hey et,
I hear ya, we've all been through the same crap before, i'm primarily just a lotus owner wanting people to have cool stuff, this isn't my day job so i get to be a lot fussier over which kits i work on and which i don't.
as for the picking fights/stone throw, i don't see it like that, its a valid concern, so i'll do what i can to address it.
first the 200 kits is actually in reference to the SC kits, not the turbo car isn't actually a kit thats sold, you can recreate it as we post all the details on how to do it.
some of the cars are tracked pretty heavily, i have at least 4 cars in rally and endurance racing by professional race car drivers on professional circuits, the cars do nothing but go on track day in day out. rally is pretty tough on the cars.
the rest are basically anywhere from heavy competitive use in events like the lotus challenge, there are quite a lot of my tunes running in that series, AJ's car is probably the heaviest modified and he's very quick certainly uses the car as its supposed to be, down to the guy just tootling around going to the shops and back.
in some ways the turbo's a little easier, in others harder, the hard parts are usually the machining and such but thats not the bit i get involved in, the tuning really isn't that complicated, yes its more work than the SC kits because of the varying boost, but its all known stuff and i do work with some excellent tuners with decades of professional experience.
franks car is extremely well sorted, and he is one of the pickiest guys you'll ever meet when it comes to getting the car sorted, stuff i don't even notice he has me sort out, i spent an entire day getting the idle perfected on his car one time, we dyno tune, street tune, rinse and repeat, the engineering on the kit is really well done too, lots of attention to detail, again he's much more picky than anyone else i've ever worked with and he does have the experience to be able to spot and sort problems out, i've been around a lot when he's working with the fabricators watching all the, redo this, that and this that goes on, which results in it just being excellent quality.
he's relentless in his quest for the pefect setup, i thought the old SC car was fanatastic, and now its gone and been replaced by the turbo which anyone who's been out in it is awed by how good it is, and the good thing about him is, if anything gets broken he posts about it, theres no secretive emailing back and forth or obscurity on data, its all posted out in the open, so you know exactly what its going through in order to get it built..
if you ever hang out with us during a tuning session, you'll see its fairly intense stuff, we dont' get to leave til its perfected or the dyno throws us out, which has happened often
unfortunately the reality is people just don't want to spend the kind of money you need to develop a bespoke setup like his, it costs a lot in time and parts, paying for the wrong ones, and the replacements and the dyno time etc, him and john have split costs on a lot of it, but to my knowledge john is the only one to really do it with him, he's shouldering the rest.
so it ends up being a balancing act, the market is very price sensitive so if you want to build a kit thats OEM quality or better, it costs too much to sell, it requires a ton of RnD and most people just want to wait until someone else does all the work and go off of that, but thats whats so great about what franks done on the turbo car, he's given out all of the information you need to recreate that kit, who does it, where to get it, how much it costs, whats needed, what can be cut back on etc.
I'm not really aware of kits that'll warranty a motor, the superchargers/turbo is usually warrantied by the OEM, like magnusson for instance, but they clause out all the parts they know break, the SC carries a reasonably good warranty since it just doesn't really break.
Simplest reasons being that
(a) you'd need to know the quality of the motor it was being installed into, or have a lot of motors available to you cheaply and a network of mechanics to do the work, ie the oem.
(b) know that the installer was doing it properly.
(c) know that the setup was being properly maintained.
i've hit all three of these at one point or another.
unfortunately very few aftermarkets have that sort of setup, the kits would be just too expensive because there just isn't the volume of sales available, the only reason i've invested so much time into the ecu is because i'm practically OCD about reverse engineering it, and i have one of the cars.
but if you're serious about a turbo kit i'd certainly recommend you talk to frank about his, he'll be happy to help you out, and it is a well done kit.