We definitely made some errors on this build. It's humbling and embarrassing to be chastised publicly.
We've built north of 100 200's over the past two years. I've made a lot of friends and relationships and hopefully that will continue for a long time. I personally supervise each one, I am intimately familiar with any issue that may happen after the fact. I can't speak for every shop, but I would assume from time to time, mistake(s) are made. Even in our service shop that writes 45k repair orders a year, even with our master techs, mistakes happen, and the right thing to do is to own it and apologize and sometimes you can make a friend and sometimes you will be written-off forever.
As mentioned in this OPs post, we did mount the rock lights in a vulnerable (to rock scraping) area on the sliders, we corrected by fabricating custom mounts using existing frame holes. We tack welded the holes to fill, polished-to-smooth metal, painted with matching paint per the manufacture.
As mentioned in other posts on Mud, we use vendors for various parts of our builds. DSI (4WP) Indy, is one of them. It would be inaccurate to say that they "do our builds" because they don't. But they do do some things such as non-OEM suspension installation and rarely (but in this case) slider installation. They also help with misc other things that fit their wheel-house. I have fully disclosed this on Mud and made no secret that we use their wholesale arm them for the simple reason that they offer a 6-yr/80k warranty unconditional parts/labor warranty on any work they do on a new vehicle. This limits exposure to my enterprise in the event something failed or was done improperly. This is particularly important because Toyota strictly prohibits lifting any vehicle with (Toyota Safety Sense) TSS. Toyota is released of all liability when the height is adjusted. The DSI warranty is the only insurance product on the market to my knowledge that picks up that liability.
Dealers sub-out lots of things that people may not be aware are not done in-house (i.e. paint, dent repair, windshields, wheel repair, paint film/coatings, remote starters, window tint, hitches, bed liners, etc.). Similarly to a dentist subbing out his crowns to a company that "does crowns" or your general contractor subbing out a roof, drywall, paint, plumber, electrician, etc to the appropriate vendor as their specialty. I feel terrible that the OP felt lied to, that was not the intention in any way.
At the end of the day, we did fail him. As noted in the OPs threat, the evap canister was not mounted correctly and the sliders were over torqued (which did not damage the frame). I consulted the manufacture of the sliders and worked with his local repair shop to remedy (both which are experts). The metal has a memory and the frame was restored to proper shape when uninstalled/reinstalled.
I believe that a few switched were reversed, which were corrected easily. The biggest issue was the LRA / evap canister issue. The OP states of a gas smell, that I can't comment on too much because the tank was reinstalled /inspected at another shop.
As the OP states: I have paid every invoice in-full, plus additional 4-hour inspection of every component of the build. I've apologized privately and again publicly right here / right now.
There are quite a few of them (all using existing holes) and the thought is to spread out the load across many points, instead of few sleeved holes.
