Universal Manufacturers

I was pretty wary about getting a place in Honolulu to do some modifications to my oil pan because I have seen a lot of shoddy work done before. There are very few places with any information listed online and even fewer that have reasonably good reviews. UM has pretty good reviews so it was one of the two places I contacted.
Most of these reviews on here mention their high cost so I was pleasantly surprised to be quoted about half of what the other place quoted me. I liked the information I found about the other place but couldn’t justify the incredible cost over going with UM.
I talked to Taylor Hong at UM about my needs and sent him an email detailing everything with pictures. I brought my pan in on a Friday and he had it finished by the following Wednesday. I was quite impressed with the turnaround time and it was finished within the four business days that he had quoted me. This was a first for me, as every single time I have had a shop do work for me, the quoted time was usually, at minimum, half of the turnaround working time.
I wanted a section of my oil pan cut out and replaced with a piece of 16 gauge sheet steel to make clearance for my headers. I also wanted the sensor bung that was on the cut-​out section to be relocated to an adjacent part of the pan.
Upon receipt of the pan, the welding looked very good with no undercut or porosity and the heat input looked acceptable. The bead profile was very consistent and penetration was 100% through most of the weld. I could tell that the person that welded it was experienced.
The only problem with their work was that the bung was welded in to the same place it was originally. While they did a good job on that weld, The sensor that is supposed to be installed there will not work in that position. I emailed Taylor about it later that day and had an email back within an hour. He didn’t hassle me or anything about it and just apologized and asked me to bring it back in. I brought it in the next day and they had the pan finished about six hours later. It is now in the correct position and works great.
I would have given them 4 stars for the mistake they made, but because they were so easy to deal with and corrected it in a few hours, I feel they deserve 5 stars.

Fabrication is simply not cheap any way you spin it. But I’ve had good work and customer service every time. I’m a sailor and have projects intermittently related to my yacht.
The front office is very friendly and attentive… they acknowledge you when you walk into the office.
Taylor is one of the owners and helped me tremendously this past week. One of the other estimators that I talked to seemed like he just wasn’t as attentive to my needs.
I’ve had a stainless piano hinge modified and a patch put on my 18′ aluminum boom along with some other little stuff.
I’d recommend them to anyone. But make sure you leave there knowing that you communicated exactly what you need done so you’re not disappointed when you return to pick up your merchandise.

I’m not sure what happened to these guys but they have definitely gone down hill. I took in some parts to have duplicated. Even though they had the original to compare to, the result was completely off. They re-​worked the fabrication and gave them back. The parts were still not right. Third time, they delivered something that was close, not exact, but only CLOSE. The only ever reworked the original fabrication, so god only knows what kind of work hardening the material has undergone getting to the end result.
On another project the item fabricated didn’t even match the specified dimensions. This wasn’t anything complicated, just a rectangular bar. They reworked the bar to try to bring it down to spec and completely failed. The result was crooked and badly made.
I talked with three other people who had taken parts to Universal. All had similar experience. Delivery was slow, and the parts were not right the first time and had to be re-​worked. One part took 6 weeks to be returned in spec, the original quote was 1 week.
I don’t mind paying a premium to get a quality part, but Universal is charging a premium and delivering poor results.

Well these guys really look like they know what they are doing. How do I know? I went with a few other people and we were taken on a company tour. Some of their machines were AMAZING! Amazing as in, you probably won’t see this on the island. They have a water cutter, and computer guided laser cutter etc. (quite impressive).
Other services they provide is material sales. The scraps from their previous projects are still extremely good pieces of material that can certainly be used for smaller or personal projects. Why buy more than you need?
Consider these guys, they know what they are doing.

This place is awesome they make anything to do with metal. not cheap but they can do anything

Had a metal drain fabricated. 16 feet long, 18 inches wide in 5 sections. They did a great job and David even delivered them to my home in K-​Bay.

I needed a stainless steel drawer pull duplicated to match the existing ones that I have. David and the guys did such a great job! You cant even tell the old ones from the new ones. I never Unilocaled before but this was worth my time. Great service in a timely manor and best of all beautiful work.