old no.7

This is a long story but please read it, I will try and keep it as short as possible.

So beginning of last year [06] I bought a T74 turbo from Innovative. The turbo was purchased through the shop I work at http://wallsrodcustom.com/. Due to some mechanical and financial issues I only got to drive my car for a short period of time, approx 150 – 200KM’s. We have very short summers here so the car was stored for winter and a plan was made to get the car finalized.

Over the course of the summer we have a few problems with my boss’s car, a 67 Camaro running 2 Innovative T80’s. For whatever reason the drivers side turbo seized up twice on us after basically 0 KM’s of use. Both times my boss had to cough the bill for repairs. Innovative blamed it on us saying it was a lack of lubrication.
After being rebuilt twice and now being upgraded to their “F2” bearing design, everything seems to be going fine.

Flash to spring 07, I bring my car out in early May, the horrors of the T80 failures pretty much forgotten. Drove the car straight to the shop to put the car on our dyno and do a few pulls to clean up some areas. Everything seemed good on the dyno so we unstrapped the car and went for a rip on the highway just to make sure everything was ok. After a couple runs on the highway something didn't sound right, it sounded like there was a jet plane under the car or something, the exhaust was really loud. Everything on the laptop, temps, pressures, etc. were good so we eased the car back to the shop and started checking things over. No visual problems were found so I started the engine back up and reved it a couple times. My buddies told me the noise was coming from my turbo so we pulled the air filter off and gave it a spin by hand and right away we could tell the bearings were fucked. So I’m extremely pissed since I was planning on going to a local track day within the next few weeks. We call Innovative up and explain the situation, they say to send it back and they will check it out.

The turbo arrives to Innovative on May 31. I figure I’ll give them a couple days to look it over and if I don’t hear from them I’ll call and see what’s going on. A week goes by and I hear nothing so I call up and speak with Justin. Justin is the main guy we had always dealt with when choosing and ordering turbos for ourselves and our customers. During our conversation with Justin, he tells me that the turbo failed because of their bearing design and that they had had a lot of problems with this design and that they were going to repair it under warranty and upgrade it to the F2 bearing for free. I was stoked. I was told within a couple of weeks I would have the turbo back and that they were just waiting on replacement parts. I tell this to my boss and he’s pretty choked that they made him pay for his repairs but he’s like whatever, it’s done now.

This is where things go to ****. About 3 weeks later I still have no turbo so I call to see what going on. I have trouble getting through to anyone this time and the automated “which extension do you want” just keeps passing me from voice mail to voice mail. I leave a message asking about my turbo. No one ever calls back. I keep calling and finally get through to Justin. I get some BS about “still waiting on parts” and I know things are not looking good.

I have now gone through 3 months of waiting on hold, [at least 1/2hr per call], getting transferred from Justin, to Joe, to who knows who. Hearing everything from “we’re still waiting for parts”, to “we’re not sure if this is going to be warranty” and back to waiting for parts. The latest was “it’s going to be shipped out any day now”. On Aug 17 I received a UPS tracking number from them but guess what? It only says billing information received and the package does not move.

I am at my wits end and don’t know what to do. I call, I e-mail, I’ve been extremely nice, I’ve been a total *******, and nothing is getting through to these guys. I have threatened to get a lawyer involved as well as coming down there in person to deal with. The owner, Ola who my boss has personally met and dealt with at PRI will not return our calls or e-mails.

What do you guys think I should do? I have now lost another summer of driving my car and unfortunately cannot afford to buy another turbo to replace this one. The T74 cost me a good chunk of change and right now I feel like it's never coming back. And if it does come back, can I even trust it? To add insult to injury 2 of my close friends also purchased T80’s but due to financial and personal issues their projects have not been completed. After seeing what is happening to me they are scared to use their turbos. They don’t know whether to sell them and take a hit or to run them and chance a failure.

Please give me some advice guys. If you know anyone at Innovative, please have a heart and tell these guys to give me my turbo back!

Thanks for reading this.

Chris

miller

with all the other turbo companies available why would you stay with innovative ?

We learned our lesson with ITS units a long time ago.

My advice, buy another turbo and just take the loss. I know it sucks but what are you gonna do.

old no.7

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by miller &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">with all the other turbo companies available why would you stay with innovative ?

We learned our lesson with ITS units a long time ago.

My advice, buy another turbo and just take the loss. I know it sucks but what are you gonna do.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Believe me after this ordeal is done, i will not be staying with Innovative. When we first hooked up with them they seemed great. That has obviously changed. I can't honestly afford to just take the hit, that turbo cost be a lot of cash and i need to recoup some of it somehow.


Modified by old no.7 at 11:10 AM 9/9/2007

Rogue108

Many years ago, probably about 5 or 8 we had switched to Innovative Turbo from Turbonetics and they were great. It was also when Bothwell was running Innovative Turbos on their Sunfire and Cobalt and they were stating they were happy with their service and availability. It sucks to hear things have gone down hill and you are getting stuck with the short end of the stick. Unfortunaley, it sounds like you have to use legal action or wait till you get your turbo back, so you can offload it and get something else.

Good Luck

mrcox

I am sorry about your problems. I just bought a F2 74mm from them and they had it to me in two weeks. I have always got to talk to Justin. I don't understand why they are effing you around.