Stay away from Madda Automotive in Oak Creek

[6forwardgears]

I highly recommend you stay away from Madda Automotive on Rawson in Oak Creek (right next to the Farm & Fleet there). The head mechanic (his name is Rick I think) seems like a nice enough guy but he clearly isn't the very experienced. He completely screwed up Z28Roxy's 4.10 gear install. Pretty much everything that could have been done wrong, was. This resulted in a broken tooth on her gears.

We even took the car back to him and he put it up on the lift with Roxy there and still tried to tell her everything was OK. Maybe he will redeem himself and offer some kind of refund or something along those lines, but most likely he'll just make excuses and there goes Roxy's money flushed down the toilet.

Thankfully Tom was able to salvage something from the wreckage and with his leet skills was able to get it quiet and smooth even with the chipped gear. Great success! Tom :headbang's

[Z28Roxy]

Just a correction, his name is Brian.

And yeah he did try to tell me everything was fine, even though my pinion bearing was loose.

[juicedimpss]

what made you decide to have that shop do the install in the first place?
just out of curiousity,cuz there are plenty of guys/shops on the site that do side work cheap.

[6forwardgears]

We didn't know of the site until like 3 weeks ago.

[67-400]

speaking of cheap, I had 4.10:1 gears installed w/Posi for $600 +/- at Transmaster in Watertown. Yah, it was a trip but I thought it was pretty cheap. They did a good job, no problems after a year n a half runnin them. Launchin at the track X amount of times, 1.732 best 60' on DR's. They also did my transmission, so maybe got a deal, but still.. just an fyi

[Waver]

speaking of cheap, I had 4.10:1 gears installed w/Posi for $600 +/- at Transmaster in Watertown. Yah, it was a trip but I thought it was pretty cheap. They did a good job, no problems after a year n a half runnin them. Launchin at the track X amount of times, 1.732 best 60' on DR's. They also did my transmission, so maybe got a deal, but still.. just an fyi


Funny, that is my xes uncle's shop.

[Yooformula]

bout time someone actually mentioned the crappy shop. I hate reading about how bad of an experience they had but wont name the shop.

[Nix]

Funny, that is my xes uncle's shop.

It cant be a speed shop of any sort cause you car is slower than shit!:goof

j/k man 25th I can vouch for the guys work cause I have been at the track with him when he launched it many times and it still is holding up well!

[Waver]

It cant be a speed shop of any sort cause you car is slower than shit!:goof

j/k man 25th I can vouch for the guys work cause I have been at the track with him when he launched it many times and it still is holding up well!


hehehehe, naw...when I was with her I didnt have this car (well for the last three months of the relationship I did, anyhow) he does good work

[Last year 5.0]

just cerious, did you break the gears in?

[6forwardgears]

just cerious, did you break the gears in?

Yes.

[BAD LS1]

For those in the know on rear ends here is all the shit i found wrong.

This guy should just quit now that worked on it. He needs to get kicked in the jones.

For starters, externally the pinion had about a 1/8th inch free play up and down, side to side and in and out. The back lash was set at .014" with the pinion tight. The guy probably thought an impact would "crush" the crush sleeve adquatley apparently. Well it did not and never had any bearing pre load.
The chucking of the pinion caused the larger pinion bearing to become loose on the pinion shaft which intern wore the .035" shim down to .015", so that was wrecked.

Also all the movment cause one tooth to chip of the ring gear as there are only 3 teeth in constant contact with 4.10s in the rear end to begin with, the movment probably allowed for 1 tooth to be in contact. The pinion seal that was pissing phenominal amounts of gear lube should have been mullet mans first clue.

Pinion seals dont leak unless they of course are damaged or there is movement happening.

Also the dowl pin retaining screw was finger loose.

So i had gutted it out and replaced the pinion shim with the right sized one, used a solid crush sleeve where i adjust preload with shims (and it wont ever compress under shock loads like a actual sleeve would) shimmed the carrier up to get it down to.006" BL as it should have and got it shimmed tight enough that the carrier went in with force as it should.

The pattern turned out OK but wasnt text book. It makes a little noise to the coast side (light throttle) in 5th-6th gears but for having a tooth missing its really quiet, perfectly normal for a 10 bolt with aftermarket gears.

I simply helped her out and made it right so it wont grenade, although against my better judgment to reassemble with the busted ring gear.

[67-400]

For those in the know on rear ends here is all the shit i found wrong.

This guy should just quit now that worked on it. He needs to get kicked in the jones.

For starters, externally the pinion had about a 1/8th inch free play up and down, side to side and in and out. The back lash was set at .014" with the pinion tight. The guy probably thought an impact would "crush" the crush sleeve adquatley apparently. Well it did not and never had any bearing pre load.
The chucking of the pinion caused the larger pinion bearing to become loose on the pinion shaft which intern wore the .035" shim down to .015", so that was wrecked.

Also all the movment cause one tooth to chip of the ring gear as there are only 3 teeth in constant contact with 4.10s in the rear end to begin with, the movment probably allowed for 1 tooth to be in contact. The pinion seal that was pissing phenominal amounts of gear lube should have been mullet mans first clue.

Pinion seals dont leak unless they of course are damaged or there is movement happening.

Also the dowl pin retaining screw was finger loose.

So i had gutted it out and replaced the pinion shim with the right sized one, used a solid crush sleeve where i adjust preload with shims (and it wont ever compress under shock loads like a actual sleeve would) shimmed the carrier up to get it down to.006" BL as it should have and got it shimmed tight enough that the carrier went in with force as it should.

The pattern turned out OK but wasnt text book. It makes a little noise to the coast side (light throttle) in 5th-6th gears but for having a tooth missing its really quiet, perfectly normal for a 10 bolt with aftermarket gears.

I simply helped her out and made it right so it wont grenade, although against my better judgment to reassemble with the busted ring gear.



^^what he said :)

[Car Guy]

Well from the looks of it they [Madda] really screwed up twice.....:chair:

First off if you don't know how to do something and do it right don't do it at all. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not the most experienced with rear ends and wouldn't do one for somebody else, free or otherwise.....

Second, when someone comes back with a problem you don't just 'blow it off' and hope that it fixes itself. A full refund, partial refund, or fixing the issue at hand is the way to go about it; even if that entails Madda taking it to Tom to have it done right. Yeah they'll most likely loose money on the job but just think of how many people are NOT going to go there now for car repairs after reading or hearing about this. AND if you think about it someone that wants performance gears installed is most likely 'into' cars more than someone that wants an oil change on there '98 Escort and therefore probably talks to MANY other people that are 'into' cars. Well guess what, when someone that IS NOT 'into' cars needs advice on where to take there DD for some simple maintenance they'll most likely ask someone that is......

I know where the shop is but that's about it, never been there and I don't know who owns/runs it. But if it was my shop it would have been taken care of one way or another, cause that's just bad business.....






:3gears::3gears::3gears:

[Z28Roxy]

BTW, just drove the car for the first time myself and wow, Tom = :headbang

It's whisper quiet, great work for any gears, let alone ones with a broken tooth.

[STANMAN]

No excuses if we race then. Unless they are from me:rolf

Glad to hear everything is now OK. I know when I had my gears installed there was a bit of a pucker factor, as they seem to be screwed up pretty routinley!