I have received a lot of inquiries behind the scenes with respect to my experience with Carbon-Effects (Bill Niarchos, Nachos23 here on the ZHPM.c).
I first approached Bill in March of 2011 after seeing photos of his work on this site. I was impressed with what I saw, and his work was the perfect fit with the CF theme that I was pursuing for the ZHP.
Bill was very helpful and responsive. We quickly settled on a deal via email: I would pay $320 for a CF wrapped fuel rail and valve cover which he would provide, and I would cross ship him my existing valve and fuel cover (which were pristine).
I paypal'd Bill the full amount on March 29th. On April 4th, I was excited to get an email from Bill telling me that my parts were wet sanded and should ship in the next few days.
On April 6th, Bill emailed me that he wasn't happy with how the fuel rail cover turned out, and that he could substitute a commercially made one that he had in his possession. He indicated that this would get me the order 7-10 days sooner and that if I didn't like it, he would re-wrap a new fuel rail cover for me. I agreed. I also shipped him my covers as my part of the cross-shipping agreement.
After not hearing from him for about a week, I emailed him and he responded that he ran into a problem with a batch of material, and that depending on when he could get the clear coat done, they would be shipping in the next 3 or 4 days.
This went on with a few back and forth emails until I finally got a shipping confirmation on April 25th.
I received the covers, and was not satisfied with the workmanship, nor the matching of the two pieces. Details are posted in this thread.
I reached out for Bill to discuss my lack of satisfaction, and to ask him to make good on his offer to wrap a new fuel rail cover for me.
Unfortunately, this is when Bill's wife was diagnosed with cancer.
Now Bill is a very nice guy, and I felt horrible for him, especially with the loss of my mom to cancer a year earlier fresh in my mind. I knew the hell he was going to be going through so I just let it go for a long time.
In June, I shot Bill an email to see how he was holding up. He told me that his wife had passed, and that he was slowly getting back to working on parts.
On July 4th, he emailed telling me that he would wrap new parts for me and said he would start them, "tonight or tomorrow."
After not hearing from him for awhile, I emailed him on July 29th seeing how the parts were coming. He emailed me back the next day that he was backed up and would be starting them that week.
Again, I didn't hear from him so I shot another email in late August. He responded on August 22nd, apologized for the delay, and said he'd be starting them early the next week.
The next two months involved more back and forth emails, me asking about the parts, and Bill telling me that he was working on them.
On October 19th, this month, I finally got a tracking number indicating that they had shipped.
Bill also had posted up a few pics here, and the first thing I noticed was that there was a long, black mark across the W in BMW on the valve cover. Now in his emails, Bill said that he was doing the re-wrap using the valve cover and fuel rail cover that I had originally shipped him-- well, as I said earlier, those pieces were pristine when I shipped them. This is a picture of the original covers
As you can see, there are no marks or blemishes.
Immediately upon seeing the parts when I opened the box on Tuesday, I was disheartened. I could see that the big black mark was still on the W, and that there was marring on the front edge of the fuel rail cover.
The CF itself was much improved over the previous set and looks quite good.
Here are pics of the new set:
The marked up W
Leading edge of the fuel rail
As you can see, it looks great from a short distance away.
So here's my summary:
If you were to bring these parts to my house and ask me if I'd give you $320 for them and my fuel and valve covers, I'd say, "no thanks."
I am anal retentive, and these parts have too many imperfections for me to be happy.
Now that being said, Bill was always responsive to me and always tried to make me a happy customer. He went through a terrible life crisis during this, and I'm certain that that contributed to a lot of the delay.
He never made excuses for the imperfections and never made me feel like I was being overly picky or critical in my assessment of the condition of the parts.
After looking at Bill's other work, I think perhaps that his best parts are the ones where ALL of the part is wrapped in CF, as opposed to parts where a portion of the original part is left exposed, such as with my fuel rail and valve cover.
I am appreciative of how Bill handled the situation, and I further think he's a really good guy, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend him to my Family here.
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