The Sad Saga of the Victory Red SS RWD Cobalt

As you read this story, you will notice the absence of most shop names. That is intentional because this isn’t a particularly happy story, and there are legal issues to deal with between those companies and myself.

The car was originally a 2005 Supercharged Cobalt that I purchased new in April 2005. From the time I put the order in for my car I started looking for all the info I could about the SS/SC on the internet and it was there that I discovered car forums.

It was on these forums that I began to see many others who shared my interest as well as information. The forums were where I also discovered the world of modifying these cars. With baited breath I waited on all of the first aftermarket parts so that I could start squeezing more power out of my Cobalt.

I followed, and bought, all of the initial aftermarket parts staring with a CAI and then a header. Before too long there were rumors of GM releasing stage kits for the LSJ Ecotec engines and like many SS/SC owners, I constantly called GM dealerships hoping the kits were available to buy. On the morning the kits were released, I called my ‘parts guy’ and told him to call GM direct to order my kit. To his disbelief not only were the kits released, they were a “call to order direct’ part.

While the stage 2 kit added a few more HP to the car, I was already looking for the next power upgrade. GM had released a LSJ 300HP Build Book with detailed instructions on how to squeeze 300hp out of our LSJ engines. It was at this time I began researching parts distributors to find the components needed for the 300hp build.

I found most of those parts except for the tuning which GM refused to release. While looking for the parts I discovered a company that had been working on Ecotec engines and they offered modified cylinder heads. As I read about the promised hp gains with one of these cylinder heads, I began to imagine an engine of even more than 300hp. This is where the story starts to go bad as the company billed themselves as Ecotec specialists. I would later find out that this was not the case and a costly lesson would be learnt.

At the same time, there were stories about being able to twin charge the LSJ. This was done by adding a turbo to the already supercharged engine. While this technology for the LSJ had been done it hadn’t been perfected. During discussions with the company advertising the cylinder head upgrades, I mentioned that I was looking to over build my engine so that if ‘twin charging’ became a reality, I would be able to incorporate it into my build and have the engine already be ready to handle this power increase.

It was at this point that a crazy suggestion was made, “take the engine out of your new car and send it 5,000kms away”. The offer included a discount on shipping as well as “a great deal on the work”. The same company said they would be able to produce a ‘twin charge’ kit for me. It was then that the wheels were set in motion for the project to take on a life of its own.

On May 22nd, 2006, the engine was removed from the car and sent from Vancouver, BC to Toronto, Ontario. The initial time schedule was for the engine to be returned home on Aug. 15th, 2006. Sadly that schedule wasn’t even close to being realistic. The company who received the engine immediately got to work on the engine but for their own purposes. They wanted to pull apart the engine so they could use it to design aftermarket parts and sell those parts to other LSJ owners.

It was early on that I started to hear the reasons for the delays such as; parts on order, parts not available, company’s having back ordered parts and sponsorship agreements not fulfilled. Because I had friends who had been telling me that this was to be expected with performance builds & parts, I patiently waited. Although the schedule wasn’t being kept, the bills kept coming in.

During that time I was researching the capabilities of the MU3 transmission only to discover that it would take some re-working, to hold the amount of expected torque that this build would produce. I consulted other companies about doing the work but was eventually told by the engine builder that they would also be able to do the transmission work. The transmission was then sent off to Toronto as well.

All the time that I was waiting to see progress on the project I kept researching everything about my car. I started to read that there really was no successful implementation of a twin charged LSJ. Then I was told that the turbo sponsorship fell through so I made the decision to scrap the twin charged setup and go to a straight turbo setup to make the power. Shortly after that decision, the idea of a twin turbo setup was proposed to me. My first reaction to that suggestion was that it sounded really expensive. I was assured that it wouldn’t be much more than the cost of a second turbo. That has proven to be far from the reality of the true cost of this twin turbo, four cylinder, ECOTEC engine.

Under the advisement of the company that I had trusted to do this project, as well as their assurance that this wouldn’t be “too bad, it will be okay cost wise”, I agreed to proceed with the twin turbo plan. After that decision was made there were more parts to be ordered and other parts that needed to be fabricated. The projected power levels also were reconsidered and somewhere in the process it was decided to upgrade more of the internal parts. The stock connecting rods were good to about 500hp and because I don’t want to be running on the edge the rods were to be upgraded as well as the pistons and cylinder sleeves. A short time later it was decided to go with a custom aftermarket 4340 billet steel crankshaft, making this engine fully capable of handling in excess of 1200hp. While that number produced an excitement in me, it also brought forward other challenges such as dealing with the short comings of the transmission.

Once again the main shop says that they can take care of the transmission issues. This time they would have new gears cut and new input/output shafts made. The original transmission was torn apart and the shafts were sent to his college buddy, in Hong Kong. I was told that the cost was going to be about $5,000. Until we got closer to producing them then the price rose to $9500.US, which translated to about $15,000. CA before they were in my possession.

It was at that point that my frustration was getting the better of me. I had been working on this project for quite a while and nothing went according to plan, not my plan anyways. I had enough of the escalating cost of the transmission so I started thinking about an idea that I had always discounted before, because of the cost factor, the idea of going rear wheel drive. At a cost of almost $15,000., for a fwd transmission, RWD seemed a whole lot more feasible. I called up the company doing the project and simply said, “because of the price of the transmission, why wouldn’t I just go RWD?”

The answer was that “we were too far into the fabrication stage to switch directions now”. That wasn’t what I wanted to here but being that they were the ‘experts’ they knew better. Well that was Friday morning and first thing Monday morning I get a phone call from the shop. It was early so I knew something was up but I just figured they wanted more money. Well, I was surprised to hear that after looking at the car all weekend, they were 80% sure that the car could be converted to RWD.

WOW. I was very excited again. They said they had a couple of things to work out and that they would call later to confirm if it could be done. After waiting a few hours I called the shop and pulled the ‘customer’s prerogative’, I told them to not tell me it couldn’t be done. The car would be RWD, end of story. I was soon told that it could be done for a cost of about $20K-$25K, more than the transmission but with so many more issues fixed in the process. Many of the drivetrain components would now be ‘off the shelve parts’, making repairs easier down the road. Considering I had already shipped the car to Toronto to have the engine installed, there was to be little time wasted to start the conversion. I was told that there was a two week wait to get the shop time but after that it would be full steam ahead.

Five months later, the car had not been touched by the shop who had agreed to do the work, even though I had personally met him and offered to pay extra to get the car done. During those five months I also endured huge delays waiting for parts. Hardly anything was happening on my car and everyone used the other as their excuse. There was no urgency to work on the car if there wasn’t an engine for it. There was also no reason to work on the twin turbo setup if there wasn’t a car to put it in.

It was during this time I had a six month run around from the company contracted to do the custom crankshafts. After months of broken promises and missed deadlines the company, owned by Jose A Macias, finally stopped returning my calls and emails and walked away with my $2500.US deposit. Not only would I not receive anything from him, I still needed to have the crankshafts fabricated. I did manage to get in touch with another company who agreed to do the job and the result of that were aftermarket, direct replacement crankshafts, for the LSJ ECOTEC’s. It was too bad that this whole crankshaft affair took 10 months to play out.

Now that I had the crankshafts, I was supposed to have a completely built race engine in two weeks. We even had one of the crankshafts shipped over night to get the work started. Well, if you guessed that this didn’t happen as promised, you are very right. I was again lied to and miss led. Plenty of excuses were given but I believed nothing anymore. The money was flowing out but I wasn’t seeing much return for that money.

The car had been moved to Distinct Images Custom Auto Builders for the conversion. Time was spent doing the design and parts were ordered. When I first saw the pictures that the cutting had started on the chassis, I was happier than most people would be considering this was my baby being chopped up. The car did start making beautiful changes once the RWD conversion started. The quality of the parts and workmanship in the conversion are all top notch but there was still a glitch. I was expecting the cost for the conversion to be a bit higher than what originally quoted, by the original shop who did nothing, but after 6 months of no invoices I was in for a huge shock. While the car was still far from finished I was already well over and projected cost for the conversion. It was at this point I had to deal with the shop and try to work something out. My wife was in tears and the project was in serious jeopardy, again. After some compromises on both sides the shop and I decided to continue forward under a partial sponsorship agreement. After about another month the car was headed back to the main company’s shop. Once the car arrived at the shop it was supposed to be full steam ahead. Full steam ahead apparently only meant for the first few day until the novelty wore of.

If at this point you were to guess that everything didn’t go as was promised, you would be right again. The promise was that five weeks after they had received the car it would be fully operational, motor and all. The first few days they were really eager to finally do what they do best. That eagerness wore off far too quickly. The excuse was ‘burnout’. I realize that too many hours aren’t good for anyone. The sad part is that it turned out to be another broken promise. It turned out that too many parts still needed to be fabricated and even more parts had to be ordered. And the cost just kept skyrocketing. Daily my wife would see the pain on my face and the lack of a smile. I talked so much about the disappointment of this project that she started to limit when I could talk about the car. She even stopped looking at our bank statements and Visa bills.

When it came time to wiring the car to allow for the BigStuff3 standalone fuel management, I was given different opinions on how that could be best achieved. While I have been told by other shops that there was an easier, less expensive way, the main shop doing the job wouldn’t follow those suggestions. Re-wiring the complete car, I was assured, would actually cost no more than the option which incorporated an aftermarket GM based wiring harness. This assurance has been disputed by other companies. As it turned out, the wiring job that I was told was completed is far from complete.

We now arrive to where we are now. The car has been ‘on hold’ for several months now because of another issue with the main shop. That issue involves an engine they built for my daily driver Cobalt and without too much detail, that engine (and subsequent repairs) has been another major fiasco. I have lost over $10K on that fiasco and finally I had enough. I have now severed all business ties with the original, main, shop. I have another shop, Powell Motor Sport, who took possession of the project. Now that the car is at Powell Motor Sport, we will be fully assessing and scrutinizing what we have to this date.

Sadly, what we received the weekend of April 18th &19th, is far short of what is required to make this project work in its previous configuration. The race engine is poorly built and missing many aftermarket parts as well as many of the stock parts. The cost to fix this engine is likely as much as starting over from scratch. Many different parts that I had paid for were not even bought. The parts that were fabricated by the main shop are of such poor design that the true professionals deem them unusable. That means starting over again to make parts that will work properly at an additional cost to the project. The news was very unsettling for me to hear. I knew there were issues, which is why I cut ties with the main company, but I did not expect to be told that those parts were junk. This puts me even farther behind than I was because I have to pay again to have parts I was told I had.

Then I was given more bad news. It turns out that while I was promised that the 1,000rwhp LSJ Ecotec would be streetable and a long lasting engine, that promise was and is both un-rational and false. That realization causes other problems because this project was always supposed to be a dual purpose car and I was told that is where some of the cost came in. I am thankful that at this time, I have true professionals, who are race experienced, who have the proper credentials behind them to advise me. It is with this advice that we have chosen to make some changes to the project. The car will still be a car that can be street driven and track raced. It will still be turbo charged but this is where things change. We will now be running a single large turbo and using an LSx engine. The choice of the LSx addresses cost, reliability and streetability. I really tried to keep the original LSJ powerplant but as you have read, this plan failed miserably and not because I didn’t try hard enough.

So far this project has cost me in excess of $200,000.00 (largely due to trusting the wrong shops to do the work), more than I would ever have paid if I was honestly told the cost up front. I kept hearing, “it won’t be too bad, it will be okay” when I previously asked “how much?” If you believe that the cost is way too much, I agree with you. I long ago arrived at the point where I was in too deep to turn back. The first time I thought that I should have bailed out because it got much worse. How much worse?

Well that is the reason for this website and this story. Friends, forum members and strangers, I basically broke the bank to try to keep this dream alive, including pulling all of the equity out of our home. I lose many hours of sleep worrying over this project and how to finish it. I have shared some of this story on some forums and members, on more than one forum, have suggested doing a fund raiser for this project. The thought that they cared enough to help out made me, a grown man (50), tear up. There have been many people who said they would donate something and others who said they wouldn’t. Either way is fine with me. I am not after huge donations, anything helps.

It was then suggested that I should have posters made of the car doing a burnout at the track, once she is finished. The suggestion was to promise everyone a poster if they donated $20 or more. Another person suggested I keep a list of everyone who donates and put their name on the inside of the trunk lid. While I like that idea, the inside of the trunk lid sucks but here is what I will do.

I promise that for everyone who donates to the project, I will put your name on the car, for everyone to see. Should I be blessed enough to have many donators, I will cover the whole car with names and treat them as any other sponsor would be treated. Furthermore, for those who donate $20 or more, I will send a poster once the car is finished. I will get the posters professionally done. I will also keep a list of all the people who want to be included on the friends & supports page.

This car became more than just my car when the forum members embraced it on the forums. It is my hope to finish it and share it with as many of you as possible. I will have plenty of pictures and videos once we start taking it to the track. I will also continue to give updates on the forums.

When this project finally makes it out of the shop, there will be an open meet for all to attend. The car will be taken to a race track and a professional driver will run the car, just to see what the car is capable of. There will be a three week notice on all forums and my website so people who want to travel, can arrange to be there in Toronto, Ontario.

I expect this unveiling to garner quite a bit of attention and perhaps the largest Cobalt meet held anywhere.

If you want to help, thank you.

If you don’t want to help, thank you for taking the time to visit.