Do bumblebees sting?, My experience with John Forbes and his "Speed and Custom Shop" Options

[iankarr]

The time has come to tell this story.

As some of you may remember, back in the fall I put out an APB for someone to help me rescue an engine from a shop in North Carolina. I don’t believe in posting unfavorable reviews of businesses publicly until they’ve had a chance to make good...and the full story has unfolded. I could go on with the boring details forever, but I’ll try to keep things as brief as possible. Or you can just skip to the last paragraph.

In May of last year, I saw a craigslist ad for a bumblebee roller in primer. I’d been looking for a car I could build a video series around, and this seemed perfect. It turns out the owner was John Forbes, who has a 914 pedigree.

EDIT: The original version of this post referenced Black Forest Racing - a company John started years ago. His son took over the company in 2017 and John is no longer affiliated - though he didn't go out of his way to point this out. He currently does business as "John's Speed and Custom Shop"

We had a series of really enjoyable conversations and he told me this car was “the most soild and straight 914 he’d ever seen”. He bought it about 10 years ago and kept it to build for himself, but life got in the way. His asking price seemed fair, so I wired the funds and he fedexed the title.

As we talked further about the car, he said he would love to rebuild the engine…and gave me a great price. His motors have won races, so I gladly agreed. I wired half the dough for the build and also sent some new parts to him. He showed me pics of the case split. We also talked about having the car painted (to an OEM level-not concours) in North Carolina, since it would probably be simpler than NY. John said he had a “great guy”…and would love to oversee the painting since he was so attached to the car. He asked for a 50% deposit on the paint and sent me some progress photos. Two weeks later he asked for the balance (which I sent), and texted some more pics…although somewhat few and far away…but he raved over the phone about how great the car looked. At this point he had almost all of the money in this deal…in cash and parts I sent.

Then things changed.

John became harder to reach, and he missed multiple dates to deliver the car (part of the deal was that he would trailer it to my garage). The engine sat, half-built for months. Finally, John promised he’d deliver the car on Sunday, September 8th, but when I called the day before to ask what time he’d arrive, he told me he couldn’t make it. I told him I was flying down to NC and would see him on Monday.

I walked in to the shop and the first thing I saw was my engine, still unfinished and untested. As I turned to see the car, my jaw hit the floor. Paint was bubbling on the deck lid, there were scratches from coarse sanding, and smudges and runs everywhere. I asked John how he could even set a delivery date when the two-month old paint had major issues and the engine wasn’t running. He didn’t really have an answer, but promised he would make things right. Here are just a couple of pics. Of course, I have video (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)




I’m often trusting to a fault…but especially when it comes to the 914 community. I had let my guard down on this bumblebee and I got stung. My choice at this point was to either pull everything out of his shop and lick my wounds…or give John an opportunity to make amends. I figured I had nothing further to lose, so I chose the latter, though, tellingly, he said he couldn’t give me any money back on the paint. He actually said “the painter ripped us both off.”

For the next few weeks, John did seem to be more attentive. He paid for a mobile blast service to strip the bubbling paint and took the car to a friend who was a “body man” to fix some things (about $ 500 worth). Then, as September turned to October, the ghosting began again. When we did speak, details were scant. He was even reluctant to tell me exactly where the car was! All the while he was supposed to be working on the engine. He told me “it’s all together, turning over and almost ready to fire…you’ll hear it run tomorrow” at least five times. It’s just a 2.0 with 96mm pistons to make it a (D-Jet) 2056 and it was now going on 6 months. The final excuse was that he didn’t have a good fuel injection harness to test with.

Around Thanksgiving communication came to a dead stop, with numerous emails and calls unreturned for nearly a month. When I finally reached him, he apologized again and said he wouldn’t be able to get the engine running until some other work came in. At that point I realized that I immediately needed to get the engine, the parts and the car, which was in Winston-Salem, back to my garage.

@Joea9146 was kind enough to pick up the engine and I arranged to get everything trucked up to NY. Thanks, Joe for being a great example of what this community is really about.

I sent the car off to my body and paint guy who literally shook his head when he saw it. I took inventory of all the parts and let John know which ones were missing (some LE-specific)…but it’s now May and I still haven’t heard back from him. I don’t expect to.

Given everything I’d experienced, I thought it would be a good idea to give the engine a closer look before I invested further time and money. I knew that John would be re-using some parts, provided they were in good shape, but I was pretty shocked at what I discovered….in order, and with some pics:

– The valve covers have gasket adhesive “webs” inside the cavities.
– The pushrod tube retaining wires are missing
– The 3-4 cylinders are not on an even plane, so no way the heads can seal.



– Head gaskets were installed
– The deck height is excessive and inconsistent (ranging from .080 to .100, not including the head gaskets.)
– The #4 register has dropped by about .020, causing the sealing issues and deck height variance.
– The cam shaft is worn.



– No crush washer / felt ring was installed on the used, unturned flywheel. The brand new clutch and –pressure plate I sent were bolted up to this. Also the o-ring and bearing aren't fresh.



– The crank end play was basically zero. So tight that the shims are imprinted and concave.
– The MPS which came with the 2.0 engine is for a 1.7.
– Only about a quart of break in oil was in the engine.

As for the heads, it doesn't look like there are any cracks, but the valve job is poor. This pic shows the #4 intake valve sitting lower, which could indicate a bunch of issues and result in unequal combustion chamber volume.



Needless to say, I now need to split the case and start from scratch. There’s no way this engine would’ve run. If it had, it wouldn’t have run well…or for long.

I’ve been in the service business for 35 years and dealt with lots of people, but this situation has perplexed me. John’s a great guy to chat about 914s with and I honestly don’t believe that he intended to deceive. Though he could have duped me. Perhaps he just doesn’t deal with challenges well...or circumstances have caused him to lose a step. However you loook at it, he certainly wasn’t forthcoming or proactive in a meaningful way.

Others may disagree, but in my experience, the quality of his work is grossly unprofessional and sub-par. He was laser-focused on receiving deposit money, but not nearly as much about finishing the job. Could my experience be a fluke? Maybe. But I care about this community enough to share this story so that others can approach Mr. Forbes and his "Speed and Custom shop with their eyes open.

As I write about this, I realize that my issue is less about what happened and more about how John handled it. Car restoration always has bumps in the road. If he had been more transparent, communicative and collaborative, I’m sure we could’ve worked things out more positively.

The good news is that nothing he did or didn’t do is permanent. The bumblebee is well on its way to being awesome. And I’ll be creating videos of every step along the way. Engine suggestions and help welcome!

Caveat emptor…

Ian