Thunder Ranch Story

There seems to be very little information about Thunder Ranch posted. After a 9 month build, we have had our T/R Speedster for a few months and are very disappointed in the lack of any response to our telephone calls and emails addressing a number of initial build issues. If anyone is interested in a Thunder Ranch Speedster, feel free to contact me for the "laundry list" our problems. brian.burnevik@pactronics.com

Seems like a repeat of Paul Rich's experience. There are two sides to a story, but let's hear yours.

tell it like it is...
im sure TR reads this column once in awhile, unhappy customers are not good publicity.

Brian:

There is a hell of a lot of information about Thunder Ranch posted. You'll have to draw your own conclusions, but often it's not pretty. Some buyers (all on the West Coast nearby to the Thunder Ranch facility) have had good luck, but others (usually on the East Coast) have had a disaster.

Start here: https://www.speedsterowners.com/forum/readmsg.asp?t=15407

(You may have to cut and paste some to get it to work).

I tried to get involved between Paul Rich and Tom McBurnie to help get Paul's issues with his car addressed. While I found that Tom McBurnie talks a good line (if you can even contact him), he does not follow through with actions, leaving the fate of the customer's car up to the customer.

Not cool.

I had a good look at Paul's Thunder Ranch Speedster when he brought it to Carlisle, and even spent a few minutes sync-ing his carburetors. There were a lot of "warts" visible, even from a cursory overview, and this was a "turn-key" car.

Personally, I cannot recommend Thunder Ranch to others.

gn

Past history indicates the only west coast speedster builder that does follow though on behalf of the east coast buyers is Kirk at Vintage Speedsters. ~Alan

I finally sold my TR 550 Spyder and Beck 356 Speedster last month and just checked back into this site.
I have to weigh-in on this thread. I had little response from McBurnie after I bought my 550 replica from him. I am located in the Midwest (St. Louis) and made a special trip to TR to check out the operation and was given great attention by TM at that time. But after I went out a second time, paid the balance due with a Cashiers' Check and picked-up the Phase III 550 package, I found that several promises from TM made then went unfulfilled; most importantly, I did not receive the Manufacturers' Statement of Origin! The MSO is one of the documents required to title a "kit car" in most states, including my own.
I begged and cajoled for TR to fulfill all of the promises: I sent emails, called and wrote letters -- even several via registered mail -- to TM to no avail. After several months of vague or no response, I gave up and filed a complaint with the California Attorney General. I eventually considered getting a questionable title from one of the "services" that provide them for a hefty fee.
However, I finally got the MSO 18 months after buying the package from TR, due to an employee at TR reading one of my posts and checking my file folder. According to him, the MSO had been in my file for some time.
That is simply inexcusable, unprofessional business conduct.
Caveat Emptor. (The California AG did not follow-up on my complaint: I did not hear back from that office after I filed the complaint.)
I know there are some real fans of McBurine on this and the Spyder site, but my experience after the sale was a nightmare.
My experience with Special Edition (Beck) was just the opposite: Carey and Kevin Hines were very responsive before and AFTER the sale.
They represent the best of the "Kit Car" business.

I know this is a Thunder Ranch thread, but let's exclude Henry Reisner and Intermeccanica from the "West Coast Builders" list.

Henry is highly customer responsive before and after the sale (even to those who do not necessarily own an IM car) and delivers what he promises. The same goes for Kirk and Mary at Vintage, Carey and Kevin at Special Edition (the Beck folks) and, Steve Lawing at SAS.

Thunder Ranch and JPS, on the other hand, seem to be on the bottom of the heap.

At this point, our Thunder Ranch Speedster seems to be an overall solid design and build.

Aside from taking ALL timetable promises and having to multiply by 3 or more, the blatant lack of reply to our telephone calls, emails, faxes and letters is frustrating and seems to be an utterly STUPID way to run a business in an economy that isn't favoring discretionary "toy" spending.

At 500 miles, T/R adjusts the lifters and are suppose to fix any items that were missed on the original build or developed over the first 500 miles. We brought the car to T/R with about a dozen minor items on our repair list and picked it up 4 weeks later (yes, it was promised to be done in 1 week). Some of the items were fixed, some were not fixed right, some were worse and some were ignored.

Over the past month, there has been no reply to any of our attempts to have the open items resolved. It is as if Thunder Ranch was sucked into some kind of El Cajon

Thanks Gordon. I thought that Vancouver, BC was on the west coast, just a little north of SoCal.

Yeah....it takes about the same amount of time to drive from San Francisco to Vancouver as it does to drive from LA to Huntington Beach after 2pm, right?

gn