WOW
this board never stop's amazing me. It's a real shame that we deleted the origional give away thread once it was done, because the reason for the giveaway was we were looking for a truck to build a system on. And to use for future advertisment. We also stated that it needed to be a 2nd or 3rd gen in the giveaway. Te requirements were, you needed to post up a pic of your truck, and be a red/yellow star member. As people started to post I noticed that there were several tacoma's posted, which of course didn't qualify, but realistically i wouldn't mind doing a Tacoma Kit also, and Rat also posted his Hilux, which will also not work for any kit, which would have to be a 100% one off kit. My first thought was to send Rat a PM to let him know his truck did not fit the criteria. But after talking to a few people off PBB everyone was so stoked for Josh because he was actually in the running to win this kit, and i just could not bring myself to call him and break the bad news to him. So i never posted anything about it, or said anything about it. It came down to the wire, and Josh was the winner.
Here's where the problem comes in. I received over 30 e-mails from people on PBB that his rig won the kit, and he clearly did not meet the rules for the drawing, and several of the claimed the drawing was fixed. So I talked with Josh a bit on the phone and weren't really able to set a time/date to get his truck in because his would not be a kit, but a complete one off setup, and that there never would be a "kit" to fit a hilux pickup. After he was announced the winner we were contacted by LowBuck. LowBuck knew we still needed a vehicle to build the kit from, so our deal with LowBuck was, if he paid for part's and materials, we would do the labor for free. LowBuck brought his 4runner to us and dropped it off, and we proceeded to begin working on it. After actually changing the kit about 5 times we finally got LowBuck's rig done behind the schedule he had set for us, leaving us with no time to dissasemble the 4runner, Re-Assemble it while writing instructions and taking more of the required photo's for the instructions. We got NO R&D time into the kit.
On LowBucks way to pick his rig up, he picked up Rat's truck and brought it to our shop. Now is where things became a bit unfair for Josh, we're probably one of the busiest offroad shops on the west coast. Major suspension work is generally 3-6 months out. When Josh's truck arrived we had lower link mount's and a Y link mount already built for it. But the problem is, everything else had to be custom built, at the current time we were 6 months back logged and the current projects our fab guys were working on had a deadline, Josh's rig when it was dropped off did not have a deadline. So as far as a vendor learning a lesson and having a product on the shelf before doing the giveaway, that's great, IF it's not a prototype product that your actually using to give away to help build and design.
So the bottom line is Josh won a kit he didn't qualify for, it had to be 100% custom, and had to wait in line with every other customer of ours, one thing i have learned form this is we have only given away one thing here on PBB that hasn't turned into a disaster. So we will definatly think twice before ever giving anything away again. Who's to blame for all of this? US. for not stick to our own rules on the giveaway because if we would have given away the kit ti an 84-95 toyota, it would have been in and out in under 2 weeks, and i wouldn't have basically given away 2 kit's for free.
I apreciate that LowBuck let us use his 4runner to build the first kit on, and I in no way balme any of this on him. And as far as Josh goes, we've been friends for a long time and I have nothing against Josh and believe we will be friends for many years to come.
Disco, i wish if you were going to drag a buisness into the dirt you would know all the fact's before hand.
Oh, and Josh you will have you new links for Christmas, so give me a call so we can meet up this weekend.
