Looking for suggestions on indy shops in the West LA area. Have a slight thump on 1-2 shift which may be an engine mount or tranny mount, and a squealing pulley at 3k rpm. Also might need a plug change (35k miles on the car now..).

Suggestions from the local LA crowd?

 

by far the best indie shop is foreign sport on broadway at euclid in santa monica.
ask for claudio and tell him mitch sent you.

 

Check out Lucent Motors.

 

+1 on Lucent...Arling and Tom are great

 

Need one also.

 

Arling is the man....Lucent.

 

Thanks for the posts guys-

You know I went to Lucent twice, and both times really got put off by them. I don't think they really have time nor care about getting new business (at least from a 2002 pcar owner).

First time I ever visited Lucent I dropped in to see when I could bring my pcar in, guys were nice, and I got told two weeks earliest.
I had heard such good things about Lucent I figured I'd wait a couple of weeks and make an appointment.

so about 3 weeks went by and I called to make an appointment. Got told 'next week' so made an apointment on the phone for next week, as instructed, at a specific time.
Showed up for my appointment and the driveway was blocked by one customer sedan, so i couldn't pull in. One of the lucent guys saw me and told me to wait a few minutes, so I did.
15 minutes later i'm still sitting there in front of the driveway, car idling, no one is bothering to move the car so I can park or let me know to come back later, etc.
I can clearly see that all 4 or 5 guys working there are busy fawning over the new Ferrari in the shop bay. But no one can move a car blocking the driveway for me. There's nowhere to park in front of Lucent and it's major traffic whizzing right by my door. I can't leave my car to go ask what's up, and it's too far to yell.

I wait 2 more minutes and then bail- Waste of my time.

I got home and called the shop to tell them I would not be bringing my car in, and wanted to point out the difficulty I experienced. Spoke to one of the guys there and gave him an overview of what transpired. I was polite. His response was (not kidding) "I don't know what to tell you, I wasn't there". Ok, thanks for the high-school-age response.

I was still polite and just said "hey you might want to think about this situation to avoid it happening to other new customers".
Response? "well we're always really busy and people will park blocks away and walk here if they can't get in the lot". Like I'm dense for not magically thinking of parking blocks away and walking over.
The overall attitude was like 'oh well whatever', so that's not really my kind of place.

Frankly I don't want to take my car to a place where even with a pre-in-advance appointment you're treated with disregard, and even if I'd left my pcar there I'm not certain they would have had any real time to work on it in a timely manner. I'm actually kinda pissed at myself for making the concession to wait a few weeks to take my car to them instead of doing the normal thing and finding another indy who could fit me in and has a bit less attitude.

Folks, keep in mind this was only my experience I'm sharing and any opinions expressed are my own and obviously biased- This is not an across the board knock on the shop. I've heard many good things about Lucent and obviously they are a highly reputable indy. It just didn't seem to work out for me with trying to take my car there.

 

Sorry for that experience...but hats off for keeping your cool. I could tell you though that what one drives has nothing to do with the service they provide customers. My very first appointment with Lucent there was a Ford GT that came just after I parked, a couple of Ferraris inside the shop, and lots of porsche turbos. And here I am with my 02 C2 . But Arling and Tom (and George, I think) took care of me and my car and finished on schedule (PSS9, alignment, brakes, wheel balance) with added stories and humor from Tom

I kinda recognized that avatar and said to myself "Isn't that Porsch3?"... then I read your sig . I've always wanted to ask that place where you had those front "grilles" on the bumper (and did you say they were 0.25"? I know I could search but too lazy . TIA

 

Hey, no worries- I had the screens done my AfterHours Automotive in Wilmington.
www.afterhoursautomotive.com
www.afterhourscompositeworks.com (same company, but their materials fabrication leg).

Phone is on website- Call Monday and Ask for Brian Kono (owner), tell him Kurt sent you, and what you want. He's got all of the different size stainless mesh at the shop, I think mine are .25" squares. Still looks great!

 

Thanks Kurt, and I hope you find the right shop for your car's needs.

 

I'm taking my 02 996 to Auto Talent on Monday. They are a Sponsor on this forum and are located just off Santa Monica by the 405 freeway. They were very upfront on the phone about pricing and were quick to schedule a time for me to bring my car in for suspension install.

http://www.autotalent.com/

Their website isn't great, but they can get a lot of stuff that isn't on their site. Looks like they did a lot of E46 stuff before but are versed in Porsche stuff now.

 

If you want Beverly Hills valet service, then go to Beverly Hills Porsche and pay the price. The reason Lucent is reasonably, is because they are on a tight lot in West LA and the owners Tom and Arling do most of the work. I made an appointment at 9:30 on a saturday morning and was done by 11:00. I spent the time under my car with Tom watching him work on it getting a great education and having a great cigar for breakfast. Try that at any dealer.

 

Yep, that's the sort of the experience I was hoping for, although it sounds like you have a non-standard relationship with them since (for insurance and safety reasons) customers are typically not allowed in the shop work area- particularly under cars on lifts.

If you've ever paid for shop liability insurance and had to deal with OSHA requirements you'd understand why indys / dealers don't typically allow this, it's not really because the shop is 'just not cool'.

I did try to support them as a 6speed sponsor by making Lucent my first choice - Unfortunately I got no love there. Again this is only my experience. So, have to shop around and find something that works for me.

 

I would recommend Precision Motorsports (in Burbank) , I know its not in West LA but the guys there are great, fast, honest and really know their stuff and they do work as if they are students and not teachers. What I mean by that is, they don't just say I know what the problem is and ok lets fix it, they actually take the time to see what originally caused the problem in the first place (lets say if a part is wearing out to fast).

Talk to Harvey there, he really knows his stuff and is very friendly. I take all my cars there and usually they don't even charge me unless it costs them (out of their pockets) my point being they are not all about the money.

It's really tough finding the right shop, the best idead would be to research and generaly go with your gut instinct and not what someone recommends. Most big shops have big heads if you get what I am saying.

Anyways give em a call 818-558-7401

Peace out,

Yaki

 

Woot! My account is *finally* fixed - Thanks mods!