Warning rant ahead.

So my car has been away for a long time. Long story but she's finally right and ripping again.

Just got her back yesterday. Today as I was looking around the interior for spots to place toggle switches for my diff and aux trans coolers, I noticed that my "carbon" AC surround looked funny...



That's weird, right? Let's investigate further.




Uh oh. I've skinned a bunch of carbon trim pieces. You have to sand down and rough up the OEM part to get the surface to take the carbon skin and epoxy while also not being larger dimensionally than the OEM trim piece. The OEM trim piece as you can see here is untouched. That's a bad sign. Let's keep picking...




Bro. That's a fukin carbon sticker. I'm surprised it didn't peel away earlier, this has been on for 7 or 8 years.

Now normally I'd chalk this up if I had bought from a shady probably Chinese vendor and got scammed oh well.

My problem here is that this part was made by a member here who was really well-known for making beautiful carbon trim pieces for our cars. I have a bunch of his stuff, and now it's all suspect. I have all the emails and receipts. I paid $200 for just this piece of garbage in 2018.

Now that I'm looking at it more carefully, I think he was probably just mass-producing these thin overlay skins from a mold on their own - clearly without actually individually skinning and keying/sanding the OEM trim piece donors he received - instead just gluing them on with a thin superglue or something (although there's no evidence of any kind of glue residue here).

I've reached out to him for an answer to this and am awaiting a response. Just thought I'd park this here for now and see what the community thinks.

Serious questions here. Is this on me? Did I expect too much? Should I have asked more detailed questions? I mean, we paid what was reasonable compared to OEM, but still quite a premium price for these pieces. He says that these things take hours to make and that's just completely misleading - this is just not how you skin a trim piece properly. It's an overlay. I just wish I had known because I wouldn't have bought them if I knew they were produced like this. Even my eBay Chinese carbon steering wheel trims are properly skinned (less expensive), as is all my MACarbon stuff (about the same cost).

I'm not even really that pissed, just super disappointed because I thought this guy was one of the good ones.

Bummed out ☹️

 

Same thing happened to every piece I bought, likely from the same guy. TERRIBLE quality. Happened to me in less than a year. fit terrible from the start, burned into the carbon when finishing. I warn everyone when I see it pop up. But I will say I only tried him after a big euro company blew me off when their lifetime warrantied shifter surround had the epoxy darken. As you mention, China is better and cheaper than most of these crooks. I even ripped apart bunch of his crap and covered it in Alcantara, I was so pissed. I made a thread with pics on that subject.

 

Yeah man you got played for sure. A true carbon skinned part will not come apart. The epoxy quite literally mates itself with the surface it’s on. What you have was probably held with 3m tape (old 3m tape held on great!) $200 is a fair price for a real skin job by 2018 standards

 

Pretty bad that especially at the prices he charged if it’s from the europe guy?

Could you not feel a ledge between the parts when you got them?

My carbon guy wouldn’t even charge more than £70 for doing that part which is probably around $100. The more parts you send the better the quote. He did my full interior plus more for half the price the europe guy was charging and it’s done properly.

He has probably got away with it now with how long it’s been unfortunately.

Glad to see you back, post some pictures up of the full lb kit on the car.

 

Glad to hear I'm not crazy for thinking I got screwed here.

Yeah it's the "Europe guy" who at one point had his carbon trim on most of the cars in this forum it seems.

Saying I got played is funny, as he had hundreds of customers here on this forum and I never heard a bad thing.

And yes, I already said I've skinned plenty of things myself including an engine cover, so I know what I'm talking about thanks.

Back in 2018 I hadn't yet started working with carbon, so these trim pieces escaped my scrutiny. He had a good reputation as far as I could tell, never saw a complaint or otherwise, just a lot of happy customers. And I take pride in doing my due diligence on things, it's unusual for me to get caught like this and it pisses me off.

Kind of sucks that we didn't self-police this forum good enough to get rid of this guy 10 years ago if his work was failing even back then. Bummer.

 

Let's tag him and see what he has to say? He's still very active here on MBWorld it seems. Trying not to jump to too many conclusions here, would like to give him a chance to say something or make it right. How many others have been affected but never said anything I wonder...

@olszowa12 I'm a little disappointed here. Anything to say?

 

yep, that’s the seller.
It was glued down, but it was not glued with any sort of glue that was proper. Let’s just say the surface wasn’t prepped right, the parts were not finished right, the parts were not able to fit in without further shaving, one part came with a scratch due to shipping. I spent at least $2000 for the entire center console and rear vent. It literally was the biggest waste of money I’ve made on a car in over 30 years of driving (besides once owning a cpo bimmer)

I tried looking for my thread last night, but I’ll dig again today on my computer.

Considering my car had both the interior and exterior OEM carbon package, that carbon is still in perfect condition.

 

This was the thread

https://mbworld.org/forums/w212-amg/...or-update.html

 

Got a reply from him. Guess he didn't want to show up in this thread. Chickenshít.

Confirmed zero surface prep. He was just gluing carbon stickers on. Doubt any of it is real carbon, doesn't look like it.

Says he's not making his shìt parts anymore. Yet I see him all over the forum.

I'm going to go post in all his threads. Fúck you scammer Matt.