My Weekend At ZPI

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 9:03AM Post subject: My Weekend At ZPI

As you all know i recently put a turbo on my tC and ive been having problems with it. So i figured i would take this time to set a few things straight and to help people understand. For myself i have to say i bought the turbo and had my friend help me install it without any knowledge of how a turbo even worked. So the mistakes that lead up to the misrunning of my kit are somewhat my fault.

So here comes the book.
Small Problems: turbo ticking noise (tack weld inside the turbo on the internal wastegate came loose)
Wastegate leak: still a small leak, gonna get the flange machined locally
Emanage wired wrong: my fault (and to think i work on electronics for a living)
Emanage air flow error code: My MAF wasnt perfectly straight in the pipe, therefore throwing the check engine light and causing the tune on my car to be off
Piping loose: brackets needed to be made and my drivers side intercooler piping needed to be straightened.
Lack of an injector harnass: guy i bought the kit from didnt include it and i wasnt aware it was necessary

So now to the story.
Im from virginia beach so it took me 11 hours to actually make it to zpi. I didnt want to take this trip, im not a distance driver. And on top of that the people i paid to do my tune in the first place did a horrible job. The cars driveability sucked and was overall horrible.
So I arrive at zpi at about 9 in the morning on Saturday (zpi's day off) and I rest in the car until the time we were scheduled to meet. At around 11:30 Kenny and Keisha come to the shop and instantly start moving the stored cars out of the way to start working on my car. Had enough time for a handshake and Kenny was ready to go. I gotta say i was pretty impressed. Within the next 10 minutes Sean shows up and is ready to help. They got in there, wired up the harnass, made brackets, changed my intake pipe for the turbo, welded the loose piece on the turbo, and pretty much got my car up to standards of what it should have been. Before the car was even brought to the dyno the improvement was unbelieveable. In the middle of working on my car their Maserati shows up to take a look at whats going on. So Kenny offers to take me for a spin in this car (mind you its a 100k dollar car). So as we come around the turn sideways id say we evened the car out at around 70. Unreal. Only bad part of that was there was no OH **** bar to grab, so that definitely woke me up since i was still overtired.

Once all the miscellaneous problems were fixed with my install it was off to the dyno.. Most dyno shops will do 3 or 4 pulls to get your car tuned right, we did over 20. After 1/4 tank of gas and 10 miles added to the car they were satisfied with the tune (mind you Rob had showed up to help with the tuning). With this tune, which is safe across the boards i managed to produce a decent amount more of hp and tq. The final result was 263.1whp 281.2 tq. Not too bad, expecially since the car is running super rich. (Had to compensate for air differences through the mountains and where i live). After the tuning we all went out to dinner and i really had a good time, well as good of a time as anyone would have from being up since 2am the morning before.

In conclusion to this write up i can say this, thanks to the help of this company my car is running great. I showed up, i saw very professional work accomplished, and i was very happy with the outcome. Any questions i asked were immediately answered, there was no stuttering, nothing. I can honestly say Kenny didnt try to bull**** me about any answers, he said anything he saw straight out. They definitely care about their customers and are not in the business just to take peoples money and not care what happens from there. I didnt even buy my kit from them, i bought it used and they still worked their rears off getting it set up right. So the only thing i can say to end this is if your waiting for a kit from zpi, rest assure you will get your kit. Their quality far surpasses the other kits out there, and their tech support is unmatched. 20 hours in total driving time for me to get his accomplished, and it was worth every bit. I dont think i have found anyone as knowledgeable on any vehicle i have had as Kenny is on tC's and thats the truth. My dyno sheets should be posted as soon as i send them to sciondad, as well as new photos as i start to dress up the engine. You will see my car in zpi's gallery on their homepage shortly as i need to clean it up and put my konig's back on and pull all the bugs out of my bumper..
Thank you ZPI staff (thanks guys, it was definitely fun) and sciondad for helping me get my car running as it should and bearing with my million's of questions i ask. If any of you have any questions feel free to shoot me a private message and i will answer.

tCerz1an · Joined: 13 Mar 2006 Posts: 64

Wow, sounds like ZPI defiently stands behind their products and is a great guy too.

good to hear.

smokeydog001 · Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 614

:clap: A happy post! We need more like this. :clap:

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 9:18AM Post subject:

tCerz1an wrote: Wow, sounds like ZPI defiently stands behind their products and is a great guy too.

good to hear.

Standing behind their products is an understatement. Just from talking with him and watching him work, the guy lives for this stuff. And was willing to break things down that i didnt quite understand. Im not a motor guy, im a stereo guy. So im just getting into motors and he definitely helped me understand answers to things i was asking. As far as their personalities, great people. Its a shame my girlfriend and I live so far away because they are definitely cool people to hang out with.

ScionDad · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 2088 Location: St. Louis, MO

:shock:

:bow: :bow: :bow:

That is a company that takes care of their customers. All the BS thrown out there about ZPI is just THAT...pure BS.

That is friggin AWSOME

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 9:39AM Post subject:

ScionDad wrote: :shock:

:bow: :bow: :bow:

That is a company that takes care of their customers. All the BS thrown out there about ZPI is just THAT...pure BS.

That is friggin AWSOME

Couldnt agree more!!

When working on motors problems are bound to arise and nothing is 100 percent failsafe. thats just a risk you take. But they understand that and will help you out fully. Treat them with respect, as you want to be treated. If you have a problem, talk to them about it, dont just call and start cursing out the first person you hear (probably keisha and she will just cuss you back out :) ) but treat them with respect and they will definitely return the same. They are very intelligent and respectable people and i have alot of respect for the work they do.

Whocares05050 · Joined: 24 Oct 2004 Posts: 3616 Location: Florida

:clap:

Wow, Good to hear nice things.

ZPIracing · Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 993 Location: Louisville, KY

Thanks for the kind words. It is not very often people post about there good expirence only when they have some type of issue or potential issue.

Thanks

peteyd · Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 2793 Location: Houston

ZPI PWNS ALL!! nuff said.

TCpete · Joined: 07 Nov 2005 Posts: 8434 Location: SoFla Flossin

i wish you guys (zpi werent so dam far away in KY lol..guess one day ill have to plan a weekend drive from south florida up there.

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 10:27AM Post subject:

TCpete wrote: i wish you guys (zpi werent so dam far away in KY lol..guess one day ill have to plan a weekend drive from south florida up there.

I can tell you from first hand experience you wont regret it, you will be very impressed with the way they do business. The trip was definitely the rough part, but i was very relieved on the ride back. Honestly i was nervous heading up there considering i had never met anyone from the company so i could of driven 11 hours to an empty shop and no one showing up but they stood by their word. Said if I brought it they would get me up to par and delivered a better then par car. Cant ask for more.

nester · Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 569 Location: Louisville, KY

Here's a few pics from the Dyno

Here's a video too.. :)

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 10:38AM Post subject:

YOU ARE THE MAN!! Remember i was complaining my good camera died? I only got 1 good video on my good camera. Well my mediocre camera took some videos and pictures, but when i plugged the memory card into the computer it errored and i lost all the photos on the card. Glad you got some photos. If you have other photos that arent posted or videos email me them
jrod1221@cox.net
Thanks buddy.

rhythmnsmoke · Joined: 20 Jun 2005 Posts: 11184 Location: TN

HEY Pollup! WHY DO YOU THINK I drive there even for little stuff I can do myself....heehee.. I only live 3hrs away, so I'm a ZPI shop troll.. I'll be right along side you next month when I turbo our tC. There is a reason why I am a ZPI fan. Kenny's integrity is that of mine. He values his integrity, and that's why he bends over backwards to help us out despite the hurdles. Once anyone meets the people behind ZPI, they will be hooked. They are bottom line---Down to Earth.

PS....YOUR CAR SOUNDS FREAKIN AWESOME! And what exhaust are you running?

nester · Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 569 Location: Louisville, KY

rhythmnsmoke wrote: HEY Pollup! WHY DO YOU THINK I drive there even for little stuff I can do myself....heehee.. I only live 3hrs away, so I'm a ZPI shop troll.. I'll be right along side you next month when I turbo our tC. There is a reason why I am a ZPI fan. Kenny's integrity is that of mine. He values his integrity, and that's why he bends over backwards to help us out despite the hurdles. Once anyone meets the people behind ZPI, they will be hooked. They are bottom line---Down to Earth.

PS....YOUR CAR SOUNDS FREAKIN AWESOME! And what exhaust are you running?

He's got the TRD axle back, stock mid-pipe and s-pipe.. :o

I think he's going to be ordering a zpi s-pipe and mid-pipe soon. :) I think he'll see a big improvement in power with the tune he's got, and a more free flowing exhaust.

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 2:37PM Post subject:

nester wrote: rhythmnsmoke wrote: HEY Pollup! WHY DO YOU THINK I drive there even for little stuff I can do myself....heehee.. I only live 3hrs away, so I'm a ZPI shop troll.. I'll be right along side you next month when I turbo our tC. There is a reason why I am a ZPI fan. Kenny's integrity is that of mine. He values his integrity, and that's why he bends over backwards to help us out despite the hurdles. Once anyone meets the people behind ZPI, they will be hooked. They are bottom line---Down to Earth.

PS....YOUR CAR SOUNDS FREAKIN AWESOME! And what exhaust are you running?

He's got the TRD axle back, stock mid-pipe and s-pipe.. :o

I think he's going to be ordering a zpi s-pipe and mid-pipe soon. :) I think he'll see a big improvement in power with the tune he's got, and a more free flowing exhaust.

I want to go with the s-pipe and midpipe now but the only thing thats gonna hold me back is im going out to sea in june for 6 months. when i buy the 2 pipes im gonna head back out there and let them retune it. so thats gonna be a little bit. the noise in the videos is the atmospheric wastegate, its friggin loud, and it has a custom pipe made for it. sounds pretty decent now, didnt sound that good before.

kytc · Joined: 17 Jul 2005 Posts: 1056

Glad to hear about so many good experiences about going to the shop. I'll definetly have to go up there this summer and let them talk me into blowing all of my money on my car lol. Oh and if I can get my gf's dad to weld my resonators in to my ZPI midpipe I'll post a review up on it.

rhythmnsmoke · Joined: 20 Jun 2005 Posts: 11184 Location: TN

nester wrote: rhythmnsmoke wrote: HEY Pollup! WHY DO YOU THINK I drive there even for little stuff I can do myself....heehee.. I only live 3hrs away, so I'm a ZPI shop troll.. I'll be right along side you next month when I turbo our tC. There is a reason why I am a ZPI fan. Kenny's integrity is that of mine. He values his integrity, and that's why he bends over backwards to help us out despite the hurdles. Once anyone meets the people behind ZPI, they will be hooked. They are bottom line---Down to Earth.

PS....YOUR CAR SOUNDS FREAKIN AWESOME! And what exhaust are you running?

He's got the TRD axle back, stock mid-pipe and s-pipe.. :o

I think he's going to be ordering a zpi s-pipe and mid-pipe soon. :) I think he'll see a big improvement in power with the tune he's got, and a more free flowing exhaust.

I thought he might have been running a restrictive exhaust. Yeah, def. will free up those ponies, and stop choking the turbo.

rhythmnsmoke · Joined: 20 Jun 2005 Posts: 11184 Location: TN

pollup wrote: nester wrote: rhythmnsmoke wrote: HEY Pollup! WHY DO YOU THINK I drive there even for little stuff I can do myself....heehee.. I only live 3hrs away, so I'm a ZPI shop troll.. I'll be right along side you next month when I turbo our tC. There is a reason why I am a ZPI fan. Kenny's integrity is that of mine. He values his integrity, and that's why he bends over backwards to help us out despite the hurdles. Once anyone meets the people behind ZPI, they will be hooked. They are bottom line---Down to Earth.

PS....YOUR CAR SOUNDS FREAKIN AWESOME! And what exhaust are you running?

He's got the TRD axle back, stock mid-pipe and s-pipe.. :o

I think he's going to be ordering a zpi s-pipe and mid-pipe soon. :) I think he'll see a big improvement in power with the tune he's got, and a more free flowing exhaust.

I want to go with the s-pipe and midpipe now but the only thing thats gonna hold me back is im going out to sea in june for 6 months. when i buy the 2 pipes im gonna head back out there and let them retune it. so thats gonna be a little bit. the noise in the videos is the atmospheric wastegate, its friggin loud, and it has a custom pipe made for it. sounds pretty decent now, didnt sound that good before.

I like it loud, so I guess I'm a little more bias'd on the sound.... :P

pollup · Posted: 3/20/06 3:27PM Post subject:

oh definitely dont misunderstand, i like loud clean sounding exhaust. problem is in virginia beach we have super strict exhaust noise laws and they give out tickets like crazy.