Sportech in Campbell

[Efren]

Unbelievable experience with this shop. I’ll try to make this short as I can.

I can no longer wrench like I used to so I decided to take the car to a shop for Clutch, front seals, oil seals and engine mount Installation.
I took the car in to Sportech in Campbell on Feb 16 and they were recommended by Dons Autowerks since he no longer work on 944’s. They gave me a quote via Text message. I made the Appt and showed up on Feb 16.

I left the car with Ryan (Shop Supervisor). He said it would take a week.

One week later I gave him a text to see their progress. He said 20% completed. He said give him till next week and I did.

Sent him another text a week later. This is now week 2. He said he needs another week since the Tech was sick all week last week. He asked for one more week.

I sent text today to set a schedule and get a commitment from them.

See attached screen shot of text messages.

I was furious.

[Efren]

Darn, pictures didn’t post in the right order.

[Efren]

For more than two weeks they had the car they kept lying to me.

[Tom]

So when he said "mounts and belts are done" -- he was just lying? So sorry to hear this. That blows. I assume he's not trying to charge you anything? Is this aka "Ken's Sportech?" If so, I don't remember the details but remember being told to steer clear back in the day with I had an air-cooled 911 -- I don't remember anything about lying or dishonesty, but just the level of work performed. Tony Heyer in Mountain View has the best reputation in the area for 944's; or Modderman down the street, or Reitmeir Werkstatt in Los Altos -- or book some time on the Carpokes lift.

p.s., if it makes you feel any better, I took the 450SL to a mercedes guy who claimed to know how to rebuild the convoluted HVAC climate control system. He had the car for 18 months! And after having it about a year, be was celebrating the fact that he had tracked down the factory manual covering the climate control. It was essentially free storage while we transitioned houses or I would have pushed harder -- but at least it was inside his shop the whole time...

[Efren]

I would love to work with you in this but I just can’t. I can barely lift my left shoulder above my shoulder and if I’m able to Im in a lot of pain and no strength on my arm.

Yes. He lied several times, after the first week he said they were about 20% done and he asked for one more week. Week two he said Tech had Called In sick and needs more time. Today he said he will try hard to complete this week and said engine mounts and belts are done but he lied about that too. When I told him to halt the work and I’ll pickup the car he said car is ready for pickup and that they haven’t touched the car.

[Efren]

The car was outside all this time too.

[Tom]

Wow, that's just awful. Did you get the car back? Did they try to charge you anything? I'd probably do a Yelp on that. I get things taking longer than expected, and people calling in sick, and whatever else might come up, but there's no real excuse for lying. No soup for them!

And totally get it on the work. I work in little increments -- half an hour in working, half and hour in my chair, and so on... Much easier to do that in your own garage without feeling under the gun....

[Efren]

Yes I got the car back yesterday. It was filthy. The guy tries to apologize and I totally told him off for giving me the run around. I’ll definitely do Yelp on them.
I called Heyer and looks like he’s closed shop. I’ll call Reitmeir later this morning.

[Tom]

Bummer about Heyer closing down. You might also call RMG enterprises in Sunnyvale. They were traditionally an air-cooled shop but looks like they are doing more p-cars these days. They were the insiders go-to, best of the best, place for years, referenced in national publications, etc. If they'd do the work, it would be my #1 choice by a country mile. Their namesake, Robert M Grigsby, is retired, but I hear his protégée has carried on his tradition of excellence.

[whalenlg]

I had a mixed experience with Sportech
They did a quick check on some basics in Nov 2020 when I was trying to get smog to pass - they gave me a $5k estimate for new cat, new control arms, repair hatch glass, etc. Seems like they wanted to reduce the labor component vs. parts cost. Nice part was they gave me a roadmap of what was needed but didn't charge me for the estimate. I did manage to get the items resolved by going to a muffler shop (2rd party cat) and rebuilding the parts of the control arms & hatch glass myself.
Last time I dropped by, I was asking if they had an easy way to get the idle mix. None of the guys there could give me a coherent answer on their procedure.
I thought it was a good sign that they always had 944s on the lot, but maybe they were not making progress on the repairs.