Hellbert

wow...not my kinda place... maybe ill keep away from there. i like hangin out at howards (RLZ) shop in charlotte. pops grading/trucking/construction business on one side, moms hair salon in the middle and a shop on the other side. theres nothing like 9-13000rpm dyno pulls through an open down pipe while some old lady in curlers getting a perm pokes her head into the shop to see what the racket is and cringes and slams the door because its so loud haha ahhhh i miss the good ol days...

Tom-Guy

Howard has issues, I'll introduce you to people that want to kill him if you ever make it up my way. Brad is good people.

douspray

i'm in new bern

Hitchhikkr

I went to oak island on vacation back in may of last year, and subsequently was in Wilmington a few days. I actually like the town. It reminds me of AshEVILle without so many hippies and no mountains. I would consider living there but I wouldnt have any money because the nearest Porsche dealership is is raleigh...and no independent shops in sight. Eh..

You should just move up here to asheville. We get drunk and blow stuff up. Whats not to love? :P

SkunT

im in havelock.

If you cant find anything to do in Wilmington, your not looking. Actually...wilmington is more of a seasonal thing for fun. The summers become a -----fest.
Also, Myrtle Beach is about a 2 hour drive from the lejeune front gate. Many of my old days = packing a car with clothes on thursdays, getting off at 1630 on friday heading straight out the front gate to MB, stop along the way, change out of cammies, party all weekend long...leave MB at 0230 Monday morning, stop along the way to change into PT gear to be in formation monday morning. Those were the days.

And actually, there is a lot of knowledge around the Jacksonville area for boosted hondas. Thing is, all of there heads are so far up there ***, they are too good for there own ----.

Hellbert

why is that? hes always been cool as hell with me. send me a pm if u dont want to say on here, that could possibly be something good to know...?

ashevilles too ------ cold for my ***!! when it hits about 55 i start gettin cold so screw that. its supposed to be like 17 down here either tonight or tomorrow im gonna be screwed...

actually i really havnt looked too terribly hard, just went out and cruised around looking a few decent looking cars to stop and see whats up, buncha ricers is the best i came up with. ive hammered out the MB drive a few times since ive been down here but the winter sucks period, just a bad time to get out and meet people. i actually live on the south end of topsail island, so its a pain in the *** to get anywhere. atleast 45 min from civilization of any kind but i love how quite it is.

Tom-Guy

I brought a friend down there who paid half up front for an engine based entirely off of meeting Brad. It took forever which was kind of expected duh it's speed work but Howard consistently lied about timeframes, what had or hadn't been done so far, and was rude. Travis Fender will probably break him if they ever find themselves in the same room. I've heard the same story two or three other times from other people; liked Brad but wanted to wring Howard's neck.

Brad was doing all the machining and primary assembly work, Howard did light duty finish assembly stuff. Turned Rob Deal's 85X92mm ITR with the original prototype LS-length Carillo A-beams, strutted pistons, cams, etc, out the door with the valvecover on and dabs of silicone on corners of the cam caps as you're supposed to do to seal it. The engine builder set the valve lash, right? Yah, it ran on two cyls for a total of three seconds before I shut it off, and I had to drop the pan to retrieve three lash nuts that were so loose they came completely off. The car ended up popping the headgasket because the CR was a wee bit higher than the advertised 11.5:1 and the guy who bought the engine stated that he didn't think the head studs had been torqued all the way which is why the headgasket issue came about. The other four RLZ engines I've broken in and tuned were excellent units, but they all came out as seperate head/block assemblies not finished units - two of which because the customer was sick of waiting for the completed head to be bolted to the completed block. I kinda have to file Howard under the "knows how to drive really well, can push laptop buttons really well, someone needs to take his wrenches away and not let him talk to customers" category.

I feel really free stating these things because I'm not exactly a bed of roses myself so it's kind of the pot calling the kettle black. I'm pretty honest with people about what/when/why I'm going to do things, and for the most part it works for me. Similarly, if Howard was honest and upfront about his lack of interest in holding people's hands, or hearing that custom speed/machine work takes a long time which is only obvious to anyone over the emotional age of 7, he'd lose 7-10% of RLZ's current new sales but 90% of his PR problems would go away which means repeat customers and more customers in the long run.

Hellbert

honestly sounds about right. ive never seen howard do anything too speedly. my buddies b16 tranny sat down there for god knows how long waiting on syncros and a lsd and one day we just decided to hop in the truck and haul *** and it turned out the parts had "just showed up" but the ups box told me different. i never said anything to anyone about it though. i understand hes a pretty busy guy...keep in mind i use that loosely... and has some stuff to do but come on sometimes it just gets rediculous. brads a cool guy, knows his ---- and that shop has all of the makings of an awesome outfit. if like u said he would get off his *** and put his mind to stuff instead of ------- off. howards a good person, good tuner from what ive seen. you know how when u look at some people though with a wrench in their hand they just look nervous or akward while theyre doing something...thats him and if youve seen him work you know this already. he doesnt like to give much info out at all... i learned really quick just dont as him questions about what he does when he does it. when he tuned my car i had a question about getting it to idle with the 1000ccs so smooth right off the bat and he just kinda shrugged and said its easy and walked off. idk...

Tom-Guy

Sounds like me, but I'm honest about my own bullshit. I have six or seven cars I should hop on, but I sat at the house all day doing jack ---- instead. It comes with the terrirtory, most really good tuners are ADD disaster areas. I'll get up tomorrow, or maybe the day after, and pull one to four fifteen hour days. Then I'll sit on my *** for one to five days and cook elaborate dinners for me and the kid, which is my latest kick. Last one was a roasted pork tenderloin with a dried cranberry/apricot/fresh blueberry sherry/balsamic glaze accompanied by smashed yukon golds tossed with mushrooms, onions, red/orange/yellow bell peppers, spinach, and sour cream as well as haricot verts sauteed in the fruit glaze and pork drippings, deglazed with marsala wine.

I answer questions, though. Tuners who don't kind of make me giggle a little. I got into all of this with a very pronounced DIY mindset, and a very open door shared info policy at a time when people refused to hand out their tips and tricks. 20/20 hindsight has made me aware that I can share every trick I have in my bag freely and never run out, or create any threats to me making a living. I am what I am because I have a functional intellect and I question everything. The sort of people who look for other people's ideas to copy but can't think for themselves... uhm, let's make the chinese knockoff analogy. The chinese really grasp the fundimentals of engineering, don't they?

Hellbert

well son of a bitch I should be master tuner then... I take pride in my ability to quickly learn something and have a pretty true to form diy ability but there are a few things that I don't completely grasp yet. mainly tuning. suspension, engine work, transmission work, body hell just about anything really. and im ok with tuning but I wouldn't put myself up to tuning my high compression turbo motor... so howard did work on it and she runs awesome...when its got vtec...

what sucks though is I seem to have a cap on what I can learn. its weird like ill pick up so much so fast on something its like by brain runs out of room too fast and im stuck. like with turbo cars I learned pretty much everything I know in the first 6 mo to a year. since then I havnt picked up very much on it. I think most of it comes down to my lack of resourses. not information, that's everywhere. but things like cars to work on dynos to run on stuff like that. id love to do like you howard and so many others have and turn my hobby/passion into a carrier but I don't forsee that happening.

those are the glories of owning ur own business though. you can come and go as you please and do what you want. the good ol saying "cheap, fast or right, choose two."applies ten fold too.