This is our (Lucky 8's) response to austinlandroverbill through email today. I feel it is only appropriate that I get to tell my side of the story, too, considering he left out some of the key talking points.

email:

Bill,

You are referring to a purchase made through a 3rd party store several months ago. Those questions get filtered into another folder on eBay when the purchase is over 90 days old. You also sent it over the weekend and we didn't have a chance to get to it yesterday as Mondays are usually quite busy for us. Then we come in today and have a threatening email. If you are on the forums and you know who we are then you have our contact info. Next time you have an issue, either email or call us directly. If you are going to publicly bash us at least be polite and put in the bashing that you sent a message thru a 3rd party site over the weekend and didn't even give us more than 1 business day to respond. That is only fair. Threatening to deface us because you didn't get an immediate response through Ebay is silly to say the least.

End email.

You also keep referring to the coil packs as "new". Not quite sure what you are trying to accomplish here but they are in fact new. As is anything mass produced there is a margin for error. You price shopped and bought the cheapest ones you can find. We never have an issue with replacing anything that fails under warranty, these included. But we do not however respond to threats when we aren't even given a chance.

 

Lucky 8/Justin(?), FYI, they (the coil packs) were new when I purchased them, have never performed appropriately since installed, and you -- Lucky 8 which does business on eBay as LRParts (not the UK LR Parts and dispute resolution on Paypal is directed to the LK8 email domain, so as far as I am concerned, from the perspective of my issue Lucky 8 and eBay LRParts are one and the same company) -- chose not top rectify the situation, i.e., refund or replace the coil packs. They only responded after I posted in this thread about the out-of-box failure of their coil packs.

Here is my full statement on Lucky 8 that I provided to Lucky 8 in advance of now posting it here:

Hi all.

First, I want to say how pleased I am with the coil relocation kit I bought from another member on this forum (LR03NJ). It's where LR should have installed the coil packs in the first place. If you haven’t considered this mod, you really should: it is brilliant and Gerry’s kit is as good as it gets..

Now to the reason for this post.

Back in January, we fixed a vacuum leak at the rear cam valley gasket on my son's '04 D2. While we had the entire manifold (upper and lower) off, my brother suggested that we maybe we should also replace the 13 year-old original Bosch coil packs while we were in there — especially as how hard they are to access otherwise.

This suggestion seemed to make sense to me, so I bought a pair of what turned out to be defective3 coil packs from Lucky 8 (they do business on eBay as LRParts -- but not the UK LR Parts).

We did all of this right before my son went back to college, and immediately upon the drive back, my son called me to tell me that the D2 had started to throw misfire codes: cylinders 1,6 (on one pack) and 5 (on the other).

As anyone knows, there is no way to a priori test the coil packs other than installing them and then reinstalling everything else: upper and lower manifold, SAI plumbing, heater hoses, ignition wiring, etc., so you have to start with the assumption that the supplier you got the coil packs from is trustworthy and is sourcing them from a respected manufacturer.

My son drove the D2 sparingly during the semester with the misfires, clearing codes only to have them come right back, and when he came home for his summer internship, he left me with the D2 and took my Honda Insight (quite a difference in vehicles, eh).

Well, not believing that these brand new coil packs from a vendor with whom I had had great experiences could possibly be bad, I instead tried everything else: injectors, injector harness, ignition wires (3 sets!), etc.

Having laid on top of the engine for hours on end in 100 degree Texas heat over the past month to change wire sets all those times — not to mention all of the hand and arm skin I sacrificed to to Land Rover gods in the process — I finally “bit the bullet” and bought the coil pack relocation kit sold by Gerry/LR03NJ.

The coil relocation kit came with another set of wires (the 4th set), so after the coil relocation and newest set of wires still failed to fix the misfires, I swapped out the new coils from Lucky 8 with the original 13 year-old Bosch packs that I had fortunately kept (as they weren’t bad per se, just old).

With the coils relocated to the front/side of the engine thanks to Gerry, swapping out the coil packs took me all of 10 minutes, and voila, no more misfires.

I contacted Lucky 8 about a refund, however they never provided one.

So in the (admittedly mean) spirit that a positive review gets you 2 new customers while a bad review loses you 10, and to steal that infamous warning immortalized by emcee Chip Monk at Woodstock:

"To get back to the warning that I received. You may take it with however many grains of salt that you wish. That the brown acid (or coil packs from Lucky 8) that is circulating around us isn't too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip (or wasted time installing them). So be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, ok?"

 

I posted this post on a different thread but felt it was an important enough notice to the D2 community on this forum that I should post it as its own thread as well to assure as many people as possible are aware of the possible issues with coil packs sourced from Lucky 8 and their DBAs so that others don't experience the frustration and many lost hour that I have.

I hope that members of this forum agree that vendors and parts they sell need to be identified whenever they are involved in the sale of defective parts, even when such a sale is not malicious or intentional and especially when such defective parts can cause damage to other even more expensive parts, e.g., defective coils causing misfires which in turn can damage catalytic converters, and can only be tested after everything is fully reassembled.

We need to know when there is bad "brown acid" out there (if you don't get the context of that comment, read below).

----------------------------------------------------------

Hi all.

First, I want to say how pleased I am with the coil relocation kit I bought from another member on this forum (LR03NJ, aka Gerry). It's where LR should have installed the coil packs in the first place. If you haven’t considered this mod, you really should: it is brilliant and Gerry’s kit is as good as it gets. Look up his posts for all the details.

Now to the reason for this post.

Back in January, while my son was home from winter break, we identified and fixed a vacuum leak at the rear cam valley gasket on my son's '04 D2. While we had the entire manifold (upper and lower) off, my brother suggested that we maybe while we were in so deep on the top end of the engine, that we should also replace the 13 year-old original Bosch coil packs that have been baking all those years in that oven between the engine and the firewall — especially as how hard they are to access otherwise.

This suggestion seemed to make sense to me, so I bought a pair of what turned out to be defective3 coil packs from Lucky 8 (they do business on eBay as LRParts -- but not to be confused with the UK LR Parts).

We did all of this right before my son went back to college, and immediately upon the drive back, my son called me to tell me that the D2 had started to throw misfire codes: cylinders 1,6 (on one pack) and 5 (on the other).

As anyone knows, there is no way to a priori test the coil packs other than installing them and then reinstalling everything else you have to take off to get to them: upper and lower manifold, SAI plumbing, heater hoses, ignition wiring, etc., so you have to start with the assumption that the supplier you got the coil packs is sourcing them from a respected manufacturer, that they have been tested and that they are fully functional and perform to specifications.

My son drove the D2 sparingly during the semester with the misfires, clearing codes only to have them come right back, and when he came home for his summer internship, he left me with the D2 and took my Honda Insight (quite a difference in vehicles, eh).

Well, not believing that what had been brand new coil packs from a vendor with whom I had had great experiences in the past could possibly be bad out of the box, I instead tried everything else: injectors, injector harness, ignition wires (3 sets!), etc. This blind trust was a strategic error on my part and one I want to make sure others don't make.

Having laid on top of the engine for hours on end in 100 degree Texas heat (120 in my un-AC'ed garage) over the past month to change wire sets all those times — not to mention all of the hand and arm skin I sacrificed to to Land Rover gods in the process — I finally “bit the bullet” and bought the coil pack relocation kit sold by Gerry/LR03NJ.

The coil relocation kit came with another set of wires (the 4th set from Kingsborne), so after the coil relocation and newest set of wires still failed to fix the misfires, I swapped out the new coils from Lucky 8 with the original 13 year-old Bosch packs that I had fortunately kept (as they weren’t bad per se, just old).

With the coils relocated to the front/side of the engine thanks to Gerry, swapping out the coil packs took me all of 10 minutes, and voila, no more misfires.

I contacted Lucky 8 about a refund, however they never provided one.

So in the (admittedly mean) spirit that a positive review gets you 2 new customers while a bad review loses you 10 current and potential customers, and to steal that infamous warning immortalized by emcee Chip Monk at Woodstock:

"To get back to the warning that I received. You may take it with however many grains of salt that you wish. That the brown acid (or coil packs from Lucky 8) that is circulating around us isn't too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. Of course it's your own trip (or potential wasted time installing these coil packs). So be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, ok?"

 

Can we get back to the part where you didn't even give us a chance to rectify it? You went to immediate blast because nobody responded to you over the weekend.

 

We aren't denying that we are LRparts on eBay so I don't know why you keep eluding to the fact that we are trying to hide that, as if you are cracking some sort of big case wide-open.

As for the part about us not refunding you, I sent you an email at 9:35am this morning stating you would receive a refund check if you sent the "bad" parts back. Instead you posted this at 10:37am on here stating that we are uncooperative and that we aren't refunding you. Perhaps you had too much of that brown acid.

 

I have a feeling this is going to get ugly?

 

 

Come off it mate, gonna take more than a single drama queen to smear Lucky8's good name.

 

And anybody who wants the whole story, including the part about us not responding due to the fact that it was the weekend, and also the part about how we did offer a refund even though it is now 6 months later, can be seen here: https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...n-85169/page2/

 

Sounds like you're being a bit of a drama queen, mate. Despite what society thinks, the customer isn't always right and the people who run a business you purchase from are not your servants.

Its very common knowledge that L8 doesn't operate on the weekends and you will NOT get in contact with them outside business hours. I would be the same way if I ran my own business.

Furthermore... If you can't test coil packs without installing them, how do you expect them to be tested before reaching you? I also don't understand why you sunk all that money into more new parts when you had the old coils there for free. That would be diagnostic step #1, especially knowing that the problem arose right after replacing a part. Duh!

You also let your son drive the truck to school and drive it for a whole semester knowing the damage it was doing to the truck. Dude, what the hell? This is a "don't be stupid, stupid" kind of situation.

I've had plenty of dealings with Erik and Justin, and never once has one of them been negative. In fact they've gone above and beyond multiple times and I will continue to use them as often as possible in the future. Saving up to buy some gears from them right now.

Don't take out your own impatient, prissy, self righteous attitude on them. You're not as important as you think you are and you're slandering your own name more than you're slandering theirs.