(WARNING: The following is a tome worthy of @Gordon Nichols and @Stan Galat.)
Rather than post this in the extremely lengthy build thread for my car I thought I'd make it stand-alone. Remember that my car is a pre-production prototype and I fully expected sorting issues as that was part of the deal. Anyway, herein lies a lesson in proper customer service:
As some of you know I have been chasing some issues in the suspension for a little while, mostly alignment sort of stuff. I don't have proper alignment tools and had attempted to set camber myself as the rear appeared to have positive (leaning out at the top) camber rather than the desired neutral or negative. It also had a urethane bushing that had torn. I soon realized that I was out of my league and decided to take it to the best place in town for real Porsches. When I got it back after a couple of weeks and $740 it seemed better at first, but I noticed some things that concerned me, including a worsening of the damaged bushing. I discovered that while the Porsche shop had set the alignment specs to what they (and I) thought reasonable, they didn't fully understand how to adjust what wasn't really a Porsche suspension, and had over stressed some things. I spoke to Carey and he sent me replacement bushings and explained the proper alignment technique in the rear. I didn't get it back together in time for the Tour de Smo', but did shortly thereafter. After a couple of attempts with my crude, makeshift alignment measurements I felt like that car drove rather well, but I wanted to double check with a real alignment rack.
I set up a return visit to the Porsche shop and planned to go under the car with the owner/chief tech/chief driver of their race team, doing any adjustments myself. The shop is about 45 minutes from my house and I was within a mile when a horrible rumbling sound started in the rear end. I pulled off and called the shop and they sent a truck and trailer to get me. Driving the car into the trailer, and then back off, we were unable to reproduce the sound. My first thought was CV joint.
He pointed out a few things and said fixing it would be "expensive." He did, however, say "...they are 95% there..." I told him that I would call Carey and discuss with him, before authorizing any work.
I called @chines1 the next day and had a long conversation, in which we talked about the issues. It was clear that some of what the Porsche shop thought were issues were due to the differences between a Porsche design and non-Porsche design. Anyway, Carey called me back the next day and said that Chuck Beck was going to pick the car up and take it to his shop for repairs.
Not only did Chuck do that, but Mike Fincher and Randy Beck loaded a truck with any parts they might need for repairs (including a complete transaxle!) and drove down from Special Edition in Bremen, IN to Chuck's place in north GA. They worked through the weekend before Thanksgiving to get the car fixed. The transaxle and CV joints were fine, but it was likely that one or both of the half shafts was just slightly too long and had bottomed out, causing the noise. They shortened the half shafts to make sure there was plenty of plunge on the transaxle ends and reworked the lower control arms to ensure that the bushing issue didn't reoccur. While they had it they replaced a sloppy ball joint in front, realigned everything, calibrated the gas gauge, and replaced with wiper motor (it would no longer park when turned off). After the holidays Chuck and a buddy brought it back to my house. It is now driving perfectly.
Thanks to Carey, Mike Chuck, and Randy. If anyone reading this is undecided about which vendor to choose, I offer this as evidence.
This is how it should be done.
