oil (inside and out) and the intercooler had at least 2 quarts in the reservoir tanks on both sides. I cleaned out the IC with gas and waited and waited. 4 weeks later then sent me a new kit (which was a complete joke). They never unpacked my emanage so they didn't even check the tune and they sent a redesigned hot side IC pipe that was smashed with a hammer in 3 places with had a square end on it. They thought this pipe was nice looking enough to send to get powder coated as well! OMFG. I'll take pictures if any wants to see the square end that I was supposed to use a round clamp to attach to my car.

At any rate, I still assumed that they knew what they were doing so I started the install. The new kit they sent was missing an air filter and several bolts including a way to attach the new larger oil drain line that comes from the bottom of the turbo to the old pan plug that they welded in to the oil pan. They told me to go to the parts store and "figure it out". I installed this garbage on my car within 10 miles my car started smoking out the exhaust. No just smoke but James Bond smoke screen smoke! I call Kenny who tells me that the old kit must have blown oil in to the engine and that I should just ride it “hard for like 10 miles or so to burn out the old oil”. I tell Kenny that this is no way oil burn off, it’s something serious. He swears that it could not be anything serious and convinces me to go for a ride. I drive literally 5 miles and car dies. I was able to get it started again and get it home.

I’m telling him at this point that it’s got to be a blown head gasket or worse and he’s swearing up and down that he’s never seen this happen to any of the cars that they’ve done. As a last ditch effort to get it working, he sends me a replacement center section for the turbo. I received the part the next day and was shocked to see that same f’ing pin sticking out of the center section. I call Kenny again and he swears up and down that he removed the pin himself, I send him digital pictures of the pin and he finally admits that they must have sent me a different center section. I remove the pin and assemble the turbo, put it in the car and get ready to start the car. I know full well that this new center section is not going to fix the problem, but I don’t know what else to try. I start the car and low and behold, the car is still smoking, worse than ever. It looked like a burn out contest in my driveway.

Kenny is completely in denial that there are any problems with my car and starts calling local shops for me to get the car to for them to check it out. He gives me a phone number of a local shop and tells me that he has set up everything up, all I need to do is call the guy and bring him the car. I call the shop and they tell me that Kenny told him that I probably had a loose IC pipe or something stupid. I tell him that there is oil all over the engine bay and that smoke is coming out of the exhaust, he tells me not to come that the car is not safe to drive as the turbo could catch the oil on fire and there was no way possible that anything but internal engine damage could cause those symptoms.

I tell Kenny and he finally says, oh, you know us, we’ll stand behind our product. He’s going to set up a trucking company to come get my car. I give him my address and he tells me that he’ll get me a date in the next few days. Weeks go by with every excuse in the book and a few that I know he invented. 6 weeks later, he tells me that they are days away from getting me car. I tell him, to forget it, I’m going to take it someplace local and get it looked at.

I get the car towed to Billet Design and they do a leak down test on the car… 20% compression in all 4 cylinders. They pull the motor and guess what… all 4 pistons had cracked ring landings and the rings had collapsed scoring all 4 cylinder walls. Kenny offers to help me with the rebuild… He’s going to buy me pistons (wow $500 dollars). I guess that’s what he means by we take care of our customers. 12 weeks go by and he still couldn’t get me a set of overbored pistons from Race Engineering (a company that is literally 5 miles from my house).

At this point it’s been like 4 months since my car ran, I write off Kenny and start this long process by myself. I send my block to Golden Eagle and get new pistons made. I get the Carrillo rods, the block balanced and blueprinted. The head built and ported. Billet is doing the fabrication and tuning, ZPI can eat sh|t and die as far as I’m concerned.

As far as your build goes, I like what you are doing, but I hate the fact that you are doing it with ZPI.

All fanboys beware, I was once like you, but I have paid the ultimate price for my loyalty.

Originally Posted by rhythmnsmoke

Oh he flames in his on little way.

Originally Posted by Dyltone

It appears that some how my long post from page 4 was deleted but some how the part where rhythmnsmoke quoted me is still there on the same page.

Hmmmm... Maybe I'm missing something, maybe it's a "system glitch" but I hate being censored!

Originally Posted by pollup

for the record if i recall correctly im running "THE" very first zpi kit and i have had no such problems. so dont blame it on being one of the first kits. seems like an install problem.