Breakdown #3 was on the cards, less than 1/4mile from F1, the car died. It started and cut out a couple of times before finally calling it a day. We then had to tow the car back to Manchester from Bolton. The car had previously never broken down once, yet in the space of 2 and a half months, and whilst Urban Racing were telling customers of a "200hp Punto" that they'd been 'tuning', the car had broken down 3 times. We were told by them when we called to advise them what had happened on the way home, that 'these things happen when you tune a car to its limits'. Little did they know it was actually within it's limits, and we weren't exactly pushing it to its full potential, since we'd only just ran the engine in! Going by their logic, should we expect to rebuild it once a month?!? This was the last we heard from Urban Racing, until they wanted some more money off us for parts that we'd ordered weeks earlier and had actually forgotten about. Afterall, our main priority was to get the engine running again, and check what damage they may have done. That in itself was interesting, as we have a lap top and DTA programme to communicate with the ECU. We found that the water temperature had been recorded at 120degs (default max reading so it was probably higher) which is of course, cylinder head and head gasket crippling heat. We also discovered that our intake temperature had been as high as 70degs, which renders the map near enough useless as intake temperatures on the road are 5degs above ambient.
In summary, we can put our hands on our hearts and say that "Urban Racing are nothing more than thieving, lying, untrained monkies". After reading this post, if anyone is still considering taking their car to them, you need to seriously consider your psychiological state of mind. No doubt we weren't the first, or indeed the last people that have been ripped off by them. Our advice to you, would be to find another garage somewhere else to do whatever work you require. Urban Racing cannot be trusted to lace your boots, nevermind 'tune' your engine. Our experience with them is one that we'd like to forget, and we only had an engine management system and an intercooler fitted by them, we were hardly asking for them to re-create the De Lorean.
Sorry for the long posts, just really needed to get that out in the open, and let you GT owners in the N/W know not to use this company.
Regards,
Matt.