Got some popcorn? My negative feedback on a UK tuner.

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Yoniboi
Help!!! I need a LIFE!!!
Posts: 850
Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2005 6:24 am
Location: Madrid, Spain

Got some popcorn? My negative feedback on a UK tuner.

Post by Yoniboi »

Just to let you all know how the saga turned out.

I sent my head to the Cylinderhead shop in the UK, where Len has some truly top kit for working on our bikes. That said he specialises in Classics.

I took him the head in person on the 2nd of Jan. I'd asked him what he needed and he said the head and the valves. Me not knowing any better took the head as I'd taken it off the bike.

He explained that he didn't build or strip heads, he only worked on them, but let me use his bench and valve compressor to do it myself.

I was there for about two and a half hours all told, and the guy never stopped talking, he didn't do anything either, but kept telling me he'd got lots of work.

Two months and some international phone calls later, he'd finished replacing the valve guides and cleaning the valves, and recutting the exhaust seats. He said he'd get it in the post the same day.

Two weeks later I phoned again and he said that he was very busy and it was a case of 'who shouts loudest' and he hadn't posted it yet.

10 days later it arrived, with the gasket surface heavily scratched. I phoned him immediately and he said that he didn't understand because he had aluminum work tops and he was always very careful.

I had the head skimmed locally, they had to remove 0.5mm to remove the worst of the scratches, and by the time my wife had had a baby and I'd got the bike running two months had gone by.

Once sure the bike ran OK I sent Len a copy of the invoice for the skimming work 35€ with photos of the before and after.

He told me that I was an ungrateful bastard, that he'd let me use his workshop, that I was trying it on and that things didn't work like that in the UK.

I told him to go to hell.

End of story.

You all make your own minds up.

End of rant.

John
If you're going to take a shot at me let me know so I can duck...!

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