De Minimis
Well-Known Member
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- 7
Love him, hate him, whatever. Posting this up here so hopefully no one else makes this mistake. Talked to Dave about some new front arms. He said less than 2 weeks. Okay, I took the bait (I should have done my due diligence before hand as there is no shortage of tales of woe out there when it comes to Dave). 2 months later (after missing shipping promise after shipping promise and failing to refund my money as agreed when the third and final ship date passed), I got these pieces of garbage. Not a single weld was closed at any of the tight joints (I have a stubby gas lens for tight areas, so I would think he would too). This, and the undercutting, was the least of the issues.
1.5" tapered bungs used in 1.75" tubing. Guessing he just used what he had laying around.
Paid in full (like a fool), so you'd think the arms would be welded in full (nice fit-up gap).
Both upper arms look like this. The visible hole is the tubing notch edge. That's an approx .25" fit up gap. This is a critical joint at the spindle end. Heck, I'd argue that all suspension component joints are all critical joints, but these are more so.
Upper arms were apparently not welded on a fixture table. Both leading tubes (which have a bend) were not welded on a flat surface in relation to the other tubes (at least not the same plane as the other arm tubes), so the arms have a curve (one spindle end would point down and the would other point up at the spindle end as a result). Big deal? Meh, perhaps 1/2" to 1' floor to height difference between the two ends if mounted up, but it shows just how poorly these arms were slapped together. Didn't even take the time to wipe the tube down with acetone before welding (affects both uppers -lowers were wiped at least).
This isn't exactly against the rules, but had I known he's now using Chinese steel, I wouldn't have even rung his phone.
Okay, people have bad days, hire tools, outside issues creep into work lives and vice-versa, money gets tight, etc. I get that. So what happened next? Dave admitted these arms should have never gone out, he made some weak excuses (some of which were inaccurate -I'm being nice) and threw out some plausible deniability by stating one of his employees built these (I'm a novice tig welder at best, but even I think I see two different bead signatures at play here). He also stated he'd make it right, he wouldn't take money from someone that wasn't happy, and even agreed to my suggested compromise in the form of a partial refund (I offered to accept just enough of a refund to get these arms fixed)...all in writing. Well, as far as the partial refund, all I ever got was Dave's version of the "check's in the mail.". After studying these arms closer, it became obvious they could not be fixed regardless (1/4" fit-up gaps saw to that -I didn't look at those holes closely at first and figured they were just more welds where he didn't close, not the gaping notch holes that they really are). These arms are good for scrap and that's it. Well, Dave had long since gone silent, so I filed a suit and of course got a judgement (which included filing and service fees along with prevailing judgement award on top of the arms' costs). Being a fool, I offered Dave the opportunity to just give me my money back and I'll forgive the additional associated judgement $ (I was offering to eat the filing and service fees, along with the prevailing judgement fee). All I want is my money back for these unusable arms. Not a peep. So, I'll continue to go after him and do what's needed to collect (even if it takes years to collect, if ever). Can't make him do the right thing, but I am doing my best to make him regret not doing the right thing. Anyway, like I said, love him, hate him, whatever (seems it's an either/or kind of deal with him). I just don't want someone else to make this same mistake and trust Dave to build components for you. My DD car is great and well made and I assumed the same quality would have been represented with these arms. Boy was I mistaken.
1.5" tapered bungs used in 1.75" tubing. Guessing he just used what he had laying around.
Paid in full (like a fool), so you'd think the arms would be welded in full (nice fit-up gap).
Both upper arms look like this. The visible hole is the tubing notch edge. That's an approx .25" fit up gap. This is a critical joint at the spindle end. Heck, I'd argue that all suspension component joints are all critical joints, but these are more so.
Upper arms were apparently not welded on a fixture table. Both leading tubes (which have a bend) were not welded on a flat surface in relation to the other tubes (at least not the same plane as the other arm tubes), so the arms have a curve (one spindle end would point down and the would other point up at the spindle end as a result). Big deal? Meh, perhaps 1/2" to 1' floor to height difference between the two ends if mounted up, but it shows just how poorly these arms were slapped together. Didn't even take the time to wipe the tube down with acetone before welding (affects both uppers -lowers were wiped at least).
This isn't exactly against the rules, but had I known he's now using Chinese steel, I wouldn't have even rung his phone.
Okay, people have bad days, hire tools, outside issues creep into work lives and vice-versa, money gets tight, etc. I get that. So what happened next? Dave admitted these arms should have never gone out, he made some weak excuses (some of which were inaccurate -I'm being nice) and threw out some plausible deniability by stating one of his employees built these (I'm a novice tig welder at best, but even I think I see two different bead signatures at play here). He also stated he'd make it right, he wouldn't take money from someone that wasn't happy, and even agreed to my suggested compromise in the form of a partial refund (I offered to accept just enough of a refund to get these arms fixed)...all in writing. Well, as far as the partial refund, all I ever got was Dave's version of the "check's in the mail.". After studying these arms closer, it became obvious they could not be fixed regardless (1/4" fit-up gaps saw to that -I didn't look at those holes closely at first and figured they were just more welds where he didn't close, not the gaping notch holes that they really are). These arms are good for scrap and that's it. Well, Dave had long since gone silent, so I filed a suit and of course got a judgement (which included filing and service fees along with prevailing judgement award on top of the arms' costs). Being a fool, I offered Dave the opportunity to just give me my money back and I'll forgive the additional associated judgement $ (I was offering to eat the filing and service fees, along with the prevailing judgement fee). All I want is my money back for these unusable arms. Not a peep. So, I'll continue to go after him and do what's needed to collect (even if it takes years to collect, if ever). Can't make him do the right thing, but I am doing my best to make him regret not doing the right thing. Anyway, like I said, love him, hate him, whatever (seems it's an either/or kind of deal with him). I just don't want someone else to make this same mistake and trust Dave to build components for you. My DD car is great and well made and I assumed the same quality would have been represented with these arms. Boy was I mistaken.
