Eat Shit and Die

 You know who you are. You wear the mask of cooperation and friendship hiding a face of deceit, envy and frustration. You smile, you promise, you talk too much, you are in a hurry. It's no accident you have a saw in your pocket when we crawl out on the limb. To all of you...Eat Shit and Die ! To you, who surface everytime we come up with a new product or activity, find your place on our roster.

You go to Europe to race with us and conspire to copy our racing frames. You tell our suppliers we have authorized the release of proprietary parts to you. We airfreight you turbos and you never pay for them. You take our parts , copy them and then return them saying they were no good. We build prototypes for production approval and you have them copied by other firms or even better yet you sell them and never pay us at all. You borrow turbo kits from our clients, tell us you want to buy them but need tech info, then you copy the parts and tell the world you are the new savior. You order parts, stop payment, run your dyno tests and send us back beat up used parts. We sponsor your bike, tune your bike and find out our name is nowhere to be found on the entry or when the record is set. We go to the awards dinner when you set two world records after we spend thousands of dollars and driving thousands of miles getting the record and you don't acknowledge our presence. You remove our decals from our products when we aren't around. You set a 200 mph record and our name never appears on your turbo web page.

You order parts for a custom turbo application and get "investors" or "sponsors" money to order parts from us. We provide finished parts and raw parts for your own fabrication and to our knowledge you did nothing. You then demand we refund your money because your "investors" were going to have you "put in jail" and you said send the money and then you will return the parts. We said return the parts and we will refund for what has not been damaged or altered. You never return the parts. For the next decade you rant about what crooks we are. We keep our mouth shut about it and let you rant.

We find out you are advising people not to do business with us so we call you up and ask since we've never had any dealings with you it would be better to either keep quiet or call us up first before you spread rumors. We then remind you we know all of your three previous employers whom you left under less than favorable circumstances and also know people with whom we know you have had bad business dealings with. We invite you to stop by and discuss these issues since you are local. You decline. John N.

We contacted you to purchase some high end electronics because you were supposedly the local expert...And, since you were half an hour from our shop, communication should have been easy. There was no communication. Zero. We forked over the money and after five months of excuses and no delivery, mainly blaiming supplier issues, we made one simple phone call and found the parts we ordered were in stock  both in the Cosworth USA and UK offices.  A visit with the President and now CEO of Cosworth Hal Reisiger quickly cleared up things regarding your business and practices. A few more phone calls found a long trail of lies, excuses, over-billing, and non-delivery with a range of clients. Bad business practices and pre-payments to float a failing business. We took a partial refund after a deduction for some ill-fitting, subcontracted, wiring work and moved on.

You order expensive special order parts , and try to cancel the order after we have eight weeks of labor and thousands of dollars of parts tied up in the effort. You beat up our parts because some other custom part interferes and then return them threatening us unless we refund all your money. You call us up and demand we change our designs to your specifications even though you've never made any parts and aren't aware of the expenses involved. The race is over you steal the parts and head for Canada. Your "expert" hooks up things wrong and you try to blame us for your mistakes.

A customer says he’s going to build his own turbo and wants us to order him a turbo. He chooses the wrong one. We order it anyway. One year later he can’t get it done by conning his “friend” to do the work for free so he asks us to build it “his way”. We do. He then sees our design and wants it changed to "our way". We did. He also took it upon himself to take down the license plate numbers of three out of state bikes we had in our shop. He threw a fit when he saw we were working on bikes like his but not his exclusively. He tracked these people down and told them RB Racing was tearing up their bikes doing wheelies and loaning them to customers (the bikes were never operated) for the sole purpose of spite. The people came in unannounced one Saturday and pulled their bikes and tried to sue us for not finishing their bikes even though they had not paid. They also wanted additional work done for free and even told us they would take our fixtures back to Colorado and build our parts for us. They announced they were going to “own” our business. They got nothing, zero, zip, from us. We were out eight weeks labor and fabrication. We let the original customer, Mike Chestnut, ride his ZX-11 RB Racing Intercooled EFI Turbo around the block and then disabled it as he was moving to Tennessee. He was amazed how “perfect” it was. We told him he could have the missing parts when he owned up to what he had done and pay for any losses we had. He was a coward and did nothing.  He sold the bike to a friend of ours to avoid dealing with us, who paid us for the missing parts, getting a $17,000.00 motorcycle for $6,000.00.The bike ran 210 mph on it’s first pass at Maxton. The seller, Mike Chestnut, was there to see “his Bike”.  Last seen after collecting a large insurance settlement for being run over by a double dump truck/trailer in California, Mike was chroming parts for pinball machines in Gallatin, TN...Does he have a chrome shop...no he doesn't. We were happy to hear later on that he lost his left leg in another motorcycle accident..and were glad it was his left shifter leg. Acting as a middleman for chroming is safer than motorcycles for him.  He used to laugh about how he was charging people $400.00 to ground one wire in a GPZ750 turbo ecm. Cosmic pinball got him. Karma. In the finality of this "what goes around comes around" Mike hit a turkey vulture on a motorcycle in 2016 and was killed. We hope the turkey vulture survived.

You call us up and want a ZX-11 Turbo...You ask how much..We say $7500.00. You call back and now you want two of them, and want a discount...We say no. You then call back and want three of them..and can we get a discount for three of them...We say $20,000 up front...if and when. You then show up unannounced with no money and (1) ZX-11, (1) ZX-9 (apparently a wreck at some point), and a CBR900...not the deal. Bikes are left at RB Racing awaiting a ZX-11 payment.  Long story short: We build the ZX-11 kit (money paid)...we put 6 weeks of work into the CBR, but did not finish it. We do not touch the ZX-9. We end up on the phone looking for two more payments and talk to one person's mother....that was interesting. Customers suddenly show up at shop unannounced (via Mike Chestnut)...We load up the bikes and prepare to load up the ZX-11 kit...ZX-11 owner insults us by asking up to give them all our turbo fixtures so they can make the kits in Colorado. We bid them goodbye minus the kit. End result: a 20% cancellation fee. They tried lawyers and even hired a private detective who we shamed  by following him after walking up behind and tapping him on his shoulder.. They got zero...zilch. We then called up our friend Russ Collins (RC Engineering) who called Honda R&D and they loaned us a CBR900 to finish the kit which we eventually sold. Never again.

You call us up to complain about a product that is not ours. We explain we have nothing to do with it at all. You tell us you are filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau, a complaints board, and various national internet communities. We suggest you go back to school, take a course in logic, learn about decision matrices and figure out that, if we are not part of the equation, we have nothing to do with whatever you are talking about. We then get a phone call that offers to clear our name in this matter for $1,000.00. Ha!

We give you 5MB of software, 40 pages of instructions and you think screaming at us will cure your inability to read or study. You run leaded fuel thru the O-Sensor then complain to us that: a. Your O-Sensor is "bad". b. Your bike runs poorly. We give you free this and free that totaling about $3,000.00 and then you stiff us on a $50.00 bill to cover the shipping. You build billet parts, call us up wanting to sell our exhausts...We lend you some parts for photography and testing and you never call us or return our calls, then copy the parts and refuse to either pay for or give back the missing items...Money is your God and He can turn on you faster than you think.

You order one of our turbo systems which takes several months of work and then several days just to pack and prepare  paperwork for international shipment. You transfer the funds, but when it comes time to ship you want to cancel. We inform you you will lose 100% of your money if you do not provide a credit card for the shipment costs. We ship the parts and when they arrive on your end you refuse to pay the customs duty. We again inform you if the parts return you are again liable for the shipping and there are no refunds. You pay. Some things just aren't worth the hassle.

You order a specialized racing exhaust. We advise you it will be too loud for street use and that one of our regular exhaust systems with a baffle would be a better choice. You insist. We ship..You run the exhaust, put it on two dynos looking for magical horsepower and do not find the "117 Horsepower you think you should get"...on a basically stock motor. You whine and complain about how you did not get what you thought your expected 117 Hp...We ask you if the bike runs better, faster and is more responsive..You say "Yes". We ask you if there are any complaints about fit or finish...You say it was "Perfect". We tell you to send the damn thing back as we don't want you to have our product...We tell you you flunked the I.Q. test when you paid $25,000.00 for an 80 horsepower 850 lb motorcycle. They are just air pumps and unless you modify them from the piston crown upstairs they are just not going to make large gains in power...Certainly not a 46% gain over stock. Ask Jerry Branch, he went through that more than 30 years ago searching for the 100 hp 80" EVO. Born every day.

You order $1,350.00 worth of parts on package deal for $1,100.00 and 1 1/2 years later you call us up wanting a full refund on one of the parts you never used...We keep records. You don't return the prom dress after the prom. You call up thinking we don't remember who you are because it was 5 or 10 years since you last surfaced...and we remind you of what happened before.

You call us up, order a part at the advertised price then four weeks later you call us up and say the part is too expensive. Two months go by and the item is not returned. One day the part shows up and we refund the money less a 15% restocking fee. You then complain to the credit card company you should not have to pay a restocking fee for an item you ordered and have had for three months even though the published terms and conditions are 15%.  Life's Good Racing. Get real.

You call us up wanting assurances of performance, looks, and specifications for an exhaust system design we do not make nor offer. We tell you a picture you have seen on our website is not for your model bike and has no bearing for your particular bike. We offer you items that we do make for your particular bike. We tell you after a lengthy exchange of emails that "We are not in the business of placating people by giving verbal descriptions and assurances they are looking for just to get their money…Especially when they want something that we do not make for their bike or when they want something to be exactly like another part we make that does not fit their bike." Customer then calls us arrogant and posts negative reviews of our business on the internet. Adam Block.

We support your racing projects for 35 years spending very large sums of money and even more than that in time. You then tell us something we that cannot mention and we simply remove all of our technical support and specialized turbocharger $20,000.00 control systems. You now get to face your own limitations and learn to pay for things. Bullshit and rose colored visions of the past do not cut it. You soldier on and get zero results. Look in the mirror.

We've known you for 44+ years and whenever you changed your job, or got hurt, were out of work, got divorced, or remarried, we did our best to support you financially and morally. Over the four plus decades we donated thousands of dollars at no charge for your go fast street toys and stored stuff you had sent to us without asking permission. You were always willing to help if we had a problem as long as it cost you nothing and was mechanical or automotive advice . We paid for stuff you said you wanted then changed your mind. We paid for services you contracted for when you refused to pay the bill ...Just so we would not sour a relationship with one of our industry suppliers. One final major issue though: You pulled a fast one and threw two people under the bus on an engine sale that we helped you with...All to make an extra few thousand dollars, after which you cut off all contact, knowing exactly what you had done. You had a chance to square the deal that day but you chose to run, slinking off, not facing those involved and, a short time later, relocating from California to Central Texas. We'd advise you not to pull any shit on the locals. You will always be a prune picker to them. Benefit from California for 60+ years...Climate, friends, good employment, opportunities, and then think you are a concealed permit carrying Texan. We know Texas and you can't pass the test. We don't exactly want you to eat shit and die but maybe just a little indigestion from an extra portion of comfort food . Live with it, deep down the rabbit hole, with conspiracy images to frame your world. Ron Kravitsky.

Your bike is going to be in a magazine and you are really going to help us! Ha! EAT SHIT AND DIE!