Well Friday I go to the Mitsu dealer to pick up my car after having a leaky water pump installed under the TSB out for them. On Thursday when they were working on it, I receive a call asking if I know my timing is off and I respond no, blah blah, it was running fine when I brought it in, just leave the gear timing like it is, don’t mess with it. Anyhow, when I pick up the car there I go out and start it up and immediately notice it sounds very odd and doesn’t want to idle good but it was yet to be warmed up so I was going to see if it changed any. I start looking at the invoice and there is a note at the bottom saying ‘Vehicle's timing is off, engine will not run right’. I’m thinking great they’ve screwed up my car. Well, I drive it home babying it and staying at cruising speeds. Everytime I have to slow down or stop the car wants to die so I have to constantly keep blipping the throttle to keep it from stalling out on me even though it still would usually.

Now to get on to the part about Dyno4mance, I gave Andrew a call late Friday night after hours and he answered anyways. He was kind enough to tell me I could bring it in, in the morning and he’d look it over. After arriving there, we set the car at TDC by the mark on the crank pulley. Then we started looking at the cam gear timing marks. To say the least, it was amazing the car ran at all. The intake cam was one tooth to far advanced, and the exhaust cam was one tooth retarded, so it was off by 2 teeth total. Instead of having to take the gears and belt off and loose we just made the decision to adjust my gears and make some good use out of them. We retarded the intake gear by 7 degrees to make up for it’s tooth off, and then advanced the exhaust gear by 7 degrees to make up for it’s one tooth. After setting them both we pushed the car forward in gear to make sure no valves were going to slap the piston and of course they didn’t. Started up car and sounded just like normal again and she was all set.

When we were putting the gear timing cover back on I noticed a bolt missing completely out of the top hole for the alternator bracket and the lower bolt that holds in the bracket wasn’t even half way tightened in. So we tightened it down and put in a spare bolt since the Mitsu dealer was too lazy to check small things like this. I’m just hoping they didn’t half *** anything else while putting it back together. To sum it up, dealer did horrible work, Dyno4mance did excellent

All in all if you live anywhere around or near Dyno4mance, I would highly recommend taking your car to Andrew to let him fix it up for you if you are needing anything installed or repaired. He has always treated me very good and has done top notch work And most importantly he always satisfies the customer and has excellent customer service. Also, big thanks to Ted_B for helping us assess the problem and it was nice meeting you Ted. Once again though, major thanks to Andrew, as always exceptional work!

P.S. sorry to be long but I just want to give everyone a fair warning bout some of the dealers out there..

 

Great write-up Mac.. I was along the ride with Mac to dyno4mance and I would "highly" recommend him to anybody. Top notch service! Great meeting you again Andrew and nice meeting you Ted!

 

yea they are great guys over there...and an awesome shop as well

 

Man, I cant tell you guys how awesome Andrew and the DYNOFORMANCE Crew is. They've been nothing but top notch since the first time we met them.

Another example of why they get props from everyone who ever goes there.

 

+1..

The dealer I don't believe should have ever let this car leave the lot as poorly as it was running...

 

So, how did your car get out of time to begin with? The dealership guys?

 

Did you not read the above? When the dealer installed the water pump, the timing belt has to come out and I'm guessing they didn't know how to time the Fidanzas and messed it up.. It was _NOT_ out of time when I took it in..

 

Hey, thanks for the attitude.

I did read above. The way I understood it was they were fixing the water pump and noticed it was out of time. Like it was that way when it arrived there and it was the first time they were working on it.

Did you read it? This part is a little confusing:

On Thursday when they were working on it, I receive a call asking if I know my timing is off and I respond no, blah blah, it was running fine when I brought it in, just leave the gear timing like it is, don’t mess with it.

That makes it sound like it was that way when it arrived and they were questioning if you had done that intentionally. It seems they thought you had it set that way (which is where they went wrong) and left it that way they thought it was as you requested which was obviously wrong but you didn't bother to listen to them and correct the situation.

 

Actually yes I did read it as I typed it twice, lol. Sorry I wasn't trying to be smart I was just asking if you had read the all of the above. I apologize if I came off rude, and after reading my above post I can see where you are coming from.

Anyhow, the car was just running so poorly when I picked it up, it was obvious it was out of time. When I took it in it may have very well been out, BUT the car was running just fine as far as idle, pulling through the powerband, and no backfire/rough run qualities so I just see it hard to have been two teeth out already.

I have aftermarket cam gears which are set up kind of odd, which is why I didn't want them to mess with the gear timing and just leave it where they were currently set at when they removed the belt at TDC. Instead of being in the Evo hole they are in the DSM hole, which makes the timing marks on the gears easier to read. I didn't want them to get even more confused by seeing this and thinking the gears are set up completely wrong and them trying to fix something that wasn't wrong in the first place to my knoweledge, but like I said it could have been slightly off, however, definitely not two teeth.

 

It's cool.

I'm sure it was just one of those deals where you knew the story so it made sense but, it didn't to me because I didn't know the deal.

 

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Dyno4mance is a great shop! I will always recommend them to anyone in the SE USA. I drove from Lafayette, LA to go there and get me car set up and tuned. Andrew was super helpful. It was well worth the trip.

 

Agreed

 

x2!