You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
The banners on the left side and below do not show for registered users!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact contact us.
Willing to sell a family member for a few minutes on RS
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: North vancouver
Posts: 12,633
Thanked 32,356 Times in 7,534 Posts
Failed 213 Times in 161 Posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by BIC_BAWS
I suggested FCP in page 1. The only downside is that Touringteg is out in Victoria, it would be hard for him to get to a US PO box. US is almost always cheaper than Canadian retailers, EXCEPT when you get it shipped to Canada. Then there's brokerage fee, customs/duty. Whereas if you were to go down yourself, you don't always get taxed.
I absolutely don't have the time or patience to go down to save even a couple hundred. FCP is still a good deal, easy to get parts from, quick and pleasant. Convenience of being able to get all the good parts, OE, and OE quality aftermarket, shipped to my door is what matters to me.
Advertisement
__________________
98 technoviolet M3/2/5
Quote:
Originally Posted by boostfever
Westopher is correct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fsy82
seems like you got a dick up your ass well..get that checked
Quote:
Originally Posted by punkwax
Well.. I’d hate to be the first to say it, but Westopher is correct.
Thanks for the replies. I will check out FCP. I can't go to a US PO Box but many here use Seawings. They are a freight forwarder that charges a fee to fly items from Blaine to Victoria Airport. Then I just have to clear it through customs. It does take a solid 1.5 to 2 hrs door to door for me so I would rather go to the dealer or FCP if they do Canada Post if the price isn't bad.
__________________ Victoria Car Assessments - Condition assessments (test drive, photos, deficiencies and summary). RS member references available. IG @touringteg
1998 Acura Integra Type R #0635
2017 Honda Civic Type R #01818
I learned today why people keep spotting me but it's not me. I was walking down Alexandra and did a double take. There's was a car exactly like mine. Pre-facelift, mtech 2 pack, alcantra seats, park plate, and tinted rear windows. Only difference is that this car is on BBS LM reps and I'm on OZ Supreleggra IIIs, but they're both multi-spoked and have lips/dish.
I haven't used FCP Euro in a while, but do they do door-to-door shipping without using UPS/FedEx for their rapist brokerage fees? A few years back, shipping to Canada was not even an option.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by BIC_BAWS
I literally do not plan on buying another vehicle in my lifetime, assuming it doesn't get written off.
From FCP looks like they charge a brokerage fee up front. So must be UPS? Otherwise free shipping within USA on $49 USD orders.
They don't show my rear emblem so I will stop by my dealer next week.
__________________ Victoria Car Assessments - Condition assessments (test drive, photos, deficiencies and summary). RS member references available. IG @touringteg
1998 Acura Integra Type R #0635
2017 Honda Civic Type R #01818
05 e46m3 cab here, i purchased the car at 111,xxx km. the car has 112,xxx in 8 months of ownership.
with a young child, i don't have much time to enjoy the car. i'm happy to just get away once in awhile to do maintenance stuff and be able to pull the car out and wash it.
i did not have maintenance history on the car when i purchased it, so inspection 2 was the first thing i did.
what do you guys think of the transmission fluid? it's stamped do not change. i have the fluids/gaskets/bolts purchased already. should i change it now? wait?
What’s everyones take on a F10 M5 (LCI)? Looking for a highway cruiser mainly and the odd run around town, I always walk or bike to work. Won’t be putting on too many kilometres and I have access to a lift and can do my own work. So looking for something out of warranty obviously. Always wanted another E90 M3 but the gearing for highway cruising sucks.
What’s everyones take on a F10 M5 (LCI)? Looking for a highway cruiser mainly and the odd run around town, I always walk or bike to work. Won’t be putting on too many kilometres and I have access to a lift and can do my own work. So looking for something out of warranty obviously. Always wanted another E90 M3 but the gearing for highway cruising sucks.
Fun car. Haven't owned one so I can't talk about its reliability and pros/cons.
Also the transmission is pretty much the same if you go DCT, its just more beefy to handle the torque.
I purchased new emblems front and rear (with 4 new grommets) and 4 new wheel center caps from Pelican.
A friend mentioned he found the best prices there and they ship USPS. Prices are pretty close to FCP but what made Pelican better was a 10% off first purchase code for signing up for their email newsletter.
They do free shipping in USA on orders over $99 USD.
__________________ Victoria Car Assessments - Condition assessments (test drive, photos, deficiencies and summary). RS member references available. IG @touringteg
1998 Acura Integra Type R #0635
2017 Honda Civic Type R #01818
What’s everyones take on a F10 M5 (LCI)? Looking for a highway cruiser mainly and the odd run around town, I always walk or bike to work. Won’t be putting on too many kilometres and I have access to a lift and can do my own work. So looking for something out of warranty obviously. Always wanted another E90 M3 but the gearing for highway cruising sucks.
I've driven and worked on both. The e90 M3 is definitely better to work on and cheaper to keep running. The cooling system on the f10 m5 is pain and everything either melts or turns brittle because of the hot v. dct box is similar on both, so they leak and crap out the same way.
I purchased new emblems front and rear (with 4 new grommets) and 4 new wheel center caps from Pelican.
A friend mentioned he found the best prices there and they ship USPS. Prices are pretty close to FCP but what made Pelican better was a 10% off first purchase code for signing up for their email newsletter.
They do free shipping in USA on orders over $99 USD.
Pelican & Turner Motorsports are owned by ECS Tuning now.
What’s everyones take on a F10 M5 (LCI)? Looking for a highway cruiser mainly and the odd run around town, I always walk or bike to work. Won’t be putting on too many kilometres and I have access to a lift and can do my own work. So looking for something out of warranty obviously. Always wanted another E90 M3 but the gearing for highway cruising sucks.
Leaky bits. hoses. luck of the draw when it comes to engines, as some of them do go through engines, especially the earlier cars. (engine job is same cost as car itself)
__________________
13' Nissan DBA-R35 GT-R Black Ed - Black met. - "Sophia"
90' Honda EF Civic HB // 04' Honda Pilot Granite
- The Drinker of Many Many Coffees @ McLaren Vancouver
Willing to sell a family member for a few minutes on RS
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: North vancouver
Posts: 12,633
Thanked 32,356 Times in 7,534 Posts
Failed 213 Times in 161 Posts
Its hard to tell the sound. Does it have a bit of a metallic spring to it? If so, your strut mount bearings could be seizing. Any difficulty turning the wheel compared to before?
__________________
98 technoviolet M3/2/5
Quote:
Originally Posted by boostfever
Westopher is correct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fsy82
seems like you got a dick up your ass well..get that checked
Quote:
Originally Posted by punkwax
Well.. I’d hate to be the first to say it, but Westopher is correct.
More info on the ECS takeover on Tuner and Pelican. Apparently Turner isn't what it used to be anymore - I wouldn't know what it used to be.
Quote:
The title of this group is appropriate to how I'm feeling: "Why I hate ECS Tuning."
This is my "messed up" ECS story. told through my singular lens. The opinions expressed here are just that, but are true to how ECS came into my life and made me hate their company. Settle in. This ain't short.
3 years ago today, July 1, 2015, ECS "acquired" Turner Motorsport incorporated, the company I had toiled to help Will Turner build up for 8.5 years. They promised the former owner, a guy I shared a small office with for over 5 years, all sorts of amazing synergies and upsides. We'd share the best of both companies to form a super-knowledgeable, cutting edge source of auto parts with unmatched experience and customer service.
Those were all lies.
Spoiler!
When I arrived at Turner in 2007, they were a small niche / boutique operation that sold a couple million in parts per year, fueled by a handful of true enthusiasts. I had left a solid job at another respected BMW parts outfit for the chance to work for an exciting up-and-coming BMW Tuner that already had a reputation for racing and no-BS parts.
When the ECS management team landed at Turner for the first time after the buyout, I was of course guarded. My optimism quickly turned to disgust. My impression of them was smarmy. Ruthless. Greedy. And in some cases, completely inept. Most notably the the two former owners, who's opinion I held as low as one could imagine. They had sold controlling rights to their company only a year before, and were now "Co-CEOs" of the private equity owned entity, an asset of Betram Capital Investments.
Many of our numbers were better than theirs. Our customer satisfaction higher, returns lower, vendor relationships deeper, and our employee retention and advancement out of this world. We managed a better profit margin, taboot. (Who knew: When you have happy customers and employees, you can run a good business!) Seeing behind the scenes of Turner Motorsport and ECS Tuning, it was clear -- One was a company that earned its reputation, the other a Wild-West movie scene, pretending to know what they were doing, luring customers in with prices slightly lower than their peers, and growth that stemmed from mostly dumb luck, and past smart employees who had quit along the years. They had no clear vision besides growth-at-any-cost, to inflate their private equity owned LLC so they could dump it to another larger company in a few years and (hopefully) some key players would walk away millionaires.
It was official: Will Turner sold his company to the devil. A soulless machine that didn't care about the car community or its employees. It cared about one thing only: Profit.
They were insufferable, right out of the gate. I played along for a few months, as they made one foolish or unimaginable decision after another. As the Director of Operations, I had a bird's eye view of the deconstruction and dismemberment of a once great company.
I made several trips to ECS headquarters in Wadsworth, OH. What I saw was what I would describe as borderline inhumane treatment of employees. Unnecessary control tactics to ensure NO ONE at ECS had any "tribal knowledge" of their business. Because of this their employees had a demeanor like abused animals. Cameras over every desk. Unbelievably low pay. Tiny tiny cubicles. Unnecessary dress code from the 1940's. Isolated and key-code locked rooms for every department. I was one .of a select few who could freely walk through all of the departments, and see the inner workings of ECS and the people that worked hard behind locked doors.
And I really felt bad for them. I felt almost as bad for their customers. Their warehouse was a disorganized hive of slave-like labor, governed by fear and intimidation. Their shipments were POORLY packaged, their process riddled with opportunities for mistakes and human error, and the morale of their employees those the lowest I've ever seen.
As an IT and Ecommerce Manager, their system was one of the most poorly cobbled together hackjobs I'd ever seen as well. Their security and disaster recover was a joke. it's no wonder they had troubles with data breaches and massive credit card data hacking. (Google it!) This was 100% the worst working environment I'd ever seen. Run by delusional and inept management who truly believed they'd built the perfect machine. And now fueled by outside PE money and reckless abandon.
The Turner buy-out happened in July, and in December of 2015 they unveiled their new "plan" in a small conference room of ECS. It was the former owner, Mr. Turner, myself, the two "co-CEOs", and 3 or 4 members of senior management. I sat in the board room and watched Will Turner's jaw drop as they explained their master plan -- to consolidate the 50 employee Massachusetts based Turner Motorsport with Ohio. Their reasoning after months of research: "It would save $11k in shipping expense and 0.2 days of package transit time. "That's it???" I asked. At the time, Turner Motorsport alone (not including ECS) was spending some $30k a week in shipping. No one researched the advantages of combining the capabilities of both companies. I argued they needed to re-run their numbers for contrast before impulsively vaporizing Turner Motorsport. They had made up their mind and that was that.
So on December 15, I became aware that ECS wanted me to lay off the majority of my workforce. The best of the best, in a hot bed of Boston-area talent were about to be out a job around Christmas. A good portion of whom I had hired and trained, and all of which I worked along-side for years. Several employees pre-dated my years of service, including a few with 18-20 years of experience each. No offers of relocation. No concern or compassion. All business. Just to save a few bucks, and (as time would tell) to the chagrin of its customers.
The would also dissolve the in-house R&D and production, boasting their plans to send manufacturing to the same Chinese and Mexican companies ECS was already outsourcing to.
They'd keep the domain name and 800 number, and 4 sales reps to continue the perception that Turner Motorsport was an independent parts house. They also kept two customer service reps to handle all the shipping errors, damaged parts, wrong parts, and nightmare orders ECS had become so good at creating. They quietly dumpstered thousands of parts and sent millions of dollars worth of inventory (much of which they had no way of selling) to their Ohio warehouse. A once-great all-BMW parts house went from 50 employees to 6, remains to this very today.
Strangely they didn't want me to go, though. They wanted my experience (Ecommerce, IT, SEO, Management, etc) however they could keep me. They tried cutting me in on their private equity parachute "pie in the sky" incentive plan that other ECS managers were on. I turned it down. The incentive plan's legal paperwork was a joke. A labyrinth with only 1 outcome that might pay out a modest bonus, mired with a hundred of ways ECS could cut me out and $0 at their discretion.
Pass.
Instead I made sure the laid off Turner employees got the best severances and treatment I could, and informed WIll Turner his ride with me as his right hand man was over. I quit on the 9th anniversary of my hire date, which was also the 5th year anniversary of launching a revamped Ecommerce platform that increased sales +40% overnight.
I still look back on that as an amazing job, with the most amazing people on the planet, that all came to a screeching halt because someone couldn't turn down a 7 figure payout (yes, 7 figure and decidedly not 8.) I often think how different my life and so many others would be had ECS not picked Turner as the first target of acquisition.
But they aren't done! ECS very quietly purchased Pelican Parts last fall. Good luck finding any press and PE newswire hoopla, like the Turner acquisition. They have kept this buy-out VERY quiet, as Bertram knows how bad ECS did with Turner "transition." Who will ECS buy next?
Do yourself a favor and get VERY picky about where you buy your German/Euro car parts. Starting asking: "Are you owned by ECS Tuning or Bertram Capital Investments?"
Read the ECS Glass Door, and know all the bad reports are 100% truth, while the glowing reviews are almost certainly planted by management to combat a dumpster fire that is their HR department.
I hope this clearly illustrates why I genuinely hate ECS Tuning.
It's been a while since I bought anything from Pelican (but that's when I owned a BMW.) I bought small bits and pieces like oil filters etc. from them when I had the 911, but Pelican has been great to me. Have to shop around every now that then, but their customer service is great.
I never purchased from Turner, but they were really engaging on providing technical advice, and steered me to buy the TC Kline suspension kit instead of their in-house solution. I know a handful of people who did buy from Turner back in the day, and they all had nothing but good things to say about them. I don't think any of them buy from Turner anymore.
When ECS was independent, they were okay at best. Looks like they bit off more than they could chew with the Pelican and Turner acquisition, and things went to hell. I tried to buy something from Pelican recently, and my goodness, it was a fucking pain in the ass, I gave up and went elsewhere having to pay more. Ouch.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by BIC_BAWS
I literally do not plan on buying another vehicle in my lifetime, assuming it doesn't get written off.
Its hard to tell the sound. Does it have a bit of a metallic spring to it? If so, your strut mount bearings could be seizing. Any difficulty turning the wheel compared to before?
Steering made a creaking noise, but not really? I can't tell tbh. Though the weird thing is, its not making much of a clicking noise now in the rain? But as soon as I got in my garage it started clicking again lol. Im so confused. Someone said it could be the oil pan skid plate I just bought a new bolt as Im missing one, gonna put it on and see.
EDIT: someone on a different forum said to check the steering rack bolts to the subframe as they're known to vibrate loose overtime especially if they were out for service. I should buy replacement ones, but I'll test tightening it first then if that doesn't help I'll replace.
Would anyone happen to have a torque angle gauge? and an E-Torx set
You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
The banners on the left side and below do not show for registered users!
