Recently I've had the pleasure of having my car outfitted with a Wavetrac differential at VAC motorsports in Philadelphia. Credit given where credit's due. These guys are legit.
The following is less of a review of the Wavetrac differential, and more about the experience I had with VAC and the guys there.
When I first arrived, I was fairly skeptical because the shop isn't exactly located in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia. However, when I walked in, my initial impressions took a 180 turn. The inside was full of things I wish I had in my car.
Not only that, Steve greeted me and then proceeded to show me around the entire shop. The whole place is full of energy and pretty much filled to the brim with stuff that I have no clue what it's for.
I looked around e90post and did quite a bit of research myself before I went to the shop so I had a pretty good idea that I wanted the wavetrac differential. I sat down with Steve and Chris (their engineer guru) and worked out all of the details of how they'll put a differential into my welded diff ('11 e92 335i mt).
The gist of it was... its not easy. The whole process is highly specialized and requires some special equipment. Fortunately for me, they had a machine just for that in the back. It looks something like this.
So here's the part that really motivated me to write all of this up. My car only has ~2k miles on it. Because the diff in the back is pretty much brand new, VAC decided that it would be better to outfit my diff with the LSD as oppose to doing a core swap.
At this point they quoted me a very fair price and an estimated time of about a week (they had a lot of cars lined up that week.) I dropped my car off on Tuesday and was originally quoted to come pick it up the following Tuesday. Obviously, as an enthusiast, I wanted my LSD in now and my car back ASAP.
Chris told me that it was going to be difficult, but would try to get my car in before the weekend was over on Friday. He gave me a 25% chance that this would be possible because they were swamped with work.
So Tuesday passed, Wednesday came along, and Thursday slowly drifted by. By Friday I was pretty much having withdrawal symptoms and wanted my car back.
As luck would have it, when I called in for the fiftieth time to see how my car was doing, I was told that it was being put back together now and that they would be running some tests in the afternoon and I should be able to pick up the car in the evening.
When I got to the shop, I saw my car parked out in front with no apparent visual differences. The first thing that I did was crouch down and look underneath. This is what I saw.
I rushed inside, found Chris, and pretty much couldn't stop thanking him and the rest of the crew for such a quick turnaround. I basically threw my credit card down, grabbed my keys, got into the car, and at this point I was grinning ear to ear.
If I didn't have such a great experience with VAC, I wouldn't have spent the time to write all of this up. If any of you are looking to get some work done on your BMW in the great Philly area, I would highly recommend VAC. They are very fair with their hourly charges and have never quoted me low and charged me more (I also had my brake lines, pads, fluid flush, and exhaust fitted a week earlier).
Even if you're not able to go to their shop in person, they are amazing over the phone. Last week I overheard Steve having what seemed like a five hour conversation with a customer who was asking the same questions, over and over and over and over again. The amount of patience that these guys have is out of this world.
Thank you VAC. I am a very satisfied customer.
Oh. And the LSD.
Freaking amazing. The amount of grip is remarkable. Traction control comes on a lot less often and with the traction control off, the car is much easier to control when the rear slides out. My biggest problem with the LSD is that now I'm really beginning to feel the other weak points in the vehicle.
Now I need an M3 suspension upgrade, GC coilovers, and some new sway bars.
Between that and track days I'm going to need a serious boost in income.
[Some of the photos were taken off the VAC website because my iPhone pics just didn't cut it]