Giving everyone a heads up. Avoid a guy by the name of a Jay McCain in Houston like the plague.
I bought Italo’s old car (custom 86 GT with 3800 SC swap) and drove it down from Toronto to Houston. It was a brutal drive and the car had several issues (everything BUT the engine, that was very dependable) so I let it sit for a while. One day when I went to start it, it wouldn’t run. I found Jay on FB under a shop name of Vampyre Performance (this should have been my first clue right?}, who claimed he had extensive 3800 and Fiero experience, and offered mobile service in the Houston area.
I paid him to come check why the car wouldn’t start, and he found a wire that had failed soldering, which affected injector pulse. He re-soldered it and the car started right up. While there we talked, and he bragged of his countless swaps he had done with some shop in Florida. We get to talking about my goals for the car and he says he can do the work. I had decided that the ‘86 had too many issues so I would have the engine and good stuff swapped to my 85 GT, and have the suspension, alignment, and other stuff done in the process. Jay first says he has access to a shop but then says he’ll do it at his house which will be cheaper for me.
He said he’d put together a quote and email it to me. I was planning to send the car to Chris Coultier up in MO for the work but trying to get two cars, an engine, and a spare space frame up to him was going to cost more than the work. So I figured I’d have Jay do the bulk of it then I’d drive the single car up to Chris and have him do the turbo and make everything right.
When Jay emails the quote, he wants $100 / hr for labor and the amount was on the ridiculous side. We negotiate, and I tell him he can have the immaculate fully powder coated space frame and all associated parts (control arms, new hubs, etc), plus whatever was left from my donor car, and $2k to swap everything over, replace the 282 with a F23, clean everything up, do the suspension and alignment, and make it right. Now this is with me buying ALL required parts, except the harness which he insists on making. He fully agreed to this.
Ok this was back in December / January. I give him $1k up front, which is what he asked for. Fast forward, he has the car, is working on it and costs come up. He needs a trans shop to handle putting the Cobalt F23 internals into the Cavalier F23 Trans. I pay it, no problems. Money for parts, money for incidentals, whatever, covered. I bought all new Moog and Dickman ball joints because he says mine are shot and he’ll toss them on for a little extra, no problem. He claims he has the ball joints installed and I find one of them still new in the box sitting with my stuff in his garage. We get into a disagreement about it but he ends up saying he bought some too and must have installed his.
I find out he didn’t tighten everything when I take it to get aligned, the shop has to fix what he missed, and I paid extra for it. I still don’t know for sure if his ball joints were identical to mine or not. I did glance when it was on the rack and saw they looked new though. He then tells me my car is leaking trans fluid but doesn’t know why. Remember I paid extra to have the trans done, AND I paid to have new seals put in while it was apart as part of our agreement. He also can’t get the idle right, it’s surging. I get another pcm, tuned by Chris but still surging. He even asks for help on FB because he’s stumped, even though he claimed to be a tuning guru.
Jay can’t figure it out and tells me to come get the car that we’ll address the surging down the road. He wanted me to keep buying parts but I wanted him to figure it out because I didn’t want to keep buying parts needlessly. He also wants me to pay him another $1k ON TOP of our agreed $2k for the labor, with known issues there. The car is still surging at idle and can’t go over 2200 RPMs in 3rd or 4th gears without it surging so bad the car will barely move. Other gears seem fine...? The cluster is not working (did when I bought this car) other than the tach, there are wires hanging down from the dash (weren’t there when I had the car brought over), brake cable is visible at the back of the car, shifter isn’t working correctly (can’t tell what gear it’s in and I bought the F23 shift bracket and cables), and it’s got the idiot light on for engine issues. There’s something wrong with the whole thing in general. I manage to limp it home, would have gotten it towed but he didn’t disclose any of this, it supposedly just had an idle issue and he said it had stopped leaking. It’s still leaking trans fluid everywhere btw.
Overall, I gave Jay about $4k total, not including what I bought for parts. I refused to give him an extra $1k for labor, but did give him an extra $500. So $1k up front, about $1,500 extra for parts and incidentals including parts he claimed he bought but never documented, and $1,500 when I picked the car up. The car isn’t drivable, he hasn’t made any effort to get it right. Remember this engine got me from Toronto to Houston without issue.
So now I’m having to buy a new harness from James L Brown (I wanted to in the beginning but Jay insisted he could do it), and pay a local tuner to get the tune right. I’ll also have to have the dash harness troubleshot, have the trans addressed, and who knows what else. I confront Jay, he denies I paid him all of what I paid him, denies he kept some of the parts I bought, denies he kept all of my receipts and documents that came along with my parts (he did even though I’ve asked for them multiple times), denies he tried to swap out my parts even though I caught him doing it, denies he had me buy parts I didn’t even need, claims he did work he did not do, claims he did more work than he was paid to do, and claims that since I drove the car away that means it’s drivable. His wife even texts me and claims I didn’t pay what I paid and that I’m the reason the car isn’t running. She even said they should have charged me a storage fee for the car being at their house so long while he was trying to figure out why it wasn’t right...? Seriously WTF...?
Please do yourselves a favor and avoid this guy. I’m in a holding pattern until I get the new harness. I’m hoping this has a happy ending before I give up on the car. Stick with the guys up in Dallas if you need any work done in or near TX. Stay as far away from Jay McCain as you can.
[This message has been edited by mptighe (edited 10-23-2018).]