Tech Calls

This post and actually all my posts are of my opinion only and not of my employer, Cosworth LLC or any other company that I've previously worked for.

Having been working at different manufacturers for many years now and being one of the technically inclined personnel in the office, I always seem to have to deal with tech calls from customers no matter where I seem to work. I'm glad to help somebody out if I can save their day. Luckily I don't answer all tech calls as I'm usually busy doing something else, but if I'm sitting at my desk I usually get the serious tech calls. Here's a quick summary of the types of people I've encountered over the years (both dealers and end users):

1. Smart people with good questions and good attitudes: these guys are generally easiest to work with and since both parties are interested in solving the problem so things usually get worked out.


2. Angry people: I'm not your mom so don't tell me how shitty your day was and how we made it worse because we messed up. It doesn't allow me to help you any better or faster and I'm not going to give you a credit. We manufacturers are human too and we mess up sometimes. If it's our fault, we'll do our best to fix it.


3. Smart asses: I don't even know why these people call since they already know everything. I mean if you're going to call and complete every one of my sentences, then don't even bother. Or if I give them an answer, they'll say something like "that's what I figured" or some other smart ass dumb sounding shit.


4. Not so smart people: not everybody's bright, but you still gotta help them out. Keep in mind though that if you fall into this category and you're not at least technically inclined, then you ARE wasting everybody's time. Have your installer or technical buddy call because you shouldn't be working on your car by yourself anyway.


5. Lazy fucks: these guys are irritating because they are too lazy to read instructions or specifications. Next time you call a manufacturer because you have a technical question, just make sure you've read the instructions or specifications first. It will save both you and the tech guy time and hassle.


6. Tri-state area psuedo Italian guys: these guys think their last name is Soprano. They are straight up and pushy as hell, but it's fun talking to these guys because it sounds like you're watching Goodfellas or A Bronx Tale. No matter what, you'll always hear "Fugget about it..." at least once too.


7. FFF (Fucking Forum Faggots): these are the ignorant part of the forum participants who are way too quick to judge before they know the whole story, ride on jocks of their favorite forum tuner (Vishnu and Buschur are like David Koresh), share the views of the forum masses who are wrong most of the time, always throw in their opinionated unscientific $0.02, and will have to say AT LEAST FUCKING ONCE, "I read on XXXXX.com blah, blah, blah..." Go ahead and fill in the X's with your forum of choice because there are FFF on every single god damn forum in existence. I can bet that if what I say is not in line with the beliefs of the VFBs (see #8) that I'm just trying to rip off the general public. Or as the FFF say, "They're in it for just for the money!" Uh...no fucking shit, that's why it's called a business and not a public service. Our goal is that both parties are satisfied: you get a good product and we make a buck or four.


8. VFB (Virtual Forum Badasses): these are the guys that are the amateur forum tuners or sometimes the tech gurus because they've tuned their car with moderate success and happened to do it on a dyno that read high, but have never actually had a job doing R&D, design, or anything else having to do with cars. They are, like the forum is a virtual word in itself, virtual badasses and that doesn't mean shit in the real world. Working at Kinko's by day and forum tuner/guru by night. Since they want to keep their "rank" they think that they have to be the first to report an issue with a product before they double check things. After starting a thread titled something like "Broken XXXXX camshaft!" and their jock riding followers post 40 replies of dumb ass opinions and unscientific bullshit $0.02, they get enough balls to finally call somebody in the REAL world. (All the while the dumb fuck VFB finds that a rocker is floating around in the head). It's like they think "since I'm a VFB, I should call, find out/complain about the problem, and report back to my homo bitches". You know one of these VFBs are going to call soon because we'll get multiple calls from normal forum participants who don't care to ride anybody's jock asking similar questions. For example: "I read on the forum that your Nitrile rubber coating on your head gaskets is no good and you shouldn't be using it because it goes away." This means that some VFB has proclaimed a gasket has failed because it is incorrectly designed, but not because he doesn't know shit. Sure, like Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mercedes, and BMW has no idea how to design a head gasket since they use Nitrile coatings also. In the case of Cosworth, they have designed head gaskets on winning WRC engines that will see more cylinder pressure than VFB engines will EVER see. Of course shortly afterwards the real engine builders or machine shops that those fucking posers took their parts to tell us, "That guy [VFB] said your head gaskets don't work for shit, but I took a look at the guy's [VFB's] head and it looked like he ran a fucking rake across it to resurface it." Most VFB/FFF don't have much mechanical experience (building 2 engines and having THE most widely used flash map on the openecu.com forum ain't shit) so if their head was resurfaced by some old school V8 machine shop who uses a rough ass cutter or worse yet a 16 year old jock riding slave kid helper took a pad of Scotchbrite to the head with their right hand kneeling on the oily floor, that any brand's metal gasket would have had no chance of sealing to begin with regardless of coating. It's important that you remain clear headed and objective when you read the forums people. Don't buy into everything you read.

Sorry, I guess I got a little carried away on #7 because there is just too much of that dumb shit going on these days. Forums are a great place for information, but for every 1 piece of information there seems to be 1.5 pieces of misinformation. Anyhow, look out and learn how to spot the VFBs and FFFs. Learn to decipher forum posts for yourself and mistrust before you trust. There are plenty of people on forums that are helpful and know their shit. I'm just clowning the fuckheads that think they know everything and think they're badass in their virtual world.

This post got out of hand and I'm over it now. Enjoy the long weekend and have a nice 4th of July. Remember not to drink and drive! You might spill.