Review: PRT Performance in Lewisville, TX

[skydragoness]

I never post in the 240sx forums (since I don't own one anymore) but I felt a strong urge to tell people to stay away from this 'performance' shop.

My boyfriend has a 92' 240sx, pretty mint and low mileage but has had a weird idling problem/dead spot issue that we've tried everything with (replaced SO many things and cleaned SO many things).
I'm on a local Miata FB group page and asked the members if they knew of a shop that was willing to take a look at a older car and diagnose the issues we were having as we were getting tired of throwing parts at it. They recommended Steve at PRT Performance as being great with their Miatas. I looked at some pics of their work and read reviews, (engine building, dyno tuning, mostly RX-7 stuff) and I figured if they can work on RX-7s, a 240sx with a idle problem should be easy enough. So we scheduled a Saturday to go there, explained the problem, gave him a note pad of all the parts that were replaced already and he said to check back in a few days. A few days turned into a week and he called my boyfriend saying they tracked it down to the IACV and it would need to be replaced. (I'm a lot more suspicious than my bf is so he didn't question him really and approved it since he said it would be a few hundred bucks, including the part from Nissan). $250 for the part and a couple hours of labor.

After a week, I get concerned and start calling and checking in. Supposedly the IACV is not available from Nissan and is coming out of California. I call my friend at a Nissan dealership and have him check the part. It's in stock at the Dallas hub. We specifically tell Steve we only want Nissan OEM parts on the car. Now I'm suspicious. I offer to get the part for him since I have Nissan connections through my old job and he ignores it. A few days later, he calls my bf instead and says that he has the IACV, and that the labor for the job is actually 5-6 hours because he has to take the intake manifold off. A few more days and I check in and he says he's waiting for a gasket and "it's hard to get."

So, we end up getting the car TWO and a half weeks later, with a lot of hassle/calling and I test drove the car when I came to pick it up and it just didn't seem right. It didn't pull hard (like it was on retarded ignition timing) and it was stuttering a little at idle. I came back from my test drive and told him this and he poked around and found a vacuum hose unhooked (because they really rushed putting everything back together). At this point I was done, my ride that dropped me off the shop had to leave and we needed the car back. I tried calling back the next couple of days to tell him the idling and low power problem but he wouldn't return my calls.

My bf ended up taking the car to another mechanic recently, where it was revealed the IACV that was installed was USED and he adjusted the idle on the car and it's been running better. (I've also had it looked over by an old gearhead at my job and he advanced the timing a bit which helped).

TL; DR: Steven Kan at PRT doesn't know what he's doing-- especially with Nissans, has poor communication, installs used parts without asking, and doesn't have time to take in additional work.

Before anybody bishez why we didn't do it ourselves, we have pretty busy full time jobs and I have a lot less free time than my bf. Figured we could get a honest diagnosis from this place based on fellow Miata owners vouching for the guy. We were totally wrong. ALSO, after more digging, I've found a lot of forum reviews of PRT of people being very unhappy with dyno tuning and getting their car back in worse condition: http://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/1143250 ... rformance/