Little Fyi About Intense

[mike2002]

http://www.clubgp.com/newforum/tm.asp?m=20...&key=&language= (http://www.clubgp.com/newforum/tm.asp?m=2069860&p=1&mpage=4&tmode=1&smode=1&key=&language=)

i feel it only fair to pass this info since there is rumors of them starting a 3400 aftermarket

[kwhauck]

can't see it.......

[FormulaNERD]

all the posts are blank.

[mike2002]

wierd...i wonder if you have to be a member on clubgp.com to read it....anyways, here's the 1st post

"Since many, especially our newest puppets, have questioned my bias recently I feel that I should lay out the reasons why I have recently switched from being neutral to not wanting to do any further business with Intense.

I have supported Scott all the way back to the beginning. I purchased one of the very first batches of Roller Rockers the first time around. After installation, the car wouldn’t even run. Apparently the manufacturer of these was so inconsistent that they were hitting parts all over the place, including their own bolts. I called Scott and we talked about how some people rush off to the boards with every problem and how it was best to resolve problems direct and not really spread it around. He then sent out a discounted set of standard 1.9’s for my car which I ran until I decided to build up my car.

I decided at that time to build up my car. I found that I had killed the stock diff so I purchased a first-gen Intense diff. After a few 12 second passes at the track my entire trans finally gave out and wouldn’t leave second gear. I immediately contacted Scott to build on our relationship and he helped me out with a discount on a full built transmission with the GT torque converter, which at the time I was told was completely bullet proof. When we went to install the trans I found that some trans trash had taken out my planataries. This was most likely my fault as I found a chunk of the Torrington bearing that sits behind the parking prawl. Oops on my part.

When I returned my transmission for core I was in for a complete shock. Apparently the contents of broken parts was worth as much as my $1000 core. I expected to have to pay for the diff, but I was being charged for parts like bands, etc which are standard replacement items. If I walked in to a transmission shop and paid for a standard rebuild they would be included. This was extremely frustrating, but he had given me a discount and I let it slide at the time.

I opted on that trans to have the reluctor wheel left stock and to correct for my 3.29 gearing in the PCM. I was one of the early cars, and DHP got it correct the first time without any issues. I later had a custom PCM tune on the dyno with Buckshaw and Charles. We netted 320 HP and 380ish Torque on pump gas and hot water in the IC. The car was a beast.

I drove that car every day to the tune of 300-400 miles per week. I took it to the track at least once a month and made several passes. During that time I broke *TWO* Intense differentials. They never broke at the track, though they were notorious for doing a one-wheeled burnout. They usually broke while driving to work when I would punch it and suddenly have so much torque steer I damned near put it into the wall. Scott replaced them, but I eventually gave up and went to a Quaife.

During this time, I began to see a lot of people having personal issues with Intense. I actually interjected my successes into those conversations and made many recommendations. I couldn’t see how anyone was having issues.

I ran that until I parted out the car and sold it. After pulling the trans and selling it, I had my old flywheel and torque converter sitting there. I worked out a deal with Will Mullins in Oklahoma to sell it to him because it seemed like it had held up well. Will talked to Scott and was told not to put that ticking time bomb in his car. At no point while I had it in my car was I contacted to be warned, nor was anything offered as an alternative. Once again, I quickly got over it and moved on.

Shortly after getting my 2004, John Keuhner approached me and asked if I would help him make his car fast. We immediately began working with Scott Cook since I had an ongoing relationship with him, and I felt that my friendship with Chris Green in Ohio would serve as some form of guarantee that I wouldn’t get screwed. The first thing we worked on was getting a set of headers and 1.9 Gen3 Roller Rockers on the car. John managed to get transmission slippage within a month so we contacted Scott about getting a transmission for the car.

John paid up front for the core to be purchased from Ed Morad. It was a 2003 core, so Jeff had to work only from that and the service manuals to try and get it right. When the transmission finally arrived the car would not move forward. We sent both transmissions back so that Jeff could figure it out. When the new one arrived everything was fine. This transmission was ordered with the TCC-300 torque converter, which once again was promised to be tested, proven, and bullet-proof. After all of this, John was out close to $6000 for this transmission. That’s one hell of a hefty price to pay, and far more than I did.

A bit after this, Intense rushed to market their 04 PCM. John bought the PCM for his car and we began the tuning battles. No matter what we would do, the car was running too rich and was getting too much timing. We couldn’t figure it out, and we began working with Intense to try and solve the problem. It didn’t take long to figure out that we were pretty much the only test bed for the 04 that Scott was using. This made me uncomfortable, but we continued to pursue it.

John made the decision to go all the way. He purchased all of the Stage 3 parts and we began the process of building. People came out of the woodwork to warn us about the parts we were being sold. Paul Jerkatis warned us that the single chain we were installing was not even as strong as stock in a performance application. Chris White warned us our valve guides would go to poop in a short period of time. Many warned us that the MLS gaskets were crap and still others warned us that we would have problems if we changed our fuel pump and that the 50 lb injectors we were installing were not worth the trouble and wouldn’t flow well.

After assembly with the build-up, we attacked the car in attempt to tune it. The first PCM had stock injector constants and we tried to adjust completely for everything with a Mini-AFC per Scott’s recommendations. This didn’t work well and we shortly found ourselves changing out the PCM for one with a revised injector constant. We quickly found we were running over the MAF ceiling and had to adjust with the AFC to bring it down. This gave us a lot of fights, but we felt we had it worked out and went to the track.

The best run of the night was a 13.01 which was repeated a few times and then followed by quickly degrading performance. Later we found disappearing coolant and random stalling. For some reason noone, including Intense, put the pieces together to say we had a blown set of MLS gaskets.

Rather than putting more MLS gaskets on, we opted for stock gaskets. After fixing the gaskets we resumed our tuning work. We received an SLP LS6 MAF and attempted to tune it with the AFC. Another PCM was later sent out with the correct tables for the MAF. Everything seemed fine for a while, but the car resumed random stalling and other weirdness. We had no coolant loss to clue us in. Suddenly, the car cratered and would barely run. We looked all over and finally found a rocker completely sideways in the front. We pulled the valve covers and found two rocker bolts completely snapped. Something looked weird so we pulled the intake manifold and found a lifter had come apart. Thankfully all the pieces were there but we became suspicious. Something wasn’t right with the heads.

Both heads were pulled. We found that the stock head gaskets had also been blown and took the heads to a machine shop. The shop told us that the guides inserts that Intense had used on the cylinder on which the rockers failed were completely shot. You could move the valves enough to touch each other. All of the others were slightly worn. They were not set up to do this kind of work so we went to a well-known local shop to have them inspected again. This shop found that every single guide was significantly worn and they needed to be replaced.

We contacted Scott and were told that if we shipped them to him (at our expense) he would get them repaired (at our expense). He completely insisted that no other set had ever done this, which I later found to be false. He really wanted to see them, yet he would offer no compensation of any kind to get them in his hands. In fact, his price to repair them was significantly higher than our local shop’s without even factoring the cost of shipping the heads across the country twice. What was clearly a warranty and longevity issue he was blaming on oil-wash from running too rich. Even if this was a remotely valid reason, which it isn’t, he was responsible for the PCM which was causing the car to run so bloody rich. I find it amazing that this failure which has “never happened” before is on Chris White’s laundry list of items which he lays out quite often and it beaten up over it. As we found out afterward, they usually tell the people when the guides fail that it happened due to them using stock rockers. They then proceed to sell them a set of roller rockers to “fix the problem”.

After he somehow convinced me not to walk away, he managed to convince me into trying MLS gaskets again. The new four-layer gaskets were supposed to be much stronger and we agreed to give them a shot. We put the car back together. With gaskets, repairs, etc this failure cost us in excess of $600.

Scott “felt bad” about this and offered to dyno tune John’s car “for free” if John would drive it up to Ohio. As luck would have it, John had two weeks of scheduled vacation coming up and he decided to take them up on this. He drove the car up to Ohio. Scott had Jeff immediately start re-doing temporary wiring we had worked on, install new 60lb injectors (because the 50’s were too inconsistent and he felt we would be maxing them), and do some basic maintenance that John agreed to let them do. The car was run on the dyno and tweaked a bit setting down some fairly impressive numbers. John was handed a shocking bill in excess of $800. He was being charged labor for tasks that he would have gladly performed himself had he known he was being billed. His “Free” trip had now cost him over $1200 with gas, hotel, food, etc. While invited to stick around, he left immediately for his drive home in disbelief and unsure why he had to pay. I had several rounds of email with Scott in disagreement with how it was handled to arrive at no solution at all. Once again, we just moved past it.

Less than a month after this, he was driving his now “perfectly tuned” car and had a sudden loss of motion. We quickly determined the toque converter was shot and contacted Scott. Scott, Jeff, and Chris agreed with the diagnosis and had John pay out of pocket for a new converter which was shipped to us. John then paid out of his own pocket to have it replaced (Over $450) and then paid to ship the dead one back to Intense. He received his refund for the cost of the converter. This bullet-proof converter had failed and John was yet again stuck with the full bill. Later we would learn that not only does Scott get a replacement converter from his vendor but that the vendor also gives him a full refund for the cost of that converter. I would assume that refund is to cover the cost of the replacement, but none of that money was passed to John. Scott made no effort at all to pass along any assistance or help.

At this point I was already getting very leery of dealing with Intense. I felt that while he might replace a broken part he was not going to stand behind it in any other way. I also began seeing real evidence of him completely abandoning people who aired their laundry on a public forum.

Since I had been talking to Chris Green OH for quite some time about Intense making an appearance at ACS, Scott proposed an alternative to bringing down their cars. They would sell John K. an Intercooler (at full price) and would fly down to ACS to install the intercooler then devote all of their effort to tuning it. John and I had a long talk about it and he decided to move forward with it. Arrangements were made to perform the installation while I was going to work with Derrich and others at running the event. Days before the event I was informed that Jeff would not be coming down and would therefore need to focus my efforts on the installation of the intercooler. While a bit frustrating, I refused to dwell on it and made adjustments to the plans to proceed.

We worked together as a team to get the IC installed, and quite frankly it was an incredible kit. I can’t say anything bad other than the fact that the Pump Sense kit was defective but Intense is sending out another to replace it. After the installation the car had a tendency to stall on deceleration. I assumed at that point it would be tuned out and we rushed off to dinner with everyone else.

At the track event on Saturday many back to back runs were made. Many attempts were made to dial-in the car; however as I watched them attempt to bring the O2 values down the car refused to drop below .950’s. Obviously an intercooled car should run leaner than that. I don’t think I’m inflecting too much opinion in that statement. To top it off, the car continues to stall on a deceleration yet Intense seems confused when I inflect my opinion that the car is not dialed-in and properly tuned.

Now as I sit here and hear rumors of problems with Gen 2 LSDs, Gen 3 rockers, etc I have to worry what other secrets are out there. I’ve seen the attitude that was presented towards both myself and Mike at ACS. I’ve gotten the phone calls and emails every time someone posts in a fashion that is unacceptable to Scott. I see other people posting in words that are clearly puppetted straight from Scott himself. I’ve seen MULTIPLE 2004 owners having significant engine failures caused by Intense PCMs while Scott insists there is nothing wrong. I’ve looked at the custom tune from John’s car with my own eyes and seen values that even I consider dangerous and I’m nowhere near seasoned at working with the Grand Prix PCM. Overall, it has just made me realize that there are some people that I just won’t do business with in the future, and Scott is at the top of that list.

I’m sorry for the long-winded post here, but I think it needed to be stated. If you have serious questions and want more information, please feel free to contact me. If you just wish to attack me for any reason, go *** yourself.

Chris Green "

[mike2002]

then ther'es a bunch of other posts from customers/former employees about how the company has just pooped on them and left with nothing but bills, how they dont stand behind there products, and how many people's cars have been ruined because of them.

looks like this could be the begging of the end for intense racing.

[RAVAGE214]

Im not a member and i could view everythign fine.

[FormulaNERD]

sure poop hit the fan. but they did alot of good things for the gp community. where would aftermarket be today without them?

[ImSoBored]

I can read it just fine too

[Travis99Alero]

i'm a member on clubgp and cant see poop even though i'm logged in.

[flalero]

I'm sure an aftermarket would have developed without Intense. I've never dealt with them, but after reading this, I don't think I ever will.

[mike2002]

it may not have come as quickly, but zzp, thrasher and dhp would still be there and they would have no problems with aftermarket. they did innovate alot of things, but deystroyed alot of cars in the process by not thoroughly testing products in there qwest to be the first to the market

i personally will never buy from them, there are plenty of reputable companies to buy from. even if the company does a complete 180, they've already shown there true colors (well scott cook has at least)

[xtrm 3.8 supercharged alero]

i think all of you should learn the fine facts before you start talking all your poop. i have many parts from them on my gtp. havent had any problems. also on my alero havent had any problems. so shut the f*** up and stay out of stuff that dosent involve you.

[jackal2000]

^^^^welcome to the site

[FormulaNERD]

Originally posted by xtrm 3.8 supercharged alero@Mar 12 2005, 10:42 AM
i think all of you should learn the fine facts before you start talking all your poop. i have many parts from them on my gtp. havent had any problems. also on my alero havent had any problems. so shut the f*** up and stay out of stuff that dosent involve you.
you're such a tool.

if you have something intelligent to say, then you can say it, otherwise people arent even going to listen to you.

[flalero]

It sounds like more people have had problems with them, than not. So why don't you shut the f*** up! Sounds like you are the owner or something trying to plug an ad for your company. Excellent way to advertise.

[mike2002]

Originally posted by xtrm 3.8 supercharged alero@Mar 12 2005, 10:42 AM
i think all of you should learn the fine facts before you start talking all your poop. i have many parts from them on my gtp. havent had any problems. also on my alero havent had any problems. so shut the f*** up and stay out of stuff that dosent involve you.
is this the same idiot putting a supercharged 3800 in his neighbors alero with the 78 piece craftsman tool set dad got him for christmas? or is that a different guy?

hey buddy, a link was posted to CLUBGP.COM where some very recognized l67 owners had there cars fu**** over by this company, no where did someone say "this one guy i know heard that this company....." its a link to people personally having major issues with a company who now wants to make parts for us, because alot of guys in the l67 community wont touch there products