I vote for me. Just a little vent here. It starts with my first overhaul. I'm 17 in highschool working part time and making $6.35 an hour. I take out a $4,000 loan and buy a longblock with ported heads (no intake or anything) from Rick Harper. My dad also bought a motor from him at the same time. Upon firing the motor it has a rod knock. I have a preluber and it had 40psi oil pressure before it ever fired. I drive it for a while until it gets so loud I'm afraid to stand near it while idling so out it comes again. My dad's went less than 500 easy miles before wiping out the thrust bearing in a major way (crank counterweights hitting the main webbing). Good thing he never ran it hard, discovered it had a non-turbo crank and he had a 10 second combo. We were basically told to F-off since we're all the way across the country.
Second attempt we drop both motors off at some local guy that was supposed to build great race motors. After 6 months mine is finally done. I started to question this guy when he told me this motor would never make more than 200hp, gapped the rings by eye, and told me my crank was ok as is even though it had huge grooves in most of the rod journals. But I was young and figured he must know more than me. So I fire the motor up and have piston slap. I drove it until it died of a broken TRW just cruising normal down a residential street. This was somewhere around 500 miles later.
Third attempt I built my own. I had to take the crank down to the machine shop 3 times to get clearances right, I even let them use my own micrometer. They lost my front pulley and flywheel and took 4 months for the machine work. This motor went almost 40,000 miles until a friend of mine floored with no wastegate. I had an appointment the next day to have the external gate put on but with a hole in a cylinder I missed my appointment.
Current attempt the motor was dropped off at another highly recommended machine shop. I paid $800 for the work. First thing I notice is the girdle is visibly bowed inward and still not touching all the main caps. When I pulled it off I discovered cracks. Instead of adding the extra shims I supplied they torqued the hell out of it. This made the align bore I paid $100 for no good anymore, also ruined my $400 girdle. So after this guy telling me the girdle is a bad design and how it wasn't his fault he agreed to replace it. I was on the phone or E-mailing Jason Cramer (the maker of the girdle) often to see if the shop had placed an order for a girdle. He was very helpful and it took 3 months for them to pick up the phone to order it. It wasn't until I went to the courthouse and got the papers for small claims court, called them and told them the papers were filled out and getting turned in the next day that I got a notice from Jason saying they had finally placed an order. I got my girdle, took all my stuff to a different machine shop. This guy really is awesome, he built my dad's stage II motor and has built some wicked GNs in the past. He is expensive as hell but worth it. So far what he has come up with is the boring job I had already paid for with the other shop was off, there was only .001 clearance for my JEs. The rod clearances were all over the place, the crank was ground too small so it has to go another .010. Now this guy has had it for nearly a year and still hasn't ordered bearings or rings yet. It's been paid for for quite a while. I don't know what it's going to take to get this thing done.
Second attempt we drop both motors off at some local guy that was supposed to build great race motors. After 6 months mine is finally done. I started to question this guy when he told me this motor would never make more than 200hp, gapped the rings by eye, and told me my crank was ok as is even though it had huge grooves in most of the rod journals. But I was young and figured he must know more than me. So I fire the motor up and have piston slap. I drove it until it died of a broken TRW just cruising normal down a residential street. This was somewhere around 500 miles later.
Third attempt I built my own. I had to take the crank down to the machine shop 3 times to get clearances right, I even let them use my own micrometer. They lost my front pulley and flywheel and took 4 months for the machine work. This motor went almost 40,000 miles until a friend of mine floored with no wastegate. I had an appointment the next day to have the external gate put on but with a hole in a cylinder I missed my appointment.
Current attempt the motor was dropped off at another highly recommended machine shop. I paid $800 for the work. First thing I notice is the girdle is visibly bowed inward and still not touching all the main caps. When I pulled it off I discovered cracks. Instead of adding the extra shims I supplied they torqued the hell out of it. This made the align bore I paid $100 for no good anymore, also ruined my $400 girdle. So after this guy telling me the girdle is a bad design and how it wasn't his fault he agreed to replace it. I was on the phone or E-mailing Jason Cramer (the maker of the girdle) often to see if the shop had placed an order for a girdle. He was very helpful and it took 3 months for them to pick up the phone to order it. It wasn't until I went to the courthouse and got the papers for small claims court, called them and told them the papers were filled out and getting turned in the next day that I got a notice from Jason saying they had finally placed an order. I got my girdle, took all my stuff to a different machine shop. This guy really is awesome, he built my dad's stage II motor and has built some wicked GNs in the past. He is expensive as hell but worth it. So far what he has come up with is the boring job I had already paid for with the other shop was off, there was only .001 clearance for my JEs. The rod clearances were all over the place, the crank was ground too small so it has to go another .010. Now this guy has had it for nearly a year and still hasn't ordered bearings or rings yet. It's been paid for for quite a while. I don't know what it's going to take to get this thing done.
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