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Good performance shops in the San Jose, California area


PanzerAce

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*dusts off the account, coughs a bit from all the dust that's built up*

 

So after losing my job, moving, being unemployed for a few months, and now having a job again, I finally have some money to spend on my Z. The problem is that while I have the money now to do stuff, I don't have my tools (no room for anything more than a wrench/ratchet set where I live now), nor do I have any time to work on the car myself. So, I'm looking for a good performance shop in the San Jose area that can do carb -> EFI swaps, engine swaps, etc. I'm aware of the Z Car garage, but last I checked they were fairly backed up with work, so I'm looking for other options as well. (Bonus points for a shop that really knows how to tune mikunis for the time being...)

 

Thanks in advance guys.

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Where in San Jose you live? I have the orange/black beater that keeps getting beat up in downtown.

 

Troy Ermish is in Fremont. He is more of a 510 man, but I'd still look into him.

 

I don't live in SJ (live in cupertino), but I work in San Jose, and that's where most people know in the area :P

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Its not in San Jose but its not far, Rebello Racing is in Antioch i believe, or somewhere around there.

 

The problem with that is I'd better than double my initial budget on more go fast goodies. I'd go in for a EFI install, and come out with a 3.2, a new cam, even more headwork, new exhaust, AND the EFI :P

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Where in San Jose you live? I have the orange/black beater that keeps getting beat up in downtown.

 

Troy Ermish is in Fremont. He is more of a 510 man, but I'd still look into him.

I would avoid Troy Ermish at all costs. Speaking from personal experience, and it was very very very poor experience.

 

There's Dando's automotive, which I would also avoid (again, personal experience).

Edited by auxilary
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It probably says something about the state of the auto industry when it's hard to find a decent shop for performance work. There's....three, total, that I know of in CA, one of them is down south, one doesn't answer their email or phone, and the third is rebello....

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There are resons why auto repair shops wont do performance work.And reasons why performance shops dont stay in business.The main reson why nobody wants to do performance work is that it is impossable to correctly estimate the time involved before starting the work.In the early 90's i used to manage a repair shop in Hayward.The business had some commercial customers that had some hot rods(v8z,boats,motorhomes)that we did project work -usually involving installing a high horsepower properly running engine.The owner would quote a price and we would closely stick to it.I used to do all the project work.The project work ALWAYS took twice as long as first estimated .But since these customers spent usually spent over $100k a year for fixing their commercial vehicles at the shop we could afford to write some time off to keep them happy.Next problem is dealing with California Bureau of Automotive Repair.All work has to have an estimate and the estimate has to be within +- %10.If the estimate is short you have to call the car owner for a revised estimate.Then you have product liability.That 500hp motorhome engine that i built had to be rebuilt again-FOR FREE+a $1500 tow bill.that the shop ate.Seems the torque convertor couldnt take the stress .It balooned out and tore up the thrust bearing on the crank shaft.The fix was a special torque convertor from GM/Allison.So if you had to pay a tech $20 to $30 per hour + pay commercial shop space if the SF Bay area and write %20 to %40 of your time off you will soon be broke.

 

 

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