READ THIS FULLY THROUGH OR DON'T READ AT ALL SERIOUSLY!!!!! AT LEAST READ THE END I had contracted Rat2 to do a 2GR swap on my SW20 MR2. It was a project that had been long overdue as my SW20 was in a very poor condition mechanically, like most 30 year old cars are. Initially quoted around $9,000 for the swap I was intrigued by the surprisingly low pricing. After reading others reviews and talking with Ian, the owner, I decided to continue with having them preform the work since there was essentially no one in Washington that would take on such a task and I am no where near mechanically inclined enough to complete the swap on my own even with their DIY kit. I am a physicist who can appreciate the arts and technology of these cars, but I will admit I am too weak and scared of getting dirty to do the work myself. I paid the down payment for the swap and before I knew it the day finally came for me to drop off my beloved MR2. After discussing the time frame for the swap completion with Ian I left his shop with my MR2 staying behind. As time passed I did not get any information from Ian on how the swap was going or what the progress was. I began to become worried that my car would never leave his parking lot again. As my worried state of mind continued to increase I had to constantly remind myself that this is how car work goes. Take your car to any mechanic asking for such a large amount of work to be completed and the ability for them to accurately judge how the timeframe is nearly impossible, especially on such old vehicles. Finally the time came that Ian had begun working on my car. This is when things got interesting. I knew that my car was going to need more work than what was agreed upon in the in house 2GR swap package. I feel this is where many other customers begin to become frustrated. The $9,000 was going to cover the installation of a new V6 and to get it functioning, NOT TO GET THE ENTIRE CAR FUNCTIONING. To get the entire car working I needed much more, which I was aware of prior to dropping off my car. As it is a 30 year old maintenance neglected vehicle I knew there would be further costs to getting the car into the condition I was after. In the process of swapping in the new engine there were many other smaller ticket items that would require time, attention, and repair to allow myself to utilize this new power plant right behind the drivers seat. The cost of the swap is relying on the fact that the car is in functioning condition to house a new engine and supply it with the necessary items for it to function properly, even my non-mechanically inclined persona knew this. As expected in the duration of time Ian was working on my car I was getting almost a daily email or call discussing another part that he was offering to repair while doing the swap, for an added cost of course. As my character judge of Ian was good when I met him and my understanding of my MR2's mechanical condition, I trusted that his intuition was correct and granted almost all of his recommended/necessary repairs outside of the 2GR swap package. Off the top of my head this included things such as: -ignition rewiring due to past "fast n furious" electronics installs -brake caliper rebuilds -master cylinder replacement -wheel bearing replacement -bushing replacement -wiring harness diagnostics and repair -radiator replacement -some other items It is not Ian's fault that my car had been neglected for far too many years. Ian did a fabulous job with the work. He seems to be an extremely talented fabricator and mechanic, just not a great business man, who would have guessed. He is probably one of the most educated people in the world on the MR2 chassis and if you disagree with that you are lacking understanding of what it is to work on vehicles. It is extremely discouraging to me to see so many people hating on his shop and his work. These people need to just sell their cars and find a different hobby, owning a 30 year old JDM vehicle is not expensive, but maintaining that vehicle to the extent where it is reliable and drivable is VERY EXPENSIVE and when Ian is given the time and resources he will output a very good product. Ian is at fault for overdelivering verbally and asking for far less money than the work he puts in. Which usually attracts customers that do not have the empathy of what it is to work on these vehicles. MORALL OF THE STORY: If you want to have a good product at the end of the day from Rat2 you must be comfortable with paying more than he initially quotes, because he underquotes and he cannot predict the number of items that he is going to have to repair on the way. Also you must be willing to be patient, which is his fault as he seems to overbook himself to extreme extents, which is slightly a product of the market he is working in. Thanks read more

Like the other people here, I too contracted with Rat2 to work on my car. In my case it was a 2GR swap. Worst mistake of my life. They did everything in their power to get my car, to get a down payment ($2,000.00), and then it was utterly impossible to get in touch with them. They didn't take my phone calls. You couldn't leave a voicemail because their box was always full. It would take weeks to get a response to an email, and when the response did come it was always evasive, and they wouldn't provide a straight answer. On the time front, be prepared for them to prioritize every trade show, and sporting event, anything they can do to advertise their business, over actually working on your car. They find every excuse to charge you more, while always finding innovative ways to make sure they don't add any value in the process. My bill all things said and done? $12,549.96! Yeah, they don't like to tell you how not complete their complete swap is! They said they'd get AC installed and working in my car for $600, but they billed me $1,500 in total for it, and in the end, jerry rigged it. They billed me $250 for an alignment! But then didn't both to replace the worn tie rods, and so my steering wheel is shaking right off the bat. Loads of things just magically showed up on the bill with no real explanation. Apparently they charge for converting the car to a E153, even though I supplied all the parts, and despite they are going to pull everything out of the rear anyway to install the 2GR. But why not charge you twice? After all, it's twice as much money for them. They agreed to subcontract a shop to replace the synchros in my E153. They "say" they brought the trans to a shop and that the shop said the synchros are fine. (I've seen no proof this actually happened.) However, I asked for them to be replaced, as they are completely trashed, and now I will have me to remove the transmission, work on it, and then have it put back in because they didn't follow through. It would have been so much cheaper to simply do the synchros while it was out of the car. They are of course not willing to lend any sort of aid with this, despite the fact they had agreed have it done, and chose not to, and their actions are directly going to cost me 6.8 hours of shop time I wouldn't need to pay. They're response is, "it shouldn't take more than a day for a competent shop". I shouldn't have to bring it to a competent shop, if I had brought it to an honest shop in the first place. ...and if it's such a small matter, why aren't they willing to pay for it? They told me everything worked one week, but then every couple of days they would tell me about how the ABS wasn't working, that they had to replace the the rear axle, that the AC was working but then not really because the button in the cab wouldn't operate it. Then they tell me my radiator is full of gunk, and I'm like you haven't been running my new engine with that crap have you? They're like, 'oh no, we wouldn't do that.' Yeah. They said the process was going to take two months, I dropped the car off with them on 5/11/19, they didn't finish working on the car until the DAY BEFORE I was scheduled to fly out to pick it up (10/26/19). Despite the fact they had said they had everything done two weeks prior. They told me they were "buttoning things up" back on 9/20/19, that is code for, "only just starting, and not with any haste." On 9/23/19 I get an email from the owner Ian telling me they are working on my car, and if there is anything I would like done. At this point I had realized they don't listen to anything I say, and so I provide a check list taken from all of our conversations, and again I stated I wanted the synchros replaced. They still don't listen, even though from the very beginning it was a stipulated deliverable. It's not long after this point Ian starts trying to find a way to get me to pay him even more money before I see the car. I can tell he knows I'm not going to be happy, and he want to make sure he really has his hooks in me. After several impassioned emails back and forth I finally manage to convince him I'm not straying from our original deal, the two grand I put down, and the remainder on pickup. I can keep digging deeper with the details of the shady crap I had to deal with but the end result is that I now have a car with synchros that don't work, which were supposed to be replaced BEFORE they put the transmission in the car. A 2GR which doesn't run right. A host of electrical problems I didn't previously have. Things they charged me to fix, they didn't actually fix. They ended up billing about $3,550 more than they lead me to believe it would be, while not delivering on all of their promises, and I'm going to have to have a large amount of their work redone by competent mechanics. It took nearly six months, and the entire time I was wondering whether or not I was ever going to see my car again. Save yourself while you can! read more

I recently had these guys do a gen4 swap in my sw20 mr2 and I absolutely regret giving them my business. For starters they initially told me the turn around time would be about 3 weeks. 3 weeks turned into 2 months. But when I got my car back "finished" they had not reinstalled my AC system which I very specifically asked them to do. It was a high priority item for me and they told me it wouldn't be a problem. Then the narrative changed. I asked why they didn't install it like I had asked them to and the answer was basically, 'well it wasn't on the bid and we didn't charge you for it'. But, but, but... I asked to include the AC and you told me you would, so what gives? How are you going to make this right? 'Well it wasn't on the bid and we didn't charge you for it'... Ok going nowhere with this one. We settled that matter with them sending me the AC belt and AC compressor mounting bracket (which I have to modify and install myself now). What else, let's see here... They also returned the car to me with part of the wiring harness in disarray so I had to do a little wire management for them. Anything else? Why yes, in fact. They left the idle air control valve inlet completely exposed so for about 250 miles or more I was sucking raw air and dust and who knows what else into my new motor. There should have been a vacuum line routed to the air intake or at the very least a breather filter attached to the inlet. I brought this to their attention and to be fair they did offer to send me breather filter but at this point I already had one on order. No offer for a partial refund, mind you. Anyway, glad I caught it before catastrophic failure occurred. Nice one, guys! Next, if you look at the nice pictures on their website of other gen4 swap examples, you'll see they used a nice quality intake with a good cone filter, proper fittings and an intake tube that has the necessary inlets for the aforementioned vacuum lines. Instead I got a much cheaper and simpler intake with no inlets for vacuum lines and a subpar filter. Fantastic. So we're cutting corners now at my expense. Alright one last thing- and this one's a biggie. They asked me if wanted to use my old exhaust or go for an aftermarket exhaust. I opted for the stock exhaust mainly save money since this swap is not cheap! They said OK. That was the end of the exhaust conversation. Turns out in order for the stock exhaust to mate up with the gen4 downpipe it had to be modified. Modified to the tune of 4 hours labor @ $130/hr totalling $520!!!! That's the same cost as a brand new exhaust! A brand new high performance turbo exhaust with better sound and performance! AND THEY FAILED TO MENTION THIS TO ME! SERIOUSLY! What sucks is I paid the invoice without noticing they slipped this in and when I confronted them later about it they basically told me to go fly a kite. Said I paid the invoice therefore I agreed to it. It wasn't on their bid. I'm still fighting that one as I write this actually. overall a horrible experience. You might want to think twice before giving them your business. Oh, wait hold on just sec, there actually is something else worth mentioning and that is the nickel and diming they do on your final invoice. Much like the exhaust charge, they also added things like "hardware" (whatever that means), they charged me for 8 gallons of gas even though I dropped my car off with more gas than they returned it to me with. They added a fuel pump to the bill which I apparently needed but they didn't tell me about it. A throttle cable, a sensor etc... Just ridiculous. Wish I had a time machine! read more

BEWARE, this place will do everything they can to get your money and vehicle, soo many lies. Once they have it you can forget about communication from RAT2 as it takes weeks to get any responses. Quoted a couple weeks when the vehicle was received, after a month and lots of attempts to get a response they could no longer provide an estimate for completion and it would be done when it got done. After complaints I was told all types of excuses and that most vehicles were with them for 2-5 months and some longer but simply to to deal with it. Funny how that was never mentioned, early discussions they bragged about how quick they complete swaps. Then I was told I was welcome to just do it myself. With all these issues instead of helping they hit you with every charge possible. Zero care for customer service and even less integrity from RAT2. They spend more time trying to lure suckers to using the shop and screwing them over than actually putting in work with existing customers. By the end I legit feared retaliation on my vehicle with how little I could trust what I was being told. read more