Question to the Demographic! - What is one thing you wish your shop did, or could do

[steve shadows]

I wanted to pose a question.

I have been racking my brains over new and innovative ways to serve this inudstry, before throwing in the towel

I have thought about parts, service, or both.

I have built my resume in the niche market of SR20s and drifter car setups since doing my first motorswap for money for a friend of mine as a cusotmer in 2002.

From Motor Swaps, to turbo upgrades to Custom Turbo builds to teaching myself the basics of fluid dynamics and engineering and then finally culminating and expertise in tuning japanese cars on a brake eddy dyno.

I have come to a place in the hobby, as many of you will or have where you decide to take a break from being the guy in the seat and end up on the sidelines or as a manager of sorts.

So I wanted to pose the question to my most valued resource: my customers, friends and fellow car enthusiasts.

What is ONE thing that you wish your local shop, or if you trusted a shop to do WOULD or SHOULD do and HOW MUCH would you pay for them to it.

Name the one thing you wish you could have to NOT worry about doing yourself and how much you would be willing to pay for it.

I have hope that there is still something out there that further expertise could be developed and that one more thing that could be a headache or a nightmare in our hobbies could be handled.

When I was growing up and building Nissans I cannot explain how much money I wasted, lost or got ripped off as a young teen and even early twenties from not knowing what I wanted out of the hobby or where to spend my money etc. Most importantly not knowing someone/shop I could TRULY trust.

I see if SOO often lately, big big name shops completely ripping off people or not providing the service that they should or could be or trying to do too many things at once and not becoming the best at one thing.

I see this also with fellow enthusiasts and their cars.

So throw it out there. I want to hear it from you guys. I'm curious and havent really posted anything interesting in a while, staying in tonight and just surfing the web

So let's have a good conversation!

Template:

Service to be Offered:
Price you would pay:
Timeline you would want it completed:
Goal with your car: (grip, drag, drift)

[jamg]

ls1 under $5k

[steve shadows]

Nice! nice way to start off.

[ronmcdon]

flexible hours would be nice.
there's not a lot of shops open till late & on the weekends.
maybe you already do that, idk.

a good alignment/suspension shop that's familiar with road race & autoX setups.
complete with corner balancing.
less than $200 for full alignment w/ corner balancing would be nice

Maybe do a full suspension tuning setup (equivelent to what RobiSpec does for evo's/Sti's.
pricing could vary depending on how elaborate the work would be.

[handinpants]

someone to tune a powerfc at $60 an hour, and a realistic total tuning time, cause i've never seen someone tune a power fc for 10 hours straight......

Also Los Angeles, needs a bikini car wash!

[sliddinsil8o]

i agree with handinpants...only thing that really popped into mind after read was "tuning"; something reasonable in price and done in a timely manner.

[brndck]

change my oil without stripping out a cast aluminum drainpan, even after i told everyone in the damn shop "do not reinstall the plug, I will do it before you refill it, its a cast pan and i don't want it stripped"

actually, i agree with what ronmcdon said about suspension tuning. it seems like most 240 owners only set up their stuff for wheel gap/hella flush fitment with no real consideration to how it performs.

[drift freaq]

Suspension tuning is probably a pretty damn good idea. Its kind of a black art. Everyone talks about it but not a lot of people actually do it. The most educated ones are the road racing people and or the few of us that really manage to give a damn. Like ronmcdon and brndck said.
Most people know nothing about making their car handle properly with proper settings. They just buy off the shelf garbage coils and slam the car for flushness. The good think about suspension tuning is its something you can readily transfer the knowledge of over to other cars. Thereby not pigeon holing yourself.

Honestly I would be looking towards working with newer Nissans like 350's and G35's. The 240 owners market is a pretty lost situation. Most of them are not willing to do the right thing or pay to have the right thing done. They want quick fixs for cheap.

I know that sounds bad but its pretty much the truth.

You have a grip on engine tuning already and fact is again it should be something you should be moving upstream with.

[helikz]

Originally Posted by drift freaq

Suspension tuning is probably a pretty damn good idea. Its kind of a black art. Everyone talks about it but not a lot of people actually do it. The most educated ones are the road racing people and or the few of us that really manage to give a damn. Like ronmcdon and brndck said.
Most people know nothing about making their car handle properly with proper settings. They just buy off the shelf garbage coils and slam the car for flushness. The good think about suspension tuning is its something you can readily transfer the knowledge of over to other cars. Thereby not pigeon holing yourself.

Honestly I would be looking towards working with newer Nissans like 350's and G35's. The 240 owners market is a pretty lost situation. Most of them are not willing to do the right thing or pay to have the right thing done. They want quick fixs for cheap.

I know that sounds bad but its pretty much the truth.

You have a grip on engine tuning already and fact is again it should be something you should be moving upstream with.

QFT.

but yes, suspension tuning, corner balancing, chassis tuning are all peices of the puzzle when you're talking about real performance, and not just looking good and making good numbers on a dyno.

The point about quick inexpensive fixes is also sadly true. If a company came to these forums and said they were going to start marketing a turbo upgrade kit for 9k, they'd be laughed at, while companies are doing just that on the newer chassis.

I never thought I'd say this, but the honda camp and the s-chassis camp are starting to get dangerously close together, where before they couldn't be further from similar.

[Def]

Originally Posted by helikz

I never thought I'd say this, but the honda camp and the s-chassis camp are starting to get dangerously close together, where before they couldn't be further from similar.

Starting to get close together? I'd say they've been essentially identical for the past couple of years. It's sad, but 90%+ of this forum doesn't really give a crap about having a car that's either fast, handles well, or stops well. They just want to look cool or maybe get some kind of "rare" Aero.

Yes, that's also part of the drifting scene, but it's also a big part of the Honda scene.

[Ragnarok043]

how about bushings with grease fittings.

[helikz]

Originally Posted by Def

Starting to get close together? I'd say they've been essentially identical for the past couple of years. It's sad, but 90%+ of this forum doesn't really give a crap about having a car that's either fast, handles well, or stops well. They just want to look cool or maybe get some kind of "rare" Aero.

Yes, that's also part of the drifting scene, but it's also a big part of the Honda scene.

yeah, I'm just an optimist, thinking that the nissan market wouldn't degrade the way it has.

[brndck]

Originally Posted by Def

They just want to look cool or maybe get knockoffs of some kind of "rare" Aero.

fixed for you.

[sbanzer123]

maybe offer a class on efi tuning. i know that i would love to be able to tune my own car instead of having somebody else doing it.

[racepar1]

Suspension "tuning" with some actual engineering and track experience behind it would possibly help a lot of people, but I doubt anyone would really be willing to pay to do it right. This isn't something that can be done for a couple hundred bucks. Simply turning knobs on your coilovers and adjusting your alignment isn't enough to justify doing it at all. ANYONE can do that.

[handinpants]

i'l spend money for my porsche turbo, but not for my 240, two different class ranges, i've spent alot in my 240, and i enjoy driving it more than the porsche !

[ronmcdon]

Originally Posted by drift freaq

Suspension tuning is probably a pretty damn good idea. Its kind of a black art. Everyone talks about it but not a lot of people actually do it. The most educated ones are the road racing people and or the few of us that really manage to give a damn. Like ronmcdon and brndck said.
Most people know nothing about making their car handle properly with proper settings. They just buy off the shelf garbage coils and slam the car for flushness. The good think about suspension tuning is its something you can readily transfer the knowledge of over to other cars. Thereby not pigeon holing yourself.

Honestly I would be looking towards working with newer Nissans like 350's and G35's. The 240 owners market is a pretty lost situation. Most of them are not willing to do the right thing or pay to have the right thing done. They want quick fixs for cheap.

I know that sounds bad but its pretty much the truth.

You have a grip on engine tuning already and fact is again it should be something you should be moving upstream with.

Idk if whether being cheap is the real concern, so much as just choosing the right parts for the correct application.

lot of the more affordable coil-overs out there like the Megans aren't cheap,
a more tried & proven setup of ots konis/Ground Control's w/ custom rates seldom cost over $700.

I've tried to replace a lot of suspension parts, play with different alignment settings, use decent tires, do autoX events to try out what I have.
Till this day, I'm not satisfied with the way my car handles at the autoX, much less feel comfy to take it to even a smaller track like Streets.

When you check Honda-Tech, under the "Road Race & AutoX" forums,
there's a huge resource for ppl experimenting with different setups.
You can easily find out exactly the parts & alignment settings needed to build a forgiving & well performing track-ready civic.
I did just that 2-3 yrs ago.
Had an EG done for about 12k, and brought it right out to Streets of Willow.
Didn't even have time to bring it to a proper alignment shop.
Ran about 1:38:xx CW, first event, which to me is great (my evo did 1:36:xx, first event).
Never once did the car even spin out, and overall was consistent.

It's not that the issue isn't that there's aren't enough S-chassis owners who aren't willing to spend money.
There just isn't a lot of them who autoX/road-race.
Also, info on that particular niche is relatively scarce (compared to say honda or miata owners at least).

In Socal, I can think of 2 places that probably are very knowledgeable with suspension tuning w/ regard to autoX & roadrace.
West End in the Torrance area, and Hiro's in OC.
West End, although is great at what they do, have limited hours and can be difficult to arrange something with them (2-4 weeks wait after you make an appt).
Hiro's is a bit inconvenient for those of us in Los Angeles, plus the fact that they're only open on week-days.
As far as I know, both places are in good demand.
Would be nice if there were more shops like this.

IIRC, Steve is somewhere in the Los Angeles area.
To bring to car in to have your engine tuned, susp & alignment set-up would be really convenient.

[ronmcdon]

Originally Posted by Def

Starting to get close together? I'd say they've been essentially identical for the past couple of years. It's sad, but 90%+ of this forum doesn't really give a crap about having a car that's either fast, handles well, or stops well. They just want to look cool or maybe get some kind of "rare" Aero.

Yes, that's also part of the drifting scene, but it's also a big part of the Honda scene.

There's a HUGE amount of diversity within the Honda crowd.
While they surely have their share of poseurs, there's also a big portion who are dedicated purely to track events.

I think Honda owners in general just get a bad rep from ricers and JDM poseurs.
Many apparently are also willing to spend big bucks, regardless of their objective.
It's no coincidence that their after-market is so comprehensive.

If I can ever discover the 240sx equivelent to Honda-Tech's roadrace/autoX sub-forum, that will truly make my day;
http://honda-tech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19

[racepar1]

Originally Posted by handinpants

i'l spend money for my porsche turbo, but not for my 240, two different class ranges, i've spent alot in my 240, and i enjoy driving it more than the porsche !

That's just a dumb attitude. Just because a car is less expensive or exotic does not mean that it isn't worth spending money or time on. I personally enjoy the challenge of working with an underrated and underappreciated car (in road racing/trackday circles). IMO NOBODY has TRULY developed s-chasis cars to their full potential.

Originally Posted by ronmcdon

If I can ever discover the 240sx equivelent to Honda-Tech's roadrace/autoX sub-forum, that will truly make my day;
Road Racing/Autocross - Honda-Tech

I got ya man, PMing you right now.

[drift freaq]

Originally Posted by ronmcdon

Idk if whether being cheap is the real concern, so much as just choosing the right parts for the correct application.

lot of the more affordable coil-overs out there like the Megans aren't cheap,
a more tried & proven setup of ots konis/Ground Control's w/ custom rates seldom cost over $700.

I've tried to replace a lot of suspension parts, play with different alignment settings, use decent tires, do autoX events to try out what I have.
Till this day, I'm not satisfied with the way my car handles at the autoX, much less feel comfy to take it to even a smaller track like Streets.

When you check Honda-Tech, under the "Road Race & AutoX" forums,
there's a huge resource for ppl experimenting with different setups.
You can easily find out exactly the parts & alignment settings needed to build a forgiving & well performing track-ready civic.
I did just that 2-3 yrs ago.
Had an EG done for about 12k, and brought it right out to Streets of Willow.
Didn't even have time to bring it to a proper alignment shop.
Ran about 1:38:xx CW, first event, which to me is great (my evo did 1:36:xx, first event).
Never once did the car even spin out, and overall was consistent.

It's not that the issue isn't that there's aren't enough S-chassis owners who aren't willing to spend money.
There just isn't a lot of them who autoX/road-race.
Also, info on that particular niche is relatively scarce (compared to say honda or miata owners at least).

In Socal, I can think of 2 places that probably are very knowledgeable with suspension tuning w/ regard to autoX & roadrace.
West End in the Torrance area, and Hiro's in OC.
West End, although is great at what they do, have limited hours and can be difficult to arrange something with them (2-4 weeks wait after you make an appt).
Hiro's is a bit inconvenient for those of us in Los Angeles, plus the fact that they're only open on week-days.
As far as I know, both places are in good demand.
Would be nice if there were more shops like this.

IIRC, Steve is somewhere in the Los Angeles area.
To bring to car in to have your engine tuned, susp & alignment set-up would be really convenient.

Though you miss something critically important here in your own statement. Fact is , there is a lot about Honda suspension tuning on Honda tech because back in the early to mid 90's, when Nissan pretty much dumped road racing support altogether, Honda embraced it.

Honda supported factory teams, Honda supported and encouraged Comptech a former Nissan engine builder and tuning house to embrace Acura.

In fact it made Comptech a huge name in the Honda world and made them very wealthy and successful.

Honda supported F1 and dumped tons of cash into their efforts. Fact is they encouraged Americans in SCCA to take Honda's racing. While there were some people like Bob Leitzinger racing 240sx's and Bob Sharp in General 240sx's were not exactly a richly campaigned car like Honda's were. While Honda's were FWD grocery getters turned into track whores that did handle, Nissan's heyday in Sports car racing here in the states was passing. Little aftermarket support left a vacuum for suspension tuning knowledge and or hardware for 240's.

Fast forward to today. The main thing 240's are known for is drifting and no matter how much some people like the mods on this forum don't like it. Its a fact.
Fact is in Japan the roads are smoother. Regardless of what a certain Honda owning member on here from Okinawa would have us all believe. Due to his limited observations of Japanese roads being based on Okinawa. LOL

In that sense they were able to run coilovers that could be extremely stiff to achieve the result while not being ideal in dampening which would bother a road racer.

Funny thing is even the Japanese drifters said the Americans do not focus enough on suspension and usually focus more on power. These are Japanese drifters saying this! LOL Most of whom have backgrounds in JGTC besides just drifting.

Now given all of this, yes you would think there would be a plethora of people willing to tune their suspension right and not just for the sake of drifting.

Ah ya that was true about 6 years ago. Now? Cheap kids who don't give a crap. They want the car to be stiff enough to slide it and that is all they are concerned about. They think that if you have a open diff you cannot drift. LOL That in and of itself tells you a lot.

Seriously, the small amount of people t that are interested in suspension tuning are doing it themselves already.

In other words, we are back at my statement of, "their is no money in trying to tune 240 suspensions for people for money".
Its a fact and now matter how much you want to believe otherwise, its true.

Now 350Z's G35's 370's G37's sure. The people have more money and are willing to spend it.

[helikz]

Originally Posted by drift freaq

Though you miss something critically important here in your own statement. Fact is , there is a lot about Honda suspension tuning on Honda tech because back in the early to mid 90's, when Nissan pretty much dumped road racing support altogether, Honda embraced it.

Honda supported factory teams, Honda supported and encouraged Comptech a former Nissan engine builder and tuning house to embrace Acura.

In fact it made Comptech a huge name in the Honda world and made them very wealthy and successful.

Honda supported F1 and dumped tons of cash into their efforts. Fact is they encouraged Americans in SCCA to take Honda's racing. While there were some people like Bob Leitzinger racing 240sx's and Bob Sharp in General 240sx's were not exactly a richly campaigned car like Honda's were. While Honda's were FWD grocery getters turned into track whores that did handle, Nissan's heyday in Sports car racing here in the states was passing. Little aftermarket support left a vacuum for suspension tuning knowledge and or hardware for 240's.

Fast forward to today. The main thing 240's are known for is drifting and no matter how much some people like the mods on this forum don't like it. Its a fact.
Fact is in Japan the roads are smoother. Regardless of what a certain Honda owning member on here from Okinawa would have us all believe. Due to his limited observations of Japanese roads being based on Okinawa. LOL

In that sense they were able to run coilovers that could be extremely stiff to achieve the result while not being ideal in dampening which would bother a road racer.

Funny thing is even the the Japanese drifters said the Americans do not focus enough on suspension and usually focus more on power.

Now given all of this, yes you would think there would be a plethora of people willing to tune their suspension right and not just for the sake of drifting.

Ah ya that was true about 6 years ago. Now? Cheap kids who don't give a crap. Seriously,the ones that do and the small amount that are interested are doing it themselves already.

In other words, we are back at my statement of, "their is no money in trying to tune 240 suspensions for people for money".
Its a fact and now matter how much you want to believe otherwise its true.

Now 350Z's G35's 370's G37's sure. The people have more money and are willing to spend it.

as usual, the freaq's spot on on these points.

the major thing is, if you're willing to spend the money, and really learn to drive the car at it's limits, you could make an s chassis do amazing things.

Most people aren't willing to spend the money, and for the most part, they relegate the s to drifting duty.

Look at the JGTC applications of the Supra and RX7, they both have fundamentally the same layout and proved extremely strong. From a developmental perspective, I think the Skyline's status actually pidgeonholed the S-chassis into an inferior slot, even though it has a lot of potential.

I agree that there's unlikely to be a business in chassis tuning for the silvia/240sx, but the overall lack of companies who offer those services opens up that opportunity if you're willing to develop the skill on a broad base, not simply specializing in 1 manufacturer or specific model.

I have to point at Top Secret as an example here as I'm a raging homer for their work, while they're most known for their power production, they offer full scale, TOTAL tuning solutions. which is rare.

By my estimation, 8 in every 10 import shops could be hosted on the internet or work out of a strip mall and you probably would give a shit less. Of the two that remain, 1 may have lifts and a dyno, but only 1 will be a total tuning solution. AMS, COBB, and Mazworx are the high end examples here.

Ptuning is moving towards that 1 stop solution benchmark, but don't have the machining facilities yet IIRC, but their redline time attack program is pushing them in that direction.




quick edit: not showing any shops hate, and i'm just going from the top of my head with examples.

[racepar1]

Nissan DID push motorsports, just in different places. While honda was pushing grassroots production classes from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties nissan had bigger fish to fry. Nissan was knee deep in the IMSA series and most of their racing support went to the GT (both grassroots and professional) or IMSA GTP. In SCCA GT classes the nissan ka24e is THE engine and has been for YEARS. Unfortuanetly though that means that they weren't very concerned with developing the suspension on their production cars too much because none of their race cars were in fact production cars. In the mid-nineties the drift scene started to pop-up and the s-13 was relegated to the status of probably the single best drifting platform ever. That image however drove those that were truly capable of developing the nissan suspension further from the cars.

[jspecusa]

S-Chasis is pretty much for the following people.
1. people who want to learn how to work on cars
2. honda people who want to move on from loud rice rockets, some went back to honda after S-Chasis ie S2000 or TSX.
3. people who care more about the "jdm" look then what the car can do.
it's not a good market for a shop to focus on, I would suggest you move onto other market if you want to make money.
for example SP Engineering move onto Porsche, Lambo, bmw, and audi etc..
good luck

[GSXRJJordan]

Originally Posted by ronmcdon

...less than $200 for full alignment w/ corner balancing would be nice

Haha, real race shops now are charging ~$250 for just the alignment with driver weight compensation, and another $200 or so for corner balance. - and it takes hours!! $200 just doesn't seem reasonable.

Originally Posted by Ragnarok043

how about bushings with grease fittings.

For what? Most everything can be replaced with heims or solid bushings, and none of those need grease fittings... you're talking about poly bushings with zerk fittings?

[racepar1]

Originally Posted by GSXRJJordan

Haha, real race shops now are charging ~$250 for just the alignment with driver weight compensation, and another $200 or so for corner balance. - and it takes hours!! $200 just doesn't seem reasonable.

What race shop are you going to? Last time I went to Darrin @ West End I think it was $220-$250 out the door, for corner weight AND alignment. It's been WAY too long since I have gone to Darrin.

[jorge1190]

I think if you offered a good price to install subframe bushings more people would do it as it seems people are afraid to drop their subframe. Apart from being a total pain.

[brndck]

/\/\ or maybe have cores in stock and an exchange program? except that no one in their right mind would want to ship a rear subframe.

[drift freaq]

Originally Posted by racepar1

Nissan DID push motorsports, just in different places. While honda was pushing grassroots production classes from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties nissan had bigger fish to fry. Nissan was knee deep in the IMSA series and most of their racing support went to the GT (both grassroots and professional) or IMSA GTP. In SCCA GT classes the nissan ka24e is THE engine and has been for YEARS. Unfortuanetly though that means that they weren't very concerned with developing the suspension on their production cars too much because none of their race cars were in fact production cars. In the mid-nineties the drift scene started to pop-up and the s-13 was relegated to the status of probably the single best drifting platform ever. That image however drove those that were truly capable of developing the nissan suspension further from the cars.

Yes you are correct about this Aron, but like I pointed out. Nissan dropped its major IMSA support right about the time the 240sx hit the market.

Trust me I was a big fan of Nissans legendary SCCA and IMSA efforts. At one point the one more races than any other Japanese brand. Its kinda of sad that they managed to lose that to Mazda.

Nissan completely dumped efforts to support racing in the 90's and the proof in that was dropping out of the IMSA GTP series after winning it so successfully and letting Toyota take it. Later Toyota would give it up to Mazda.

It was crazy back in the late 70's and 80's when damn near every damn dealership had some kind of racing effort going. Performance Nissan was known even back then for winning Z cars.

You had Electramotive in El Segundo, Bob Leitzinger, BoB Sharp, Paul Newman, BRE, etc... the list was huge. Nissan abandon all this in the 90's and its my belief it affected their sales as well. They sold a lot of cars in the 70's and 80's based on the Datsun and then Nissan Motorsports successes.

Lets just say the bad management in the 90's that drove the company to near bankruptcy was the same management that took them away from corporate backing of road racing. About the only thing they did stick with was championship offroad truck racing.

Once again and will reiterate , like I had said and Sam (Jspec) has said as well. There is no money in selling suspension tuning services for 240sx's. Now other cars and Newer Nissans sure.

Like Sam said don't focus on one car or model.

[flip3d]

I'd love some reliable engine tuning and someone to dial in my suspension correctly.

[steve shadows]

Originally Posted by handinpants

someone to tune a powerfc at $60 an hour, and a realistic total tuning time, cause i've never seen someone tune a power fc for 10 hours straight......

Also Los Angeles, needs a bikini car wash!

Yeah 60 dollars an hour you are not gonig to be getting a very nice dyno

Unless the dyno is already paid off

For example I charge (if you break it down) 120 bucks an hour

or 500-600 dollars flat rate for 4-6 hours of tuning.

Most of this money goes to fund the dyno owners cost for rental (or at least half) nicer the dyno and the better the tuner the more the money.

Tuning is the one thing that I think people shouldnt skimp on. Just from my own experience when I was building my first couple cars. I ended up losing more money in the long run having to run around to different shops. Quality is hugely important in something as delicate and serious as reliability and specific power output of your car.

point taken on the bikin thing though