I had the work done wednesday and thursday. Took the car to Richard's Honda here in Baton Rouge, and I was very pleased with the service. I was waiting for the parts to come in when I recieved a call from my service advisor saying "we got the parts in, and we'd like you to bring in the car tomorrow evening, so the tech can work on the car overnight and hopefully have the car for you the next day after lunch". I was shocked. They took the time to repair my car so quickly, and after hours. I was expecting to drop off the car for several days, maybe a week. But apparently they've got a transmission wiz there.

My symptoms were perfect: High amounts of gear wine from tranny mid rpm in 3rd, and occasional 2nd and 3rd gear grind on my 2001 model. One thing I also had was a major clutch squeak. Perhaps it was the pedal assembly, but everytime I pushed in the clutch, that damn squeak! Loud and a little embarrasing

My next dilema was "should I get a light weight flywheel"? That was an adventure. I tired many sponsors on the board, and I had horrible luck with import development...never returned any calls, and I got wierd responses from their emails...4-IG still hasn't returned any emails(been almost 2 weeks)...r and d was great, but unfortunately in the end, I was time constrained (didn't expect the tranny parts to come in so quickly), and just couldn't afford it.

So anyway, my impressions of the new stuff is a relief. The tranny and clutch is so smooth compared to before. Shifting is even more fun, and the clutch is easier on the leg, a little lighter than before. The buzzing(gear wine) is completely gone, and the car overall feels the way is was meant to...like a fine tuned sports car.

 

Not that I ever wanted to publicly beat up a sponsor, but.....

I ordered brakes from Import Development and told them how I had an appointment for them to be installed in 6 full days and I needed to make sure they would arrive on time. "they will be sent out 3 day shipping". After i sent about 5 private messages, and 3-4 phone calls, etc...... finally the brakes showed up on the 7th day (the day after my appointment). I never got any acknowledgment that anything went bad on their part. It was more like they ignored the problem and it went away. I even posted a thread with the details but not the supplier... everyone agreed that in that situation they sucked!

It was odd too, the guy who runs the place was posting to threads here, but not replies to my PM's or my emails or my phone calls....

Scot

 

Scot,
I think that Richard (Mingster) from Import Development sold his business. Maybe the new guy's having trouble running it. Hopefully he isn't just rude, but busy. Makes me wonder.

I also contacted science of speed, and they were very helpful. I just figure that now maybe I'll save the flywheel money and spend it towards wheels or a new air intake system. I just hope I don't have as much trouble purchasing anything else.

I am however still pleased with the tranny work, just waiting to break in the new clutch, miss the VTEC!

 

Eddie - just looked over the emails that transpired between us, and I provided quite a bit of details in various products from flywheel to the throwout bearing. Not sure how those come off as "weird", but I do apoligize that I didn't get back to you on the cost of the stand-alone lightened pressure plate. I do not sell this apart from the kit because of how it fits with certain other clutch disks. I'll look back on the call logs to see where the messages were. At the moment, I only recall the emails that transpired. I can only say this, ever since I've taken over IDi from Richard, its been quite an adventure and the majority of the day is spent on the phone taking calls or calling back customers. It becomes quite overwhelming as my time is overloaded to the point where some responses fall through the cracks.

In the end, I'm glad you are happy with the TSB054, the clutch kit you inquired upon would not be easy on the foot or lighter on the leg. Sometimes, its not that quiet either - but then again, so are most performance parts. The flywheel though - if you are going to do it, get it done with the clutch, hopefully you don't have another clutch replaced under warranty. The reason I say that, bang for the buck - it might not be worth it to you for $400 + 6 hours of shop labor. To some people it is, but it would be better if you felt it and paid for it with the whole clutch setup.

Scot - I know you've been wanting to tell the story, and thanks for letting it out. I watched the other thread you posted and waited to hear what others said. Being a friend of a friend, I provided you - unknown to you - a break in the price and did what I could to ship them out as soon as possible. They were brake pads sent to you from California to Pennsylvania. Sometimes, bad decisions are made, and that was one of them - not getting back to you, nor saying 'sorry it will not happen again'. At the time, I had not heard back on the status or a tracking number of the pads, and its difficult at times to tell customers you don't know where the package is, and that you'd really rather wait until you get concrete information before relaying inconclusive information to the customer. But as stated - it was one of those bad decisions that only resulted in negative consequences.

In the end, its your choice as a consumer to obtain the same product from someone else, sometimes at a different price, and sometimes with different service. Feedback like this is best taken constructively to work on what needs to be improved, so I thank you for your comments.