Hey Everyone. I thought I would post on the forums about my experience with Garth @ Turtle Tuned. I hate to take time out of my life, but I feel everyone needs to be warned to stay away from Garth. Spoiler alert, 10 months later and he is missing with my turbo kit, headers, etc.

Mid 2017 I purchased an EFR7163 Turbo kit for my 991 Turbo from Sean @ SillyRabitMotorsports. Garth and Sean had some relationship. Since Sean recommended Garth to do the tune, Sean sent the kit directly to Garth. The kit should had been shipped directly to me as I was going to install myself. I’ve read a few posts on the forum about Garth and there has been no real bad feedback or much at all now that I am looking back on things. Sean took longer to fabricate the kit but honestly, I fully expected that because it’s typically of the car industry. That aside, Garth got the kit in November 2017. Garth was somewhat communicative at the beginning of the process but then would go MIA for weeks at a time. Then months at a time. I setup several appointments to meet at “His” shop in NJ to do the installation and tuning. He ended up never being there. I am glad he was not there, and I didn’t leave my car. Turns out many cars in his possession went missing (there is more to this story so keep reading) Each long communication gap was eventually response to with “oh I broke my phone”. I’ve never met another human who broke 22 phones in a 10 month period on accident. About 45 days ago I had enough.

I started reaching out to people he had done business with, customers of his and vendors who sold him equipment. There is a common theme going on here where he has screwed everyone I had spoken with. Not sure I want to name some shops here but a few shops in NJ and NY but they are more than welcome to chime in here as some are forum members. Garth has taken up to $30,000 from people, delivered no parts or services. There have been several cars reported stolen, including some supra’s, corvette’s, porsche’s, etc. One Supra was recovered at a diner. He was selling $200 “discounted” slipstream tickets that were not valid… surprise when drivers went to the gate any had to pay another $350 to race. I’m sure there is a bunch of people that got taken advantage of. Everyone needs to be warned and this guy needs to be locked up.

I found out garth separated from his wife and got up left his apartment in NJ which was where my turbo kit was. I reached out to the landlord of his place to see if he had left behind the turbo kit but he just told me he did not pay rent or the electric bill. Shocker, right?

Here is a somewhat happy ending to my story. I have been talking to Sean @ SRM more and keeping him up to date on what has been happening with Garth. He really is a stand up guy! About 3 weeks ago he offered to fabricate another complete turbo kit to make me whole. I will make another post once I get this kit *directly* from SRM with how it performs. Been a very long time but I am excited to get this build completed.

 

I am sorry to hear that. Up until now I had heard only positive things about Garth's tuning prowess.

I hope you can get what you need for your car done elsewhere.

FTR - I always used Tim941nyc (he is in Plainview) to do all of my Porsche work when I lived in NY. He is mega busy with multiple businesses but for every bit of work we did, he would BUY the parts, do all the work and THEN charge me. He is the best in the business and a stand up guy. If he is not doing minor work ATM or is too busy I am sure @prodigymb and others here can give you a heads up on good people in the tri state

I did have some bad experiences with others on Long Island however on multiple cars.

 

Deal with good people that have solid reputation and not just shop name as a roll of thumb, this way you know who is behind the promise.
only a handful of shops in the country and abroad like Aim@NJ proto@AR by design@CA Esmotor@ Turky to name a few (And they are few)are to be considered as reliable and P car modification worthy because they have spotless reputation.
Many big name shops here and abroad are scam artists that take advantage of nice people good will and will screw you dry.
Do your research and make responsible transactions, realife advice.

Good luck.

 

 

It seems that everyone has a story, I have my own that I'll refrain from sharing the details of as they only validate the original post. I've since moved shops to AIM and tuning through Emre and couldn't be happier. I've driven my car more just this year since the switch than in the previous 3 years combined.

 

Sean@SRM has stood behind his company and refunded me on the turbo kit. This is what we mutually decided was the best course of action. I have nothing but respect for the guy. Just wanted to keep the community informed.

Garth is still MIA. Hopefully this thread saves at least one person from getting screwed by Garth.

 

I have had a bunch of experience with both Sean and Garth. Sean and I keep in touch and chat fairly regularly, I speak less often with Garth, but he has done all of the tuning on my 997.

I saw Garth a few weeks ago when he was out here in Arizona tuning Jordan Musser's former 997 for the new owner out here in AZ. Garth got him off the piggy back 128 and moved him to the full setup removing the stock ECU. He also upgraded his turbos to a gen 2 precision setup.

Personally, Garth has never taken anything from me. He's broken at least 5 phones, been out of communication, been inconsistent with timing or scheduling and had a ton of other things going on. But, he has never stolen from me. I have also never put myself in such a position. I will, however, say that he's done numerous adjustments to my tunes at my request and helped me further dialing things in for events and other things... none of which I've paid him any additional money for. I recently booked his return flight from Arizona back to where he was headed, but he ended up canceling it as the project here took him longer than expected and I was refunded everything.

As far as Sean, him and I have had our ups and downs, but he's always done right by me.

Given Garth's personal situation, you never know what people may do when given the opportunity. I am not saying he did or did not do anything, but I will say that he hasn't personally given me any reason to not trust him. Family issues, combined with business are never a good mix. Some people get in over there head and instead of swallowing pride they start to take advantage of others. Again, not sure of the situation here, but I've seen it happen to lots of others and it sucks.

I'm glad Sean made it right, despite the circumstances.

Best of luck on the build!

Edit: I did buy some R888R from his Facebook account. The guy posting the ads is using Garth's account, but isn't Garth? I don't know. Anyway, I paid for the tires and they showed up 4 days later as advertised.

 

 

and that isn't true at all.... in fact i could drop info about one of the shops you named in your post. Nobody has a spotless reputation, if you believe that then you haven't heard the entire story. OP< you are in NY, if you are on long island go to Porsche approved shops like TKX in Huntington, Taso is the approved (Porsche club of america) mechanic for inspections for track duties. He can install your equipment no problem with proper turn around time.

 

I am the owner of a shop, APEX Performance, in Dallas, TX area and Garth from Turtle Tooned stole over $3k from me too. I was referred to him from Jason over at ProEFI (of which we are a dealer for) and were embarking on a Porsche 996TT shop car build. Jason suggested I call Garth to chat about the tuning set-up with the ProEFI. After speaking with him the first time and after having a credible referral I decided to give him some business and order parts through Garth/Turtle Tooned as opposed to going through my normal supplier routes. That's where I deviated from my intuition and got screwed. I sent Garth two payments that totaled over $3k, that was back in April and I've gotten the same run around regarding lost cell phones and shoulder surgery and other BS. Long periods of not hearing from him and constant messages that the parts were shipped, just to be followed up with he was too busy to ship them when pressed for tracking information.

Of course I have since ordered all the parts from our normal distributor for the build, so Garth isn't holding us up any longer but still cost my shop $3k of monies we could have allocated to other shop car projects.

Add'l if anyone on this thread wants to put some resources together to locate him please let me know. I've filed what I need to with the local PD, but the more information I can give them to locate and prosecute him the better. Perhaps we can put a group of people who were screwed by him to obtain a private investigator to help the police locate him and an attorney to go after him as a class (not an attorney so don't know what constitutes a class) thus making the monies owed over the $10k small claims court limits....?? If anyone is interested please PM me as I don't like people like Garth ruining this great after market automotive industry I have come to love and enjoy and one that has provided me with a great life for me and my family. I am a big fan of seeing people like Garth have the book thrown at him and see him do some jail time for the fraud he has/is committing!

 

Wondering if anyone had any updates info. He currently stole my GTR and I can’t get a hold of him anymore. The police are involved. Any info would help.

 

Sorry to hear, hope you find the GTR soon

 

I was lucky, did a lot of homework and went with Sam at By Design, sent my car from PA to Cali, and it was SO WORTH IT, next car goes to Sam too.

 

Sam is the most honest trustworthy guy in the game. We are all blessed to have him around.