Rocky Mountain Autosports, Bryan Short RM Autosports Dangerously Shoddy Fabrication Work Loveland CO
Worst fabrication I’ve ever seen in my 20 years of racing. Took car in to have a roll cage installed. They told me they have it done in four days which I knew was impossible. 5 WEEKS later I finally got my car back. The welds are the worst mig welds I’ve ever seen. Imagine a Campbell Hausfield $100 welder from Walmart used by someone who has never welded, and then didn’t use any gas to boot.
The integrity of everything they’ve welded is now in question and I’ve wasted $10,000 with these incompetent people who have zero business being in the fabrication world. As an added bonus they hooked up the handbrake such that it locks up the left front tire and right rear! Lastly the bolts for the harnesses protrude through the floor of the car such that the first bump or rock I hit will shear them completely in half. It’s a rally car so that shouldn’t be a problem :-(
They apologized for all the sh*t work and said they fired the guy that did it, but that doesn’t help me nor recover the $10k that was wasted. If you hate your money, have all the time in the world to burn and don’t care about your safety, Rocky Mountain Autosports in Loveland Colorado is your shop!
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Bryan
Loveland,Colorado,
United States
unhappy customer rebuttal
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Wed, August 07, 2019
First, we have offered numerous times to address each and every concern customer had with our work. We are more than willing to attempt to make everything right. But customer refused our offers and choose this course of action instead. So, I will try and address each item he is complaining about.
Time Table. Customer is right, this project took longer than expected. He claims 4 days was quoted for work. Actually 4 days was quoted to install cage on a prepped chassis. Customer "drove" the car into our shop, so we had to do fair amount of prep work to get ready for cage install. This cage kit caused some conflicts with the stock battery and brake booster locations. So, he agreed to have us resolve those problems, which took more time and more parts. Then there were numerous options added the scope of work by customer which took time. But the car was never "shelved", it was always our first priority, often with 2 techs working on the car.
Welds: Customer has a legitimate right to be upset with (pictured) front jacking points. But it is difficult to tell if these photos are showing the welds or the seam sealer. But the end result is these should not have let left the shop looking the way they did. When he picked up the car it was a Saturday and neither of us noticed these two items. These jacking points are solid and we belive should not be considered a safety concern. Note, there were no complaints on rear two jacking points or on the cage welds. This is an FIA certified T45 cage so each welder must pass a weld test prior to welding on any cage. Plus, all finished cage welds are inspected by a 3rd party prior to the issuance of the FIA certificate. The FIA certificate for this car was issued and sent to customer.
Brakes: We installed a handbrake as part of this job. Once we got into the install, it became know that the 2 lines were run front to back and diagonally on this car. So, the handbrake could only brake one front and one rear across the car. The best way for rally is to have 2 master cylinders, one for front and one for rear. And then rerun brake lines accordingly. This would require a new pedal box and a lot of work. But it does give a backup system in case of a broken line and/or loss of fluid in one system. Instead, we bypassed the ABS and equalized pressure each brake line. We tested this setup and it was acceptable to us since the larger rotors in front gave a slight bias to the fronts. A bias control was needed to go beyond that. When customer test drove on nearby gravel lot, he claimed bias was all in rear. Without arguing, I subtracted about $300 from bill since he was not happy with braking setup.
Harness Eye Bolts: Customer is correct in stating eye bolts protrude below car floor. Not sure these bolts could be sheared by a rock hitting the end. But regardless, we offered to remedy this easy fix, but customer refused.
Cost: His total charges were about $8,900 (including ±$310 in sales tax) . Broken down as: FIA cage ±$2950, other parts ±$2110 (includes: new battery, custom aluminum driveshaft, Wilwood hand brake, new brake master, battery cut offs, jacking point kit, harness anchor plates plus others). Since he bought the cage from us, he received the discounted labor rate of $75/hr. Labor on bill was $3825 (which includes cage install) of which we subtracted $300= $3525 (47 hours). If we accounted for every hour we spent in the roughtly 5 weeks we had the car, we were not making any money on this project.
We do hope customer does decide to bring the car back and allow us to address his complaints. We have no hard feelings about his dissatisfaction and would welcome the chance to make things right.