My Character, or lack there of......

[Bradzvette]

The time has come to put everything out in the open. Let’s have an open discussion about my character flaws and my so called lack of integrity. Frankly I am tired of this issue being thrown in my face so lets clear the air once and for all.

I will try to be as candid, open and honest as I am able to and hopefully recall the facts correctly and sequence the events as close to how they happened.

The only finger pointing I am doing in this post is right back at myself so as to save a certain individual/shop owner the time of sending PMs to everyone about me and all of my character flaws and dings in my integrity.

I arrived to the Corvette community the day after Labor Day 2006 when I picked up my 1998 black convertible. Purchasing it was actually my wife's idea as I had retired from coaching basketball after 25 years and at that time I was teaching the most extreme special education students (mentally and sexually abused foster kids in a group home who had been removed from their parents) and needed something of a hobby to use as stress relief. I had previously built several hot rods before and worked as a mechanic in Greensboro, NC for a couple of years. I was itching to get back into a hot rod. So we bought the vette.

I had flirted with a C5 Z06 prior to getting the vert and knew I wanted to do all my own work and match or exceed the Z's power levels. Of course I immediately found the national Corvette board and joined. I read all that I could and began my mental mod list. I was intrigued at how the use of video would allow people like my self who are visual learners (this is the teacher in me) have an easier time doing the work on their Vettes, so that is where the Corvette Show came from that you see in my screen name. I registered a web site and found an on air host and actually produced two episodes of The Corvette Show as podcasts and they were and still are on Itunes.

I did the Z06 Suspension mods and showed via video exactly how to do the Ratshack resistor mod to trick the F45 suspension and use C6 Z06 Shocks. I then did my own slave/master and clutch repair then moved on to heads and cam, all documented on video.

I began conversing with Tracy at RevX over a period of time in late 2006 and on through 2007. He graciously offered his help if I needed it to install the nitrous system I was thinking about. I thought, "Hey, cool guy, that’s awesome."

Late August of 2007 RevX had a partner that wanted out. I was not overly happy with my teaching and wanted to look into a career change. I had always wanted to be back into a shop and flirted with several opportunities at shop ownership through the years. I inquired about the RevX sale and talked to Tracy about it. Tracy's first option that he wanted to pursue was to buy out his partner and have the whole thing to himself, and I certainly could not blame him for that.

However, Tracy appeared very interested in my internet skills, combined with the potential my podcast show had, he and I worked out an agreement for me to come to work for RevX on a part time basis (I would drive to RevX after school three days a week and on Saturdays from Town and Country to Palm River) and be the company’s director of marketing.


(Cont. in next post)

[Bradzvette]

I was to receive the following in lieu of any salary:
My own lift space
Keys to the shop so I could shoot the podcast after hours
A commission on any work I brought in
An office
Free tunes whenever I needed them and use of the dyno for the show, at the time I had it worked out to shoot a video comparing the dyno numbers of the four intakes, LS1, LS6, LS2 and FAST 90
I would also maintain and fix any of the Shop's computers at a discounted rate of 50% my going labor rate. (Yes I have my own computer business since 1997)

So, where did I go wrong and what things are my faults? Everywhere and all of it are my responsibility.

I was warned by many, many people in the Corvette community not to go there. But old stubborn me, I figured I have a degree in Applied Behavioral Science, (psychology) I can handle it. Wrong! Big mistake on my part. But I thought I saw an opportunity and was excited. I wanted to be a part of something and thought the endeavor had potential.

Almost from the get go, it was clear I was not wanted there by the shop manager, JP. A big mistake was that as soon as I realized there was friction with JP, I should have said thank you but no thank you and left. But there is that stubborn Irish/Italian streak in me and I trusted Tracy and thought we were friends. I don’t make many friends unfortunately, mostly because I don't have patience for adults, all of my patience is usually spent on my students and by the end of a school week my patience is gone. But I did truly think of Tracy as a friend and tried to act as I thought a friend should.

I definitely saw that there were many people around him who merely were there to get what they could from him for free. It did not take me long to recognize this at all and I felt bad for him. I vowed not to become like that. I did ask Tracy to adjust our agreement after a week or two to allow me to get any parts I needed at the Shop's cost. He agreed.

So I went along posting up on several sites marketing RevX. I went out on Sunday night cruises and breakfast cruises doing my very best to help promote RevX. I brought in a major deal for the shop from a Corvette Forum Oldsmar member who had a blown motor and it was set to generate a nice profit for the shop and a few bucks to me for the commission. Well I wont go into details as to what went wrong but the deal ended up not making any money at all due to some errors that had nothing to do with me and since the shop lost money on the deal Tracy refused to pay me any commission.

I wasn't happy but went along with it and reminded him that I wanted a 410 diff for my car and that he agreed to let me have it for shop's cost. But again, my mistake I should have left when I wasn’t paid, but foolishly stayed trying to work things out. JP was working against me every step of the way, constantly undermining my ideas. I had set up a car show at the shop on a Saturday in October 2007 but Tracy and the gang were out of town racing that day and JP tried and almost successfully got Tracy to cancel the show.

Thankfully however, it proceeded and the show went fabulously. One of the mechanic's wives called Tracy and told him how great things went and I believe some business was generated from the show.

[Bradzvette]

Late November 2007 my number seven piston ring messed up in my motor and compression was down to 65. New motor time. I privately questioned a tuner's modification that was done to my car but I refused to air it publicly or name the tuner, to which I still have not to this day. By this time I had been in the Corvette/performance community long enough and saw how on line forums worked and what happens to people who air grievances in the open, the followers of the person you have a problem with gang up on you and it all turns bad. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and accept the blame as I could have said NO to the modification but didn't. I asked Tracy not to say anything about this issue, but he was not happy as he has a history with this particular tuner, I for one did not want the drama.

By December 2007 I was ready to leave RevX. I should have left earlier. No keys, no videos, no commissions, no parts as of yet, nothing. Several times I was ready to deck JP, he was constantly bothering me and putting me down, interfering with communication between me and Tracy. JP went into my office and removed things that belonged to me.

Some more mistakes I made. A customer came in for a differential and transmission sometime in late October 2007. I had done the tunnel plate modification and loved it. I was pitching it to the customer. I believed in the product, I still have it on my car. I convinced the customer to purchase it. I marked the price up 22%. Pretty much standard mark up in most industries. The customer accepted the price which I had to cover shipping as well. Initially the customer was happy with the item. I made like 50 bucks I think I'm not sure. Well the transmission blew up and the customer came back. JP tells the customer he could have bought the tunnel plate on line and saved the 22% I marked it up. So the customer said take it off he didn’t want it. I had already collected the fifty bucks and felt that I was owed this regardless due to the past 2 months of coming to and from the job with no compensation.

As of this point, I had one tune done which took forever to get done and I threatened to quit over not getting it like I was supposed to. On top of that the tune was a rush job, he spent all of fifteen minutes tuning the car. No commissions were paid on jobs. No keys. No space. And I passed on my knowledge of marketing to RevX. I showed them about posting in forums for marketing purposes, using pictures and videos to promote the shop, I showed little things to highlight like using painter's tape and paper to cover fenders then using actual fender covers instead of bath towels when working on cars. I showed how to post pictures and detail the progression of a customers build on the forums, including here on Corvette Florida.

My mistake. My fault. No excuses, no matter how justified I felt I was or how angry I was in not receiving the things I was promised or how pissed I was at JP for undermining my deal I should have returned the fifty bucks to RevX for the deal on the tunnel plate. I have a check ready.

Next mistake.
I had purchased a short block to go in my car. I was short on funds and needed a lift to remove the old engine and put the new one in. I asked Tracy if I could borrow the one from the shop for a few days. He kind of stalled a bit, (A clue you think??) but said I could take it till I was done.

Now mind you my thinking at the time was that I had wasted a lot of time and money (lots of Gas money) at the shop so I wanted to get something for my efforts. At least save me 100 bucks on a lift rental. So I get the lift home on a Friday and Saturday morning Tracy calls and says he wants it back. I'm like are you kidding me???????? I was pissed. So I stalled a bit on purpose. When I feel taken advantage of and get pissed off I don’t think clearly. My bad, I was wrong. I should have returned the lift immediately even though I only had it for 8 hours overnight and didn’t even get to use it. Friday at 5 Pm till Saturday morning at 8 AM when I was told I could have it for as long as I needed. I thought this was done to me on purpose. Just to "F" with me. But I take responsibility for not returning it immediately. My bad I apologize. My fault.

[Bradzvette]

My next mistake:
Late February 2008, I thought my motor was ready to be started up. Tracy was working on some new products, I had picked up my differential and paid for it by check which cleared. Tracy agreed that this was fair to compensate me for the time at the shop I spent, but he wasn’t happy about it and he let me know it. The diff was at his cost, I had no intention of costing the shop money and I wanted nothing for free, at least I tried to be that way. So I thought my new motor was ready to go, it was in the car and I offered to show case a few things on the car like fuel rails and a tensioner pulley Tracy was making to sell so I had a video ready to highlight the new motor. I told Tracy I would show off his new parts in the video and post it on Corvette Forum. I was no longer at RevX officially but was over the hurt feelings of how I felt I was treated there. I agreed to pay him for the items at cost in a week or two.

Unfortunately the motor did not start. I was pissed. The fuel rails did not fit as both he and I forgot that 97 (?) and 98 vettes have a return fuel rail system and also I was using an LS2 intake.

I was under a huge amount of stress as we had sold the house at the height of the real estate boom and we had two weeks to get out, I had Hillsborough code enforcement on my ass about working on my car in the driveway (which is illegal, go figure) they were threatening to tow the vette and fine me. So I had the car moved to the Chevy super center in Largo to have it looked at and see what might be wrong and why it wouldn’t start. Next thing I know Tracy wants the fuel rails back. I'm like I cant get to it right now, I want to return them of course but I'm swamped. I was all packed up and I couldn’t locate the dang things as they were packed by my wife. It took until we moved for me to find them and return them. No excuses though I should have returned them immediately. My mistake. I apologize for the delay in getting the fuel rails back to RevX.


My next mistake, in January 2008 as I was putting all the parts together for the new motor, Tracy volunteered to assemble my heads if I shot a video of the procedure and posted it. I said OK, sounds good. Well that day arrives and I get the feeling he has regretted making the offer. I am a profiler, I can sense what people are feeling by how they act, their body language. I knew something was up and that he wasn’t happy about doing the heads. He was preoccupied with working on his lathe project and was not devoting his full attention to assembling the heads. Again, big clue on my part that I missed, I should have stopped right there and said thanks but no thanks. Dummy me didn't.

Well I come to find out later after I pull the motor in March because it wouldn’t run that the head assembly was completely botched. This motor was never started, had no miles on it, never fired as it had no compression, yet the locks fell out of the heads when the builder took the valve covers off. The builder was shocked, said he never had seen anything like that before. I was so upset. I felt this had cost me time and money (and I felt betrayed more then anything) because the heads were not correctly assembled, I blamed Tracy when I should have blamed myself. I know better then to expect something for free. There is still a cost. So I kept a set of wires for 60 bucks that I did initially intend to return. Check is ready to go on my next paycheck in January. My bad, my fault. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Lets see what else am I aware of that I have done wrong. Oh yes, on corvette Forum and LS1tech where I did all the posting for RevX, Tracy asked that my screen name reflect the RevX company when I posted. So I had achieved a good following on both sites under my original SN. But I changed it to accommodate Tracy. So my name had the RevX name under it when ever I posted. After I left RevX I didn’t push to remove the RevX name from under mine. It still read supporting tuner. Now did I know this, of course. Did I do it purposely and try to take advantage of it? No I did not.

Unfortunately one of my character flaws (many as you can see by now) is that I am a procrastinator. I had a lot going on. I did send a PM to a couple of mods at Corvette Forum to remove the RevX name but it was right at the time CF was bought out by IB brands and it didn’t get done. So I did try. As for LS1tech I researched on changing my SN and it said they no longer accepted requests for changes that you had to create a whole new profile and you would lose any of your seller ratings. Ughhh. I didn’t want to do that. So I left it, I wrongly figured it was Tracy's responsibility to tell the forums to remove me not mine, even though I did try. Could I have been more diligent in the pursuit? Most definitely. However with three kids to take care of and teaching duties, I was tired. But again, I'm an idiot, my fault for not immediately changing the RevX tuner name from mine. I am sorry.

Cont.

[Bradzvette]

On to my next mistake.
I again trusted Tracy when he said he would help me assemble my new motor. Again with the video, we agreed to shoot the build up and post it. Initially complicating the matter was that Tracy fired Kyle the RevX mechanic three days before Christmas and Kyle had the tools necessary to assemble the motor. These are Kent Moore Specialty tools and are needed to install and align the oil pan with the front and rear covers. Kyle had them but obviously was in no mood to assist after being fired so close to Christmas time 2007 and Tracy did not own the tools himself.

So I started posting on Corvette forum about how to acquire the tools and seeking info on them. Obviously I needed them to complete the assembly of my motor. Although the time line is fuzzy, I was still technically working as part of RevX when I borrowed the tools. What I should have done was clarify that these were for my personal use and not for the shop. But to be honest, I really wasn’t thinking about little things like that as I was focused on getting my motor completed. Turns out a very generous forum member offered to loan me the tools. I offered a deposit, he declined. Said he knew my rep on the forum and we were good. He sent them to me, but they were delayed arriving to me, the box ripped open and was in tatters when I received it. I took pics and sent to the owner of the tools. I told him I would use a stronger box and insure them when I return them. Alas, stupid me, I should have just bought the dang tools for 500 bucks. However I had to replace my heads as they were cracked and the budget was tight.

This tool transaction came back to bite me in the ass. I paid for the return shipping via the internet for the post office. I messed up the weight and didn’t include enough postage. I was short $1.38. However I didn’t know it at the time, I sent the package out right when I moved. I meant to use my new return address but on the USPS web site it defaults to the address on your credit card and I didn’t uncheck the box. My neighbor across the street had become good friends with me. He was an older gentleman and I looked after him and his wife. After eight years there we had become close.

Well, Dom is his name, saw the mail man and took the package trying to help me out and figured he would see me in the neighborhood as I still worked in the neighborhood school but had moved 45 mins. North. Unfortunately Dom suffered a stroke and was not able to get over to the school and give the package to me. I had no idea what had happened to the package. I filed insurance claims with USPS and they kept denying them, claiming the package was never picked up. I had a lawyer write a letter to USPS threatening breach of contract and that cost me 85 bucks. But litigation would have cost me more then the value of the tools so I worked out a deal to pay the owner out of my pocket. Thankfully Dom recovered and showed up at my school with the package and I was finally able to return the tools. My fault though, had I slowed down and paid attention to what I was doing and put in the correct return address for my new residence the tools would have been back to the owner much sooner. But I accept the responsibility, totally my fault.

cont

[Bradzvette]

Lets see what else, oh I had a deal on an LS2 throttle body go south. I paid 100 and we were going to trade LS6 injectors for the difference then he changed his mind so I sent him two payments of 50 bucks each. Took a little while but was taken care of.

At times, yes I have posted things negatively about my experiences with RevX and what I did not like about their business practices and how they treated customers. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. I realize now sometimes its better to let people learn things for themselves, I can’t save everyone. There are a lot of things I wish about all of this but I cant go back, all I can do is move forward and learn my lessons.

Let me say this again, this is all about my mistakes, my errors in judgment, nothing else. I offer no excuses, just insight. I am to blame for these problems.

What I have learned is that I need to slow down some times and devote my attention to one thing at a time. I have to recognize when I am in over my head and walk away. It is just hard sometimes because I have had to be a fighter all my life, nothing ever given to me.

I also know to NEVER EVER do business with friends and to NEVER EVER take anything for free or in trade. That is a mistake I will not make again. There are no freebies in life, everything has a cost regardless.

The biggest cost this situation has had on me is that all of these things add up and have given someone ammunition to use against me and to send PMs to other members about these issues. At times, I have remained silent due to the obvious length in explaining everything. Hopefully, with all of this out in the open, there is nothing left to be used against me. But who knows. A few members in the Corvette Community who know me well know the whole truth about all of this including wrongs done to me, and still support me and believe it or not, respect me, but I am not going to point fingers and make accusations or state what I feel was done wrong to me, I take full responsibility for my actions and I apologize.

All I can try to do is learn from my mistakes, own up to them and try not to make the same ones. Obviously I didn’t learn that for a period of time in my choices over a year or so but I see that clearly now.

In retrospect moving was a major episode and took a lot of time and I should have set aside everything else and took care of that major task first, then worked on the car. I should have severed ties early on with the shop that is also plainly clear to me.

My whole purpose for this novel of a post was and is to remove the ammunition a particular person has against me. Do I believe all that I have written? Absolutely.

The last thing I want to be is a distraction on this forum. It is quite clear to me that even after 2 plus years the negative PMs are still being sent out and things are not left in the past. I hope this once and for all resolves it.

Would my leaving this forum help? I will do that if the members feel it would. My form of punishment for poor judgment. I can accept that. I will abide by the will of the members.

I wish everyone and their families a safe and happy holiday season.

Thank you

[zzzona]

quote: I also know to NEVER EVER do business with friends and to NEVER EVER take anything for free or in trade. That is a mistake I will not make again. There are no freebies in life, everything has a cost regardless...

AWW...that is not ALWAYS true....


WE LOST TOUCH BUT............
You can always pick up the phone and call me even though you moved to BFE......

MERRY CHRISTMAS..........

[RevXtreme 1]

I agree that it took alot for Brad to post this and allthough he is right on several points, I want to correct a few:

Brad did come and want to be a part of RevXtreme, but having no$ and having $400k invested myself, Brad offered to trade the computer service (which he was paid for) and help promote. The main skill was to post pictures on the forums as I did not know how. This worked fine for a while, but personality differences rubbed most of the employees & my wife the wrong way and faced with long term employees threating to leave if he was allowed to stay prompted the seperation. I had asked Brad to show me how to post pics in threads & he refused, so I read online how & after a 15 minute struggle, I found it was easy as heck. Brad did well with the computers, no issues there.

I still felt sorry for him having no money, so I did offer to help him & show him how to lap valves & assemble cycinder heads (Brad, you have the video....please post it so everyone can see how "I" did something wrong?) I laid everything out and gave him a demostration (again, any mechanic here can watch the video Brade made of the 2-3 valves I lapped and installed for him) of how to do it (not a hard job). I then watched and guided him through a few and he took it from there and when I came back and checked at times he seemed to have it. The problem with his motor I was told by other techs that helpped him later was he had not calculated valve to piston clearance and when starting the motor hammered the valves with the pistons and and that caused his head damage. I was not present, and had nothing to do with the assy of his block or bolting the heads on or assuring the proper pushrod length was used. I'm sure Brad feels it was all done right, but a motor is not something just thrown together and I lent him tools, (the cherry picker was our only one and he was allowed to use it for the weekend, it takes only a few hours to drop a motor in and when we did not have it back by Monday we were at a stoppage for paying customer cars....which is critical we get builds in & out as promissed). So that pretty much ended the relationship I tried to still be kind to him, but the employees refused to have him set foot back in the shop. We then had to rent one and pay the cost for several days to take care of our paying customers.

So nothing I did was detrimental to Brads motor, as the video will show. He assembled it, not anyone at RevX.

Next, Kyle Briese, our best tech at the time but with no tuning ability, when the december slow down came he was laid off for 2 weeks, and when called back to work when we picked back up he refused saying he had enrolled in school and could not work. I still allowed him to have a key and use the shop at night to do his side work (no shops allow a tech to do side work, but again, I felt bad as he was short on $ and even paid him to do some night work. So, he was never "fired". Every year before that I refrained from laying the techs off and paid them (out of my OWN pocket,) to come in and clean & basically work on their own cars and goof off as I had the $ and felt it the right thing to do. I also paid them for every holiday off, lent them $ when needed, paid them every sick day, and gave them unlimited use of the shop & dyno 24/7 at my expense as a fringe benifit. But after the economy took a down turn, and I lost everything in the realestate market (had fully leveraged 2 1/2 mil spec homes & 1 rehab and road the housing crash all the way down) as well as found that my partner at the time, who had not ever put a dime into the business but was in control until we parted with him scamming my wife & I out of a final $36,000, had been pocketing cash & not depositing it (employees witnessed it and have givn the statements....so far close to $180,000 is "unaccounted for" and the accountants are not finished with the paper trail as he controlled everything and I ran a professional race team and was mostly the financial backer. So that year I simply had no more money left to :donate" to every sad story that came my way (most know how I go to great expense to make a customer happy & when a tech screws up, yes..it happens to all, to stand behind it and make it right instead of telling the customer "tuff" as so many dealerships & shops do) so with no way to cover another full payroll for no work done Kyle was laid off, NOT fired. The only employee (and Brad was never an employee, but came by after school to work on advertising ideas...such as the name he gave us" RevXtrem Motorports, that we never adopted officially). The only employee fired was Ryan who was charged, tried, and found guilty of stealing in excess of $1500 from RevXtreme.

On the tunnel plate, Brad did talk the customer into buying the tunnel plate, but he bought it himself and sold it and took the commision and after the customer got the bill and came back to us with a thred on CF showing the same vendor Brad got it from was selling them retail for 1/2 of what Brad sold it to him for, we appologized and refunded him. So there was no "earned" commision with it turning out to give us a black eye.

The entire job ended up costing us a ton of money after it was done as he also bought a RPM trans and a Yank TC....but the Yank TC came with the wrong legnth snout the first time and took out the pump on the trans. RPM stepped up and covered it even though they showed us it was Yanks fault and they had battles going with Yank on this same issue (Yank had changed control and quality went down hill). We then sent the TC back to Yank, they told us nothing was wrong, and charged us the $200 fee plus shipping to inspect it, we put the new trans back in and it does the same thing. Take it all out again (at our expense) and RPM AGAIN (great service) fixes it but tells us they cannot back it if we use the Yank again. (BTW, the customer provided the Yank) We send the TC back, pay ANOTHER $200 pus to them telling us it is fine, do it one MORE time and the same thing happens so we fix the tranny out of our pocket, send the converter to FTI in Deland, they call us and tell us as sone as they clamped it in their converter lathe to cut it apart they see the snout is welded on not ture...and the snout wobbling had taken the trans pump out all those times. Yank refused to stand behind it and to this day we will NEVER buy another Yank, only FTI makes our converters. The point being, yes, Brad sold the build, but we lost $1,000's and had every car in the shop delayed weeks to make it right for the customer through no fault of our own (Rich knows how this is with World) so Brad is not to blame for any of that fiasco except the tunnel plate.

As far as "How I treated customers" I would like one example of a customer NOT being given service up & beyond shop norms, and at my expense every time.....NEVER while I have been in control, and thats since the fall of 07, spring of 08. How my ex partner may have done things was beyond my control as I was the investor and did not run things until when Brad came into our lives. I have spent $10's of thousands to correct and stand by anything done by the previous owners (I think some can recall the poster on here a year or so ago telling about his sons car that was blown up on our dyno by the "un named tuner" I have issues with....and how I reached in my own pocket and built him a new motor since it happend at RevX.)

On the tolls Brad did not return, I had no knowledge that Brad had asked to borrow them on the CF with our sponsorship in his name and only found out after the customer posted up that he lent "RevXtreme" the tools and they were never returned. I then found out by contacting him that it was Brad, and at that time we had CF remove Brads signature. As of a year ago, I was in contact with the gentelman to see how it turned out & he at that time stated it was still unresolved, but did not hold us responsible.

Bottom line is, My ex-partner who scammed us out of so much $ (yes, enough is documented to post in public so no slander...detective Mike Thorne was kept informed throughout the entire process when we tried to take legal action but it was determined since he was a partner it is a "civil" matter) and the owner of the Mafia Girl site who has staged a 2 1/2 year campaign to slander us along with our expartner after he talked me into doing on $6k plus heads/cam/FAST 90, 90mm Billet TB, TC, etc. on credit and he only paid $1700 of it, Brad has been active on that forum in that thread spreading lies as well for the past 2 years.

So does Brad really believe he did nothing wrong in his engine assy? Maybe, he was a enthusiest trying to learn...nothing wrong with that. But he assembled it with the exception of the 2-3 valves I lapped in showing on the video (again, please post the video Brad so we can all view it). Again, I'm told this second hand, but Greg from Antivenom can vouch for most of it as he was aware of what happend after Brad tried to get it running.

Does Brad think he did RevX a valuable service? I believe he does, but we are still bruised from the events and his not paying his full bill and the negative exposure with the tunnel plate & the tool fiasco. I do believe he had his heart in it and meant well, but when a business has over $20k a month to cover in costs before 1 dime is made, there is no room for blunders and employee discontent.

I have offered to Brad that if he goes back to the other forums and corrects and clears up the damage done, that all is forgiven and we go our seperate ways....but just a few months ago Brad psoted on the site that we had "stolen" a customers Z06 from him......a total outright lie that again caused us monetary damage along with his 2 years of other slander. He did delete it shortley after that when the former owner was contacted and told to set Brad straight. We facilitated the sale of it for the broke owner with one of our customers and to date the buyer has lived up to his agreement (although he has paid a few payments late, he always made it right).

If Brad makes an effort to correct the wrongs done, publically on the sites he has slandered us on we will NOT include him in the legal action and he can go his seperate way without any more hard feeling from us for the damage caused.

[spiceman]

Originally Posted by RevXtreme 1

I agree that it took alot for Brad to post this and allthough he is right on several points, I want to correct a few:

Brad did come and want to be a part of RevXtreme, but having no$ and having $400k invested myself, Brad offered to trade the computer service (which he was paid for) and help promote. The main skill was to post pictures on the forums as I did not know how. This worked fine for a while, but personality differences rubbed most of the employees & my wife the wrong way and faced with long term employees threating to leave if he was allowed to stay prompted the seperation. I had asked Brad to show me how to post pics in threads & he refused, so I read online how & after a 15 minute struggle, I found it was easy as heck. Brad did well with the computers, no issues there.

I still felt sorry for him having no money, so I did offer to help him & show him how to lap valves & assemble cycinder heads (Brad, you have the video....please post it so everyone can see how "I" did something wrong?) I laid everything out and gave him a demostration (again, any mechanic here can watch the video Brade made of the 2-3 valves I lapped and installed for him) of how to do it (not a hard job). I then watched and guided him through a few and he took it from there and when I came back and checked at times he seemed to have it. The problem with his motor I was told by other techs that helpped him later was he had not calculated valve to piston clearance and when starting the motor hammered the valves with the pistons and and that caused his head damage. I was not present, and had nothing to do with the assy of his block or bolting the heads on or assuring the proper pushrod length was used. I'm sure Brad feels it was all done right, but a motor is not something just thrown together and I lent him tools, (the cherry picker was our only one and he was allowed to use it for the weekend, it takes only a few hours to drop a motor in and when we did not have it back by Monday we were at a stoppage for paying customer cars....which is critical we get builds in & out as promissed). So that pretty much ended the relationship I tried to still be kind to him, but the employees refused to have him set foot back in the shop. We then had to rent one and pay the cost for several days to take care of our paying customers.

So nothing I did was detrimental to Brads motor, as the video will show. He assembled it, not anyone at RevX.

Next, Kyle Briese, our best tech at the time but with no tuning ability, when the december slow down came he was laid off for 2 weeks, and when called back to work when we picked back up he refused saying he had enrolled in school and could not work. I still allowed him to have a key and use the shop at night to do his side work (no shops allow a tech to do side work, but again, I felt bad as he was short on $ and even paid him to do some night work. So, he was never "fired". Every year before that I refrained from laying the techs off and paid them (out of my OWN pocket,) to come in and clean & basically work on their own cars and goof off as I had the $ and felt it the right thing to do. I also paid them for every holiday off, lent them $ when needed, paid them every sick day, and gave them unlimited use of the shop & dyno 24/7 at my expense as a fringe benifit. But after the economy took a down turn, and I lost everything in the realestate market (had fully leveraged 2 1/2 mil spec homes & 1 rehab and road the housing crash all the way down) as well as found that my partner at the time, who had not ever put a dime into the business but was in control until we parted with him scamming my wife & I out of a final $36,000, had been pocketing cash & not depositing it (employees witnessed it and have givn the statements....so far close to $180,000 is "unaccounted for" and the accountants are not finished with the paper trail as he controlled everything and I ran a professional race team and was mostly the financial backer. So that year I simply had no more money left to :donate" to every sad story that came my way (most know how I go to great expense to make a customer happy & when a tech screws up, yes..it happens to all, to stand behind it and make it right instead of telling the customer "tuff" as so many dealerships & shops do) so with no way to cover another full payroll for no work done Kyle was laid off, NOT fired. The only employee (and Brad was never an employee, but came by after school to work on advertising ideas...such as the name he gave us" RevXtrem Motorports, that we never adopted officially). The only employee fired was Ryan who was charged, tried, and found guilty of stealing in excess of $1500 from RevXtreme.

On the tunnel plate, Brad did talk the customer into buying the tunnel plate, but he bought it himself and sold it and took the commision and after the customer got the bill and came back to us with a thred on CF showing the same vendor Brad got it from was selling them retail for 1/2 of what Brad sold it to him for, we appologized and refunded him. So there was no "earned" commision with it turning out to give us a black eye.

The entire job ended up costing us a ton of money after it was done as he also bought a RPM trans and a Yank TC....but the Yank TC came with the wrong legnth snout the first time and took out the pump on the trans. RPM stepped up and covered it even though they showed us it was Yanks fault and they had battles going with Yank on this same issue (Yank had changed control and quality went down hill). We then sent the TC back to Yank, they told us nothing was wrong, and charged us the $200 fee plus shipping to inspect it, we put the new trans back in and it does the same thing. Take it all out again (at our expense) and RPM AGAIN (great service) fixes it but tells us they cannot back it if we use the Yank again. (BTW, the customer provided the Yank) We send the TC back, pay ANOTHER $200 pus to them telling us it is fine, do it one MORE time and the same thing happens so we fix the tranny out of our pocket, send the converter to FTI in Deland, they call us and tell us as sone as they clamped it in their converter lathe to cut it apart they see the snout is welded on not ture...and the snout wobbling had taken the trans pump out all those times. Yank refused to stand behind it and to this day we will NEVER buy another Yank, only FTI makes our converters. The point being, yes, Brad sold the build, but we lost $1,000's and had every car in the shop delayed weeks to make it right for the customer through no fault of our own (Rich knows how this is with World) so Brad is not to blame for any of that fiasco except the tunnel plate.

As far as "How I treated customers" I would like one example of a customer NOT being given service up & beyond shop norms, and at my expense every time.....NEVER while I have been in control, and thats since the fall of 07, spring of 08. How my ex partner may have done things was beyond my control as I was the investor and did not run things until when Brad came into our lives. I have spent $10's of thousands to correct and stand by anything done by the previous owners (I think some can recall the poster on here a year or so ago telling about his sons car that was blown up on our dyno by the "un named tuner" I have issues with....and how I reached in my own pocket and built him a new motor since it happend at RevX.)

On the tolls Brad did not return, I had no knowledge that Brad had asked to borrow them on the CF with our sponsorship in his name and only found out after the customer posted up that he lent "RevXtreme" the tools and they were never returned. I then found out by contacting him that it was Brad, and at that time we had CF remove Brads signature. As of a year ago, I was in contact with the gentelman to see how it turned out & he at that time stated it was still unresolved, but did not hold us responsible.

Bottom line is, My ex-partner who scammed us out of so much $ (yes, enough is documented to post in public so no slander...detective Mike Thorne was kept informed throughout the entire process when we tried to take legal action but it was determined since he was a partner it is a "civil" matter) and the owner of the Mafia Girl site who has staged a 2 1/2 year campaign to slander us along with our expartner after he talked me into doing on $6k plus heads/cam/FAST 90, 90mm Billet TB, TC, etc. on credit and he only paid $1700 of it, Brad has been active on that forum in that thread spreading lies as well for the past 2 years.

So does Brad really believe he did nothing wrong in his engine assy? Maybe, he was a enthusiest trying to learn...nothing wrong with that. But he assembled it with the exception of the 2-3 valves I lapped in showing on the video (again, please post the video Brad so we can all view it). Again, I'm told this second hand, but Greg from Antivenom can vouch for most of it as he was aware of what happend after Brad tried to get it running.

Does Brad think he did RevX a valuable service? I believe he does, but we are still bruised from the events and his not paying his full bill and the negative exposure with the tunnel plate & the tool fiasco. I do believe he had his heart in it and meant well, but when a business has over $20k a month to cover in costs before 1 dime is made, there is no room for blunders and employee discontent.

I have offered to Brad that if he goes back to the other forums and corrects and clears up the damage done, that all is forgiven and we go our seperate ways....but just a few months ago Brad psoted on the site that we had "stolen" a customers Z06 from him......a total outright lie that again caused us monetary damage along with his 2 years of other slander. He did delete it shortley after that when the former owner was contacted and told to set Brad straight. We facilitated the sale of it for the broke owner with one of our customers and to date the buyer has lived up to his agreement (although he has paid a few payments late, he always made it right).

If Brad makes an effort to correct the wrongs done, publically on the sites he has slandered us on we will NOT include him in the legal action and he can go his seperate way without any more hard feeling from us for the damage caused.

I'm just a dumb ole boy retired from Chevrolet G.M engineering, but I do know that Zora ran the Studio, and none of the engineer's had a say of WHO, When or Where. Secondly, were worked as TEAM player's. We NEVER talked behind the back of one another, and when a problem might come along, you voiced the problem, and Zora whould say OK it's out and said, now carry on and be rid of it NOW.
End of story. Most likely a shame for everyone. But tell you what , you got employee's runing your business? GET rid of them.
Spice

[RevXtreme 1]

Spice, you need to come down & do some consulting for me.....I AM to easy of a pushover for the employees and have never been able to be stract enough cause I'm always trying to please everyone. Serious, I'll trad work for knowledge!

Originally Posted by spiceman

I'm just a dumb ole boy retired from Chevrolet G.M engineering, but I do know that Zora ran the Studio, and none of the engineer's had a say of WHO, When or Where. Secondly, were worked as TEAM player's. We NEVER talked behind the back of one another, and when a problem might come along, you voiced the problem, and Zora whould say OK it's out and said, now carry on and be rid of it NOW.
End of story. Most likely a shame for everyone. But tell you what , you got employee's runing your business? GET rid of them.
Spice