ILLS
Dedicated LVC Member
Hey guys I thought I would look you up and see what the LS crowd has been up to for the last year. I see that some of you were/are not happy with me when it comes to being able to get ahold of me to purchase tunes, devices, and ask questions about tech related things. I do apologize for that. I have fallen off of the map lately and honestly I will probably not be able to change that for a few years to come. Anyways, I feel that you all at least deserve an explanation as to what has been happening with me lately.
As some of you may have known I am active duty Navy. I have been in for 11 years now and am looking forward to completing my last 9 years before I can make my first retirement. When I started doing tuning and working on cars for people I was teaching Naval leadership classes up north in the Chicago area. It was a great job to have in the Navy and it also afforded me allot of free time too. At that point in time I had about 8 years in and was giving allot of thought to transitioning out of the Navy and pursuing the KBX Performance thing full time. However, after being in so long it is hard to leave the rewarding career I have built while serving my country. So rather than get out I decided to stick it out till retirement. With the teaching job I was able to dedicate allot of time to helping people on this forum and also even tuning their cars too. I prided myself on providing great service to those of you I was able to take care of on here. Heck, to most of you that had been a big point of going with me tuning your cars. I know that level of service I was previously able to offer has changed dramatically. Though I am sure I could have possibly done a better job of getting back to some of you in a timely manner the real reason that prevented me from keeping up on this stuff as much as I used to has been that I changed jobs in the Navy. I am back in a mobile battalion now in southern MS. Now, instead of teaching leadership classes I am a Construction Quality Control Inspector for the Navy, more specifically the Civil Engineer Corps and Seabees. This job has proven to be MUCH more demanding of my time and also I just don't have the facilities at my disposal down here as I once did in my own place up north. Heck, I even had to leave the wife and son behind in our home when I get restationed down here because of the issues with home sales and economy. This year has been busy for me. I changed stations in January, QC school in early spring, Expeditionary school directly following in late spring, various other tech classes for a few months, Field training exercise for the month of August, and now I have been in Virginia on another job for the Navy for a while and will be here until Christmas. Then shortly after I come back to MS and am able to fly up north to see my family I will be deploying to Afghanistan for 6 months sometime in late January or early Feb. I am not mentioning this stuff for any other reason than to provide frame of reference for what I have been encountering this last year. I have encountered allot of change and that has affected the free time that I have to dedicate to keeping up with emails and phone calls on any sort of regular basis.
There is another smaller reason why I stopped replying back to people on here. It seems that I just kept getting the same PM's and emails from people wanting to know how to do an 8.8" 4.10's w/LSD swap into their LS, or know if I still offered turbo kit for the LS's. Which is funny, because I made it a point to state that I never intended to offer full kits for the LS.
Then there were also some people that had some issues with their cars and decided to assume it was tune related. At first I tried to help those people but after a while it just got to be too much. Especially when I had one or two people insisting that one of the tunes I sent them caused their car to act funny. I have put allot of time into testing the tunes that I provide on many different LS's with different combo's and would have known if a tune I provided would cause an issue. For some reason people tend to doubt things they don't really understand first. Of course not many people understand tuning so that was their natural first choice besides maybe 5 minutes of initial troubleshooting. The funny thing was that some of those very same people claiming that one of my tunes caused an issue with their car also emailed me some time later saying that they had found the REAL cause of the issue and it wasn't even remotely tune related. That kind of stuff bothers me and kind of turned me off to spending as much time as I could afford in talking people through their issues not related to my tune. I really don't mean to sound like a jerk but I know tuning and what it can and cannot cause with a vehicle. Some of the issues one or two people were describing didn't make any sense looking at it from a tuning standpoint. Needless to say after a while it got real old when people would not bother to troubleshoot their own car and instead assume it could only be something in the tune. Since my advice wasn't being taken I decided it best to just remove myself from the situation rather than feeling I was talking to a brick wall.
The last straw was all the smacktalking on this board and even on Youtube and Streetfire where I had posted some videos of the LS with the turbo system. People can really act like fools sometimes. I was also disappointed to look on here and see that people were throwing out all sorts of assumptions as to why I sold my LS and in turn the turbo system I had built for it. I have seen that people assumed that the system "didn't work" which still boggles my mind because a system just "doesn't work" like that, but I will leave that one alone. Others assumed that the turbo system caused my car to "blow up"... That's news to me. The car never had a hiccup when I ran it for one year with the nitrous or the year after it with the turbo system on it. It made darned good power on minimal boost too. That car would have been pretty darned mean if I had put a stall in it and really allow it to launch out of the hole which is where LS's are weakest. Well, launch as well as an LS can; if ya catch my drift. But alas, the G8 caught my eye and I fell in love. I loved the power my TurboLS had but the potential the G8 showed was too much to pass up. I had to have one and within 3 weeks I went from not even knowing what G8's were and planning on going further with my LS to putting my LS back to stock, selling the turbo system for it, and buying a brand new G8 GT off the showroom floor. Since then I have done a twin turbo system on my G8 and on low boost with a REAL conservative tune am pushing 500rwhp/570rwtq and expecting middle 11's at around 125mph trap. It will only get nastier when I come back from Afghanistan. I still have the Kenne Bell Exploder by the way, and will likely always have it. The bottom line is that if I hadn't seen the G8 I would probably still have my LS. I still love that car and it was fun as heck to drive! There was nothing like hitting boost with that turbo and hazing the tires at 40mph in an "old man sedan" like the LS. In the year I had the turbo system on my car I never had any real issues with it. It made great power, was fun to drive, one heck of a highway roller, and still drove like stock when I wanted it to. I am very confident that had I not sold the LS I would have had it in the middle 12's by now. But since I never officially accomplished that then I guess it is just talk at this point.
At this point in time I cannot predict what free time I may or may not have in the near future. Chances are that it will not be a whole lot within the next 9 months which means that I probably won't have allot of time providing tech info or advice to whatever various questions some of you LS owners pose. I am trying to take care of one person here or another there but I cannot promise the same level of contact and access I was able to offer before. If that is something you cannot deal with then I completely understand. Anyways, I seen that some of you were frustrated and I also seen those of you that stuck up for me and attempted to set the record straight. I really do appreciate the kind words some of you have said in a few threads here. I felt I owed it to both "sides" to come in here and say something. I probably will not have time to come back in here and check the replies to this thread...Based upon what some people said in other threads I am not sure if I want to see some of them, honestly. As I said before I apologize for any frustrations my lack of contact has caused. I wish you all the best of luck with modifying your cars and enjoying them to the fullest.
As some of you may have known I am active duty Navy. I have been in for 11 years now and am looking forward to completing my last 9 years before I can make my first retirement. When I started doing tuning and working on cars for people I was teaching Naval leadership classes up north in the Chicago area. It was a great job to have in the Navy and it also afforded me allot of free time too. At that point in time I had about 8 years in and was giving allot of thought to transitioning out of the Navy and pursuing the KBX Performance thing full time. However, after being in so long it is hard to leave the rewarding career I have built while serving my country. So rather than get out I decided to stick it out till retirement. With the teaching job I was able to dedicate allot of time to helping people on this forum and also even tuning their cars too. I prided myself on providing great service to those of you I was able to take care of on here. Heck, to most of you that had been a big point of going with me tuning your cars. I know that level of service I was previously able to offer has changed dramatically. Though I am sure I could have possibly done a better job of getting back to some of you in a timely manner the real reason that prevented me from keeping up on this stuff as much as I used to has been that I changed jobs in the Navy. I am back in a mobile battalion now in southern MS. Now, instead of teaching leadership classes I am a Construction Quality Control Inspector for the Navy, more specifically the Civil Engineer Corps and Seabees. This job has proven to be MUCH more demanding of my time and also I just don't have the facilities at my disposal down here as I once did in my own place up north. Heck, I even had to leave the wife and son behind in our home when I get restationed down here because of the issues with home sales and economy. This year has been busy for me. I changed stations in January, QC school in early spring, Expeditionary school directly following in late spring, various other tech classes for a few months, Field training exercise for the month of August, and now I have been in Virginia on another job for the Navy for a while and will be here until Christmas. Then shortly after I come back to MS and am able to fly up north to see my family I will be deploying to Afghanistan for 6 months sometime in late January or early Feb. I am not mentioning this stuff for any other reason than to provide frame of reference for what I have been encountering this last year. I have encountered allot of change and that has affected the free time that I have to dedicate to keeping up with emails and phone calls on any sort of regular basis.
There is another smaller reason why I stopped replying back to people on here. It seems that I just kept getting the same PM's and emails from people wanting to know how to do an 8.8" 4.10's w/LSD swap into their LS, or know if I still offered turbo kit for the LS's. Which is funny, because I made it a point to state that I never intended to offer full kits for the LS.
Then there were also some people that had some issues with their cars and decided to assume it was tune related. At first I tried to help those people but after a while it just got to be too much. Especially when I had one or two people insisting that one of the tunes I sent them caused their car to act funny. I have put allot of time into testing the tunes that I provide on many different LS's with different combo's and would have known if a tune I provided would cause an issue. For some reason people tend to doubt things they don't really understand first. Of course not many people understand tuning so that was their natural first choice besides maybe 5 minutes of initial troubleshooting. The funny thing was that some of those very same people claiming that one of my tunes caused an issue with their car also emailed me some time later saying that they had found the REAL cause of the issue and it wasn't even remotely tune related. That kind of stuff bothers me and kind of turned me off to spending as much time as I could afford in talking people through their issues not related to my tune. I really don't mean to sound like a jerk but I know tuning and what it can and cannot cause with a vehicle. Some of the issues one or two people were describing didn't make any sense looking at it from a tuning standpoint. Needless to say after a while it got real old when people would not bother to troubleshoot their own car and instead assume it could only be something in the tune. Since my advice wasn't being taken I decided it best to just remove myself from the situation rather than feeling I was talking to a brick wall. The last straw was all the smacktalking on this board and even on Youtube and Streetfire where I had posted some videos of the LS with the turbo system. People can really act like fools sometimes. I was also disappointed to look on here and see that people were throwing out all sorts of assumptions as to why I sold my LS and in turn the turbo system I had built for it. I have seen that people assumed that the system "didn't work" which still boggles my mind because a system just "doesn't work" like that, but I will leave that one alone. Others assumed that the turbo system caused my car to "blow up"... That's news to me. The car never had a hiccup when I ran it for one year with the nitrous or the year after it with the turbo system on it. It made darned good power on minimal boost too. That car would have been pretty darned mean if I had put a stall in it and really allow it to launch out of the hole which is where LS's are weakest. Well, launch as well as an LS can; if ya catch my drift. But alas, the G8 caught my eye and I fell in love. I loved the power my TurboLS had but the potential the G8 showed was too much to pass up. I had to have one and within 3 weeks I went from not even knowing what G8's were and planning on going further with my LS to putting my LS back to stock, selling the turbo system for it, and buying a brand new G8 GT off the showroom floor. Since then I have done a twin turbo system on my G8 and on low boost with a REAL conservative tune am pushing 500rwhp/570rwtq and expecting middle 11's at around 125mph trap. It will only get nastier when I come back from Afghanistan. I still have the Kenne Bell Exploder by the way, and will likely always have it.
The bottom line is that if I hadn't seen the G8 I would probably still have my LS. I still love that car and it was fun as heck to drive! There was nothing like hitting boost with that turbo and hazing the tires at 40mph in an "old man sedan" like the LS. In the year I had the turbo system on my car I never had any real issues with it. It made great power, was fun to drive, one heck of a highway roller, and still drove like stock when I wanted it to. I am very confident that had I not sold the LS I would have had it in the middle 12's by now. But since I never officially accomplished that then I guess it is just talk at this point. At this point in time I cannot predict what free time I may or may not have in the near future. Chances are that it will not be a whole lot within the next 9 months which means that I probably won't have allot of time providing tech info or advice to whatever various questions some of you LS owners pose. I am trying to take care of one person here or another there but I cannot promise the same level of contact and access I was able to offer before. If that is something you cannot deal with then I completely understand. Anyways, I seen that some of you were frustrated and I also seen those of you that stuck up for me and attempted to set the record straight. I really do appreciate the kind words some of you have said in a few threads here. I felt I owed it to both "sides" to come in here and say something. I probably will not have time to come back in here and check the replies to this thread...Based upon what some people said in other threads I am not sure if I want to see some of them, honestly. As I said before I apologize for any frustrations my lack of contact has caused. I wish you all the best of luck with modifying your cars and enjoying them to the fullest.
