Classic Diesel Designs AKA Thewespaul
Sorry it has come to this but my interaction has been less than stellar with this young man. This is going to be a long post, but I feel that I gave him plenty of time and patience and see no other way to get around this.
I am going to try and do this as polite as I have tried to be with him during our interaction. I sadly must report he has been less interested in such tact.
We agreed to do some bartering for services. We met several times, I met his family and enjoyed my visits to the ranch very much. I am not a shy person and very open about my disdain of lousy craftsmanship and half-ass work. We all had laughs about ****** work we had seen including showing some previous work done by others that was just plain laughable, and not understanding how there are people who think they are to good to learn/grow/change. In sharing this with them all I am not afraid to admit I too make mistakes and that is part how we all grow is learning how not to repeat mistakes we have made. A large part of my enthusiasm for our agreement to barter was to learn all that I can about this engine I have learned to really love and appreciate but also that Wes and I seemed to share similar qualities and strive to do the best work we can do at all times. That is about the end of the good.
I have to admit that I wish I had not let him touch my truck. I gave a lot of room for error and, understanding that I was doing testing prototype/development work, I was fully honest about the errors I encountered. Not only that, but I did not just dump on his work rather I responded with solutions as I saw fit. I prefer to provide solutions rather than just pointing out problems, and I love problem solving, but my efforts seemed fruitless. I was met with defensive attitude and a shucking of responsibility that is a misdeed to our agreement. My 7.3IDI had been a truely reliable workhorse -- but since he has touched the truck I have been stranded requiring a tow and now have reservations about whether or not I will make it to work in the thing which had never before presented itself and is one of the most frustrating problems out of all of this mess.
If Wes had not been so defensive to the point of blaming me for the problems, I wouldn't be so ticked. If the fuel system failure/stranding was the end of the issue I would not be writing this, but it got worse from there. I have plenty of pictures on my phone, never learned to upload to this forum but I will figure that out here once I finish authoring this.
Just a dump of issues.
Plumbing in fuel "upgrades" with hard line and teflon tape stating he has "always used teflon tape" when I questioned its use as the system was leaking profusely. The teflon tape on pipe threads to me seemed an issue as I do not use teflon tape on anything besides water or air/compressed gas lines. The teflon tape failed because the joints were not tightened at all.
You must be registered for see images attach
"Fixing" the fuel pickup shower heads that have both now fallen off in a matter of a couple weeks. On top of that, the lock rings leak. Lock rings never leaked, now it does, he blames me for this issue when I attempted to solve it myself by asking if there was an O-ring, in which case I would try to snug it down a bit more, or no o-ring in which case I would pull it again and clean and reseat it.
Not using parts he told me he would use, ones he has been "running for years", then telling me I should switch it out myself to use what he has always used to eliminate the issue...
Using very expensive cable that I supplied him, and left him extra for his own use, to run new cables on the batteries/starting system and attaching in an extremely sub par method. It seems Wes uses air impact, or nothing, to on any hardware he touches. The battery terminal on my Driver Positive post was destroyed from obvious over torque. The ends of the terminal that grip the post were smashed together %100 to point of tight in which there are no threads left to tighten the ends any closer... this split the ring that is supposed to snug over the post. The terminal was not only destroyed to where it wouldn't hold onto the post, but the side of the terminal lug that was supposed to be interior threaded (he drilled out to shove the cable end in the lug instead of proper method of attachment) was split open as well.
You must be registered for see images attach
The splitting is common when a proper crimp is not deployed and especially on something that was never intended to be crimped! Use of large channel locks or vice grips is not an acceptable substitute for crimping. The new cable that I provided was mix/matched with old cable that was already on the truck and beyond need of replacement, and instead of using proper crimps he poorly soldered them and then here is what really ****** me off -- HID HIS SUB PAR WORK BENEATH HEAT SHRINK!!! He did not want to tell me it was not great work, and now I see why he has 0 pictures of his work to my truck on this forum because it is embarrassing.
You must be registered for see images attach
First of all, even a well made solder joint is a brittle joint and requires strain relief to keep from failing under vibration which is why battery leads have crimped on lugs. Second, if you know your soldering iron is junk why attempt to make it work to do a job it should never be doing. Third, the lugs used were extremely under sized to where at best case only half of the strands fit inside the damn lug. Seriously this is just plane half ass and careless and causes other issues with the starting circuit that Wes himself told me was "the most important thing you can do for hard starts on these trucks is bring the starting circuit up to par". It is absurd to think this is the type of work he would do but to then hide it in heat shrink is maddening. Oh and on top of that told me "I left you enough slack to trim it and do it right... [ I am sorry, so you planned on me having to redo it is what I am hearing. Not because you left slack, that is a good practice, but left an obviously failed component in place and then didnt say anything about it until I point it out. Then when I point is out you didnt believe it perhaps because you wanted a picture..] this is just one of the many lousy interactions that continued to occur.
Originally told me he pop tests all injectors before installation as that is best practice, I have read that as well by other sources, then installs unknowns, no pop test, dont think he even owns the equipment and if he does why it wasnt used is beyond me. I did buy+supply IP/injectors from a company he talked down on, Pensacola Diesel, but I had bought the parts well before meeting him or getting too deep into this forum. So yes that purchase was on me, but no due diligence was paid toward assuring they were even worth half a **** before installing them. Routed a vacuum line through one of the injection line loops which ended up pulling that line enough to cause failure of the vacuum to my hvac system. I foil taped it back for now as I have too many other issues he created that I am still working through.
Cranking the truck over for long enough to smoke the hot wire on the starter motor. This is one of those things I read about this truck was to not crank on it too long without a cool off period. I misplaced my trust in Wes as I had watched him start some of the other trucks on the ranch with long crank times and thought that -- well maybe it is one of those things that people over worry about and he seems to know what he was doing (this was during my 2nd of 3 visits to his place) and this was my mistake for not saying anything.
You must be registered for see images attach
I should have stopped then, I should have realized what was going on and left and fixed the issues he caused so far but I did not. I was interested in learning more about the IDI and I felt that he would make things right and do a good job and help me get the truck up to *****. Well the long crank time issue has pushed me over the edge now as I realized he destroyed more parts in a half ass attempt to fix the issue that he caused and undoubtedly will argue "it was that way when I started" as he seems to take no responsibility for his actions. He told me we could replace the solenoid without pulling the starter, so he went to do that and in my recollection spent a good part of the day under my truck "working" on the issue he created. He could not remove the solenoid with the starter mounted, and he did not pull the starter to fix the issue. I was working on other parts of my truck while he did his end and I just kinda let him do his thing, again misplaced trust here. Well yesterday I found out why he could not get the solenoid removed, because I went to replace it myself. First of all, the hot lead coming down to the solenoid was obviously pneumatically tightened because when I went to look at removing it the body of the solenoid itself moved.. As in I put 2 wrenches up there, one to hold and one to torque off the nut and the top of the solenoid moved... well thats not any good. So I figure I will leave the lead in place and remove the solenoid with the lead attached (all of the batteries disconnected already of course) and I looked at the screws holding it on and guess what, STRIPPED! woweee the fun keeps piling up! So naturally I decide to remove the entire starter to fix this problem and one of the 3 bolts holding the starter motor on were not tight, missed it with the pneumatic I see. The bottom 2, easy to reach, were no problem so I backed them out a turn or two then put them back in to hold the starter while I reached the 3rd. I found a combo of extensions to reach the bolt, one hand up to guide the socket, apply inward pressure and... no **** its stripped??? I dipped the end of it in a bit of fine grain sand I have here, used a slightly different combo of extensions to give me a bit more pressure, levered that ****** on with a cats paw and slowly applied pressure and got that sucker out of there and lowered the starter out... Now I understand why he didn't replace the solenoid in place or why he didnt pull the starter to fix it properly, because he stripped it and was covering his tracks alluding to "this should hold up for a bit longer, well see how it goes" I shrug it off not knowing fully what just occurred as I was not under the truck but I did hear that air tool!
You must be registered for see images attach
Wes seemed to imply it was a burden to have me at his shop this last visit, which he will claim he spent 20hrs on my truck in 2 days. Supposing he did spend 20hrs, which other people came and went and he had other tasks he was involved with during my visit but ill give him his claimed 20, I redid all of that work myself now and it took me about 18hrs. Now when I add the time it took me to do things like write this, or the email I sent him about how his attitude is bothersome, I am at a loss. Also, considering it is a 4hr round trip to his place I have spent 12hrs in drive time alone.
The one item I do not have photo evidence of, maybe I should get some video, is the noises the truck makes on cold start now. I am hoping I can get a handle on this and that nothing major is wrong, but the truck sure is loud and clacky at start up. I had heard the truck make the hollow "SHUH SHUH SHUH" sounds sometimes in very low temp cold starts but now I have to figure out why it sounds like the top end is about to dance out of the valve covers on every cold start I do.
Now you might ask "why would you have him do all of this work if you seem to know what you are doing" and the answer simply put is that I firmly believe we all need help sometimes. Not everyone has the time to do everything even if they have the ability. And now that I went through all of this, I sure as heck wish I had done it all myself because I am slowly redoing everything myself anyways. I really want my old IP and Injectors back as I would have them rebuilt by the professional member on this forum, and oddly enough Wes never mentioned his name, handle or business... I want to get those parts rebuilt properly so I can put them on my truck but I likely wont see them. We had an arrangement that I was happy about and that was supposed to lead to more work for both of our businesses but I will no longer do business with Wes or Classic Diesel Designs. A shame really, I liked Wes and his family and I tried my hardest to look past mistakes. I had hoped we could both learn and grow from our experiences but that will not happen now. He wants to talk about how the trucks he works on are "made reliable prior to upgrading for power" but I hardly consider tooling around the ranch as reliable. I easily put hundreds of miles per week on my rig and I wouldn't trust his work to even my beater offroad toy.
I am not going to pretend I had a show truck and I know my truck had not been given the love it needs but in all honesty I can say that none of these issues were present before he got his hand on the truck. The worst issue I had before he started on my truck was hard starts when the temperature would dip, but once the truck fired it would run without issue.