[Thunderbone]

Tuesday Steve Wong was tuning my car on the dyno at HK Motorsports in Van Nuys. We had made a few runs when Steve noticed that something seemed to be off. My '87 Carerra is twin plugged and it appeared that one of the distributors was firing only a few of the plugs. When we started the car only with that distributor it would just sputter and stop. The other distributor seemed fine.

Then the car wouldn't start at all. It was now 5pm. I drove down from Sacramento for the tuning, was on a tight time frame and was getting a little tense.

Steve called TRE, they said they would wait for me. The car got towed there at 6pm. Over the weekend, thieves stealing copper had cut the power and water to TRE when they broke into an adjacent building. The night before they worked 16 hours, until midnight, powered by generators. They pushed the car into the shop and started working on it. They worked until after 8pm on my car and confirmed that the splitter had failed...on the last day of its warranty.

Dave, TRE's owner, bought me dinner while I waited.

The next morning I went down to Fountain Valley to pick up a new splitter. As soon as I got back to TRE they put it in the car. I immediately went back to HK where Steve met me and we started all over at 3:30. It was then I noticed that the tow truck had bashed my muffler and lower valence during the 6 mile tow. I called the company, they came by and said 'we couldn't have done that". Twenty minutes later they came back and took pictures, still maintaining no liability...the battle with AAA begins.

Then the wife called. Whenver she hears the word 'problem' the thinks $$$ and I have to be back in Sacramento tonight to take her to the doctor the next morning or....now I'm really getting tense.

Steve works feverishly as I pace nervously.He had been up until 11pm Tuesday working his 'real job'. I leave at 5:30, get on the 405, which is a parking lot for the next 20 miles, and make it back home to Sacramento at 10:30...the car ran great.

TRE and Steve, who cancelled apppointments with his real job to get me on the road, went out of their way to make a difficult situation bearable. So if you are looking for capable people with character, here are two.