Just back from Henderson Performance Technologies

[GTOger]

Well after spending a few weeks trying to self-diagnose the little issues we've been having with our car, the wife and I decided to play hooky for a couple days at work and load the ZR-1 up on the trailer and tote it down to New Braunfels to see Corey Henderson.

This is completely unsolicited from Corey. Let me tell you that I am suitably impressed.

First, I will say that the car is running better than I've ever known it now. A week ago, I was afraid to drive it for fear of tearing it to pieces. Turns out there was nothing seriously wrong. Here is what Corey found:

• Cracked coolant "nipple" on the plenum. Probably a result of unintentional manhandling at the last plenum pull. Beware. Was easily bypassed, however.
• Bad ignition coil. Replaced it with a spare Corey had on hand.
• Fouled spark plug, possibly due to bad ignition coil. Replaced all plugs.
• Previous owner had put in a Haibeck ECM chip. We did an A/B comparison, road-testing between the Haibeck chip and factory settings. At no point was it mentioned that the Haibeck chip was in some way "bad" or "inferior" but clearly it did not suit my car's setup very well. Or it may have had a data corruption. In any event, it wasn't doing me any favors.

Corey spent pretty much all day on Thursday working on the car and was gracious enough to allow me to watch. I treated the day as a learning session and tried to gain as much understanding about the car as possible. At lunch, the wife and I, along with my nephew who, as it turns out, lives about 15 minutes away from Corey's shop, tagged along to a fantastic hole-in-the-wall Mexican food place. Then it was back for an afternoon of test & tune. Rainy conditions made it difficult to get a real road-test in.

First thing on Friday morning, we were back at the shop and got the car loaded up on one of the dynos. Corey got some settings dialed in for the ECM and then wrote a custom chip for my car. After that, since the rain gods were cooperative, he took it for a road test. Then I drove it. Then my wife drove it. Both the wife & I agree it's far smoother, far more responsive than it has ever been.

And the charges: extremely reasonable. The man is in business and I don't expect to be treated like a charity case. OTOH, nor do I expect to be bent over. I will always pay a fair price. Corey treated me extremely well on the bill, in my opinion. So much so that I would make him my regular shop for all my work on various vehicles if it weren't for the day-long drive!

While I was there, I noticed that my tow vehicle ('02 GMC 3/4-ton Duramax) was clunking in the rear end. Turned out to be a worn-out 4x4 diff. Corey's shop had it fixed and turned around in less than an hour and once again at an extremely reasonable cost.

Everyone at the shop, from the front office to the guys turning wrenches, are friendly and helpful.

I'm well aware that it is completely unnecessary for me to write this. Corey's reputation stands on its own and hardly needs my endorsement. However, I was so jazzed by the experience that I just wanted to share. If you're ever in need of some expert ZR-1 work, I'm not sure you could do better than to put your car in Corey's hands.