The (very long) story of my AMW rebuild experience.
01-16-2004, 05:11 PM
#1
Race Car
Thread Starter
UPDATED-(very long) story of my AMW rebuild experience.
I have received a number of requests for info on this, I wrote it a while ago but didn't post it then because I'm not sure I like the way it comes across. The fact that AMW is the vendor is not the point I want to emphasize, the same thing could probably happen with other engine builders if the consumer is not careful and if my putting this information out there can help others make informed purchases and not have the same experience, than some good will have come from this. I do believe that John's intentions were good when he called to offer me a good price on a shortblock, he said he had seen my post asking weather I should fix my car or part it out and didn't like to see 944 owners have to part out a car that they had become attached to. Because he meant well I do not want to trash him on this board, as I said above I am putting this out there so that others in my position will ask the right questions BEFORE this can happen to them, regardless of who they have build their engine.
_____________
The day of the first Rutt’s Hut gathering I noticed I had an oil leak. I took the car to my usual mechanic and he told me it looked like the upper balance shaft housing and possibly also the front main seal but the belts and all would have to come off to find out for sure. I gave him the go-ahead to pull it apart. He called me later that day and told me that the front half of the motor seems to be leaking everywhere, after some discussion we decided that the best thing to do would be to put the belts back on for a compression and leak down test. He found 70% leakdown in the #1 cylinder; blow-by was pressurizing the block and forcing oil out anyplace it could. The estimate was $5500-6000.
I'd called a few local places and didn't like what I heard, one was too busy to even look at it and the rest were in the same range as my shop ($5-6000). Next I heard from AMW (John called me based on my post) and between his price for a stock rebuilt short block and my usual shop doing the labor it would be a little less expensive than my other options and I figured that an AMW engine should be preferable to a local no-name rebuild, so I went for it. It was supposed to take three weeks to get the engine out to me, two weeks to build it and a week to ship it cross-country. I waited five weeks before I started calling on a weekly basis and I got six more weeks of excuses before I got a motor, with my wife complaining to me every week about having already paid the Visa bill for a motor that isn’t even on it’s way yet. The shop doing the work threatened to start charging me storage by then (the car was sitting there for almost 3 month), when I mentioned this to AMW they said they'd make it up to me, after some discussion we agreed on AMW giving me a rebuilt head (installed so as to cut down on the labor bill at the shop) and covering the freight to get the new motor to me. When the short block came a week later (freight collect) there was no head on it, I called again and John told me that the shipper got there a little early so they sent it without the head instead of keeping me waiting any longer, the head would follow and they'd make it up to me by upgrading it to a ported head. When I called the next day for tracking info there was a problem, he had stayed late the previous evening to port a head for me but as he was finishing up he noticed that it was damaged, he promised to send his own spare head "out of the race trailer with just a few break-in laps on it" over night. I also mentioned that when I dropped off the short block at my shop I had realized that he hadn't sent the gasket set to assemble it, John told me it would come with the head. Next day, still no head, so I called again and found out it had not gone out yet, there was a problem with this head too, just a little chip at one of the bolt holes where the cam tower bolts on, no big deal but they wanted to check with me before sending it. I told them it was OK as long as it had no effect on function and they assured me they would happily put it on their own cars. It went out the next morning, second day air instead of overnight, when I got it there was still no gasket set, the exhaust ports were freshly ground and further up the ports was at least 30,000 miles worth of carbon, the combustion chambers looked like a head that had been pulled off a tired old motor. My mechanic commented that the "few laps looked more like a few endurance races" and it was obvious that the head had been ported after the last time it had been in a car, not before. I called back again about the gasket set and found out that AMW was out of them but they'd get one and overnight it, that came second day also IIRC. By now 2 more weeks had passed since the block arrived, remember that the block was sent without the head so I wouldn’t have to wait any longer but the last thing to be sent was the gasket set so nothing could be assembled for these 2 weeks. During this time I sent the receipt for the shipping to AMW’s accountant and received a check for reimbursement.
As my old motor was coming apart we found out that it was in much better condition than we thought, just a collapsed ring in the #1 cylinder. The estimate the shop had given me had included oversize pistons, bore and hone the block, etc., it was a worst-case estimate. I had really only needed rings and a re-seal; even with refreshing the bearings while it was apart it would have come to $3000-3500 and just a couple weeks. I had now been waiting 3 1/2 months. I compared the old block to the new, the old one was still smooth at the top of the cylinder, no ridge, I wish I could say the same thing about the "new" one but at least it wasn’t covered with oil like the old motor. The chip in the head was also a little bigger than expected and the cam tower bolt only caught a thread and a half, extra material needed to be welded on so the hole could be re-drilled and re-tapped.
The motor went together and into the car. It fired right up but was blowing out steam right away, they shut it down and started trying to find the problem, by the time they pulled the #3 plug the cylinder was full of coolant. A borescope showed that it was coming from the top of the cylinder, best case; head gasket, worst case; cracked head, off comes the head. It turns out the head was warped, a lot. I called AMW and John told me that it had never overheated or anything but to have it shaved and send him the bill. He had sent me a check for the shipping (Roadway had charged both of us), so I agreed to it.
The head went to the machine shop and needed .019" shaved to make it flat. This is on top of whatever amount had been removed in the past, it had obviously been milled before. The guy who did it said that it must have really overheated judging from the sound his equipment made while milling it; the aluminum was like granite. He mentioned “over 400 degrees.” The bad news was that he had noticed some cutting oil (or whatever the machine uses) coming from two of the ports while he was working on it. Sure enough, 2 burnt valves!
To save time and money I told the mechanic to take the needed valves from my old head (31,000 miles since it was rebuilt), he took all 8 and while lapping them in found that 1 valve seat was warped (sunken?) and would need to be re-cut.
I told him to just do it and get the car done. A few days later it was done, they were ready to road test it and I could pick it up after work!
It's never that easy.
When I got to the shop the car was on the lift, after I had called they had pulled it outside and left it running for a few minutes to warm up before it's maiden voyage and when they went back out 3-5 minutes later the car was making a nasty ticking noise. We started it up on the lift so I could hear it and as the shop owner was telling me that he thought it sounded like a bad wrist pin, I was already dialing AMW on my cell phone. I told John the story and even held the phone to the oil pan. John told me he would get another short block out to me ASAP and would "work something out on the bill for the labor". That night I got a call from John, he only had one block that was ready to go out the door but it wasn't stock, it had a lightened crank and euro pistons. I had built my car to PCA-NNJRs autox rules for S3 class (stock 924S, 944 and 944S) and knew that I'd get bumped into a higher class but I had some vodka in me (read, an appropriate quantity considering the day I'd had) and had already missed the first two autocrosses of the year and stood little chance of being ready for #3 in two weeks. Even though I didn't want a modified motor I told him to send whatever he had so I could drive my car. The car had gone into the shop in January and it was already May.
The next motor got there a week later, a week before autox #3. I paid the bill for the first engine replacement and the head work before they even started in on the second round, ~$3700 on top of what I paid AMW for the short block and a handful of parts I had supplied (motor mounts etc.) so by now I was in for almost $5800 and the car was not even drivable!
The motor came nicely strapped to a pallet with a box next to it; in the box were the rod bearing caps! A quick call to AMW and I found out that they had been out of rod bearings so they had left off the caps! I could either get the bearings locally or they could send me a set. I told them to send them along with the nuts that hold on the caps. The mechanic and I looked at the caps and then at the rods themselves, they hadn't been marked so that the correct cap could be put back on the correct rod. Obviously the blue cap went with the blue rod but the other 3 were not as easy. On further examination, we found that 2 of the caps were marked in pencil or something so that under the right light you could just make it out, that and the blue one solved the problem. A call to AMW (on speed dial by now) later, John was telling me that the rod getting hot enough to turn blue was not a problem and the fact that it felt different when you ran a finger across it (not smooth) wasn't a big deal but if having it machined would make me feel better he'd work with me on that bill too.
Once we got the first motor apart, the failure was obvious. The #3 cylinder had a huge gouge where the wrist pin had been embedding itself. The retainer was not found in the oil pan. On further inspection we also noticed that the pistons were mismatched, the tops were all the same but the undersides weren't, #1 was different than the other 3.
The motor went back together smoothly after that, it took a little longer since this motor didn't even come with an oil pump or balance shafts so more stuff had to be swapped over. The only real assembly glitches were the balance shaft covers that wouldn't go on once the shafts were installed (They came with the upper and lower switched so they'd go on with no shafts in them but didn't fit once the shafts were in place) and a problem with a boss on the block that Porsche was nice enough to put a spare next to it that could be drilled and tapped. A week after autocross #3 I picked up my car, it vibrated from 4200 to 4800 rpm and made much less power above 5000 rpm than a stock motor but at least I could drive…. for 4 or 5 miles at a time before the oil pressure would start to drop. With this bill I was only out another $3k!
Back to the shop it went for a new oil pressure sender, it seemed to be leaking and the pressure gauge they had hooked up showed good pressure so it might have been an intermittent failure on the part of the sender. The next day the oil pressure was dropping again, I only have a 4-mile commute so I could use the car to and from work without the pressure getting below spec, so it stayed that way for a month. I was able to drive my car, just not for any distance. I put the car in the shop while I was on vacation and missed autocross #4 and #5 while I was away, the oil pressure relief valve was sticking but only after it was fully warmed up, there goes a few hundred dollars more but I'm only up to ~$9000 and the car is back to normal, well normal except the vibration, the lack of high rpm power and the oil leak that didn't go away with the new oil sender.
Since then the shop has rechecked the balance shaft belt twice and it is not the source of the vibration. The best explanation I have heard is that even if the crank is static balanced, it may not be dynamic balanced and that 14 lbs may just be too much to remove from a crank without lightening the pistons and rods. I think the vibration improved as the engine broke in but maybe I'm just getting used to it. Some high rpm power was found when the exhaust fell off at autocross #7, a high flow cat was installed and now the car pulls to almost 6000 before the power drops off. My best guess is that the increased compression and head work are better matched to the exhaust back pressure and the motor can breathe a little better now, I may even try to get a little more out of it with a cat-back once I knock the Visa balance down a bit!
Speaking of the Visa balance, the car is back in the shop again. The oil leak has to be dealt with, I stopped by today to visit it, the front of the motor is all apart and the leak has been found, the oil pump is the cause but neither I nor the mechanic can explain it. It's leaking at the mating surface where the pump casting meets the block, closest to the shaft (inside the "C" shape). We think the casting may be slightly warped but can't explain that either.
I'm over $9000 into this and still have this bill coming. It's been 10 months, I missed the 3 DEs I had wanted to do this year and I missed 6 autocrosses. Speaking of autocross, I've been moved from S3v class where I did pretty well, to M3v class where I get to run against Adrial's modded turbo S and an 1800 lb (gutted, no windshield, etc) 914 with a (~170 hp) 2.4 liter 4. I still have the dead block and I'm tired of tripping over it, I've been trying to get it shipped back for a while now but AMW hasn't return my calls or E-mail to set up the shipping.
I'm not looking to screw AMW with this thread, I hope someone can benefit from story, I've learned alot from it and I think John did too. I just think it's a story worth telling.
___________
As I said, this was written a while ago, around the time of the "Anderson? You've created a monster" thread. I had posted to that thread and John PMed me to express his regrets about the way things had gone and asked if there was anything further he could do. I typed a very long reply and found out that PM has a 2000 character limit. Since I couldn't send it By PM, I Emailed it to John at the address on the AMW site. It never came back but someone else had mentioned that he had been having problems with his Email so I PMed him and he replied that he had not received it and he gave me another address. I cut and pasted the first Email to a word document and sent it as an attachment. John replied that he couldn't open the attachment, "or is it something I don't want to see." I cut and pasted the whole thing to as new Email, I haven't heard from him since.
The oil leak has since been fixed, the oil pump housing was cracked, another $700+. The vibration has improved with time (still there but not as bad), I can't explain it, maybe something had to break-in. The total came to almost $10,000 for a job that should never have gone over $5000 and what should have been a month turned into more than ten
.
_____________
The day of the first Rutt’s Hut gathering I noticed I had an oil leak. I took the car to my usual mechanic and he told me it looked like the upper balance shaft housing and possibly also the front main seal but the belts and all would have to come off to find out for sure. I gave him the go-ahead to pull it apart. He called me later that day and told me that the front half of the motor seems to be leaking everywhere, after some discussion we decided that the best thing to do would be to put the belts back on for a compression and leak down test. He found 70% leakdown in the #1 cylinder; blow-by was pressurizing the block and forcing oil out anyplace it could. The estimate was $5500-6000.
I'd called a few local places and didn't like what I heard, one was too busy to even look at it and the rest were in the same range as my shop ($5-6000). Next I heard from AMW (John called me based on my post) and between his price for a stock rebuilt short block and my usual shop doing the labor it would be a little less expensive than my other options and I figured that an AMW engine should be preferable to a local no-name rebuild, so I went for it. It was supposed to take three weeks to get the engine out to me, two weeks to build it and a week to ship it cross-country. I waited five weeks before I started calling on a weekly basis and I got six more weeks of excuses before I got a motor, with my wife complaining to me every week about having already paid the Visa bill for a motor that isn’t even on it’s way yet. The shop doing the work threatened to start charging me storage by then (the car was sitting there for almost 3 month), when I mentioned this to AMW they said they'd make it up to me, after some discussion we agreed on AMW giving me a rebuilt head (installed so as to cut down on the labor bill at the shop) and covering the freight to get the new motor to me. When the short block came a week later (freight collect) there was no head on it, I called again and John told me that the shipper got there a little early so they sent it without the head instead of keeping me waiting any longer, the head would follow and they'd make it up to me by upgrading it to a ported head. When I called the next day for tracking info there was a problem, he had stayed late the previous evening to port a head for me but as he was finishing up he noticed that it was damaged, he promised to send his own spare head "out of the race trailer with just a few break-in laps on it" over night. I also mentioned that when I dropped off the short block at my shop I had realized that he hadn't sent the gasket set to assemble it, John told me it would come with the head. Next day, still no head, so I called again and found out it had not gone out yet, there was a problem with this head too, just a little chip at one of the bolt holes where the cam tower bolts on, no big deal but they wanted to check with me before sending it. I told them it was OK as long as it had no effect on function and they assured me they would happily put it on their own cars. It went out the next morning, second day air instead of overnight, when I got it there was still no gasket set, the exhaust ports were freshly ground and further up the ports was at least 30,000 miles worth of carbon, the combustion chambers looked like a head that had been pulled off a tired old motor. My mechanic commented that the "few laps looked more like a few endurance races" and it was obvious that the head had been ported after the last time it had been in a car, not before. I called back again about the gasket set and found out that AMW was out of them but they'd get one and overnight it, that came second day also IIRC. By now 2 more weeks had passed since the block arrived, remember that the block was sent without the head so I wouldn’t have to wait any longer but the last thing to be sent was the gasket set so nothing could be assembled for these 2 weeks. During this time I sent the receipt for the shipping to AMW’s accountant and received a check for reimbursement.
As my old motor was coming apart we found out that it was in much better condition than we thought, just a collapsed ring in the #1 cylinder. The estimate the shop had given me had included oversize pistons, bore and hone the block, etc., it was a worst-case estimate. I had really only needed rings and a re-seal; even with refreshing the bearings while it was apart it would have come to $3000-3500 and just a couple weeks. I had now been waiting 3 1/2 months. I compared the old block to the new, the old one was still smooth at the top of the cylinder, no ridge, I wish I could say the same thing about the "new" one but at least it wasn’t covered with oil like the old motor. The chip in the head was also a little bigger than expected and the cam tower bolt only caught a thread and a half, extra material needed to be welded on so the hole could be re-drilled and re-tapped.
The motor went together and into the car. It fired right up but was blowing out steam right away, they shut it down and started trying to find the problem, by the time they pulled the #3 plug the cylinder was full of coolant. A borescope showed that it was coming from the top of the cylinder, best case; head gasket, worst case; cracked head, off comes the head. It turns out the head was warped, a lot. I called AMW and John told me that it had never overheated or anything but to have it shaved and send him the bill. He had sent me a check for the shipping (Roadway had charged both of us), so I agreed to it.
The head went to the machine shop and needed .019" shaved to make it flat. This is on top of whatever amount had been removed in the past, it had obviously been milled before. The guy who did it said that it must have really overheated judging from the sound his equipment made while milling it; the aluminum was like granite. He mentioned “over 400 degrees.” The bad news was that he had noticed some cutting oil (or whatever the machine uses) coming from two of the ports while he was working on it. Sure enough, 2 burnt valves!
To save time and money I told the mechanic to take the needed valves from my old head (31,000 miles since it was rebuilt), he took all 8 and while lapping them in found that 1 valve seat was warped (sunken?) and would need to be re-cut.
I told him to just do it and get the car done. A few days later it was done, they were ready to road test it and I could pick it up after work!
It's never that easy.
When I got to the shop the car was on the lift, after I had called they had pulled it outside and left it running for a few minutes to warm up before it's maiden voyage and when they went back out 3-5 minutes later the car was making a nasty ticking noise. We started it up on the lift so I could hear it and as the shop owner was telling me that he thought it sounded like a bad wrist pin, I was already dialing AMW on my cell phone. I told John the story and even held the phone to the oil pan. John told me he would get another short block out to me ASAP and would "work something out on the bill for the labor". That night I got a call from John, he only had one block that was ready to go out the door but it wasn't stock, it had a lightened crank and euro pistons. I had built my car to PCA-NNJRs autox rules for S3 class (stock 924S, 944 and 944S) and knew that I'd get bumped into a higher class but I had some vodka in me (read, an appropriate quantity considering the day I'd had) and had already missed the first two autocrosses of the year and stood little chance of being ready for #3 in two weeks. Even though I didn't want a modified motor I told him to send whatever he had so I could drive my car. The car had gone into the shop in January and it was already May.
The next motor got there a week later, a week before autox #3. I paid the bill for the first engine replacement and the head work before they even started in on the second round, ~$3700 on top of what I paid AMW for the short block and a handful of parts I had supplied (motor mounts etc.) so by now I was in for almost $5800 and the car was not even drivable!
The motor came nicely strapped to a pallet with a box next to it; in the box were the rod bearing caps! A quick call to AMW and I found out that they had been out of rod bearings so they had left off the caps! I could either get the bearings locally or they could send me a set. I told them to send them along with the nuts that hold on the caps. The mechanic and I looked at the caps and then at the rods themselves, they hadn't been marked so that the correct cap could be put back on the correct rod. Obviously the blue cap went with the blue rod but the other 3 were not as easy. On further examination, we found that 2 of the caps were marked in pencil or something so that under the right light you could just make it out, that and the blue one solved the problem. A call to AMW (on speed dial by now) later, John was telling me that the rod getting hot enough to turn blue was not a problem and the fact that it felt different when you ran a finger across it (not smooth) wasn't a big deal but if having it machined would make me feel better he'd work with me on that bill too.
Once we got the first motor apart, the failure was obvious. The #3 cylinder had a huge gouge where the wrist pin had been embedding itself. The retainer was not found in the oil pan. On further inspection we also noticed that the pistons were mismatched, the tops were all the same but the undersides weren't, #1 was different than the other 3.
The motor went back together smoothly after that, it took a little longer since this motor didn't even come with an oil pump or balance shafts so more stuff had to be swapped over. The only real assembly glitches were the balance shaft covers that wouldn't go on once the shafts were installed (They came with the upper and lower switched so they'd go on with no shafts in them but didn't fit once the shafts were in place) and a problem with a boss on the block that Porsche was nice enough to put a spare next to it that could be drilled and tapped. A week after autocross #3 I picked up my car, it vibrated from 4200 to 4800 rpm and made much less power above 5000 rpm than a stock motor but at least I could drive…. for 4 or 5 miles at a time before the oil pressure would start to drop. With this bill I was only out another $3k!
Back to the shop it went for a new oil pressure sender, it seemed to be leaking and the pressure gauge they had hooked up showed good pressure so it might have been an intermittent failure on the part of the sender. The next day the oil pressure was dropping again, I only have a 4-mile commute so I could use the car to and from work without the pressure getting below spec, so it stayed that way for a month. I was able to drive my car, just not for any distance. I put the car in the shop while I was on vacation and missed autocross #4 and #5 while I was away, the oil pressure relief valve was sticking but only after it was fully warmed up, there goes a few hundred dollars more but I'm only up to ~$9000 and the car is back to normal, well normal except the vibration, the lack of high rpm power and the oil leak that didn't go away with the new oil sender.
Since then the shop has rechecked the balance shaft belt twice and it is not the source of the vibration. The best explanation I have heard is that even if the crank is static balanced, it may not be dynamic balanced and that 14 lbs may just be too much to remove from a crank without lightening the pistons and rods. I think the vibration improved as the engine broke in but maybe I'm just getting used to it. Some high rpm power was found when the exhaust fell off at autocross #7, a high flow cat was installed and now the car pulls to almost 6000 before the power drops off. My best guess is that the increased compression and head work are better matched to the exhaust back pressure and the motor can breathe a little better now, I may even try to get a little more out of it with a cat-back once I knock the Visa balance down a bit!
Speaking of the Visa balance, the car is back in the shop again. The oil leak has to be dealt with, I stopped by today to visit it, the front of the motor is all apart and the leak has been found, the oil pump is the cause but neither I nor the mechanic can explain it. It's leaking at the mating surface where the pump casting meets the block, closest to the shaft (inside the "C" shape). We think the casting may be slightly warped but can't explain that either.
I'm over $9000 into this and still have this bill coming. It's been 10 months, I missed the 3 DEs I had wanted to do this year and I missed 6 autocrosses. Speaking of autocross, I've been moved from S3v class where I did pretty well, to M3v class where I get to run against Adrial's modded turbo S and an 1800 lb (gutted, no windshield, etc) 914 with a (~170 hp) 2.4 liter 4. I still have the dead block and I'm tired of tripping over it, I've been trying to get it shipped back for a while now but AMW hasn't return my calls or E-mail to set up the shipping.
I'm not looking to screw AMW with this thread, I hope someone can benefit from story, I've learned alot from it and I think John did too. I just think it's a story worth telling.
___________
As I said, this was written a while ago, around the time of the "Anderson? You've created a monster" thread. I had posted to that thread and John PMed me to express his regrets about the way things had gone and asked if there was anything further he could do. I typed a very long reply and found out that PM has a 2000 character limit. Since I couldn't send it By PM, I Emailed it to John at the address on the AMW site. It never came back but someone else had mentioned that he had been having problems with his Email so I PMed him and he replied that he had not received it and he gave me another address. I cut and pasted the first Email to a word document and sent it as an attachment. John replied that he couldn't open the attachment, "or is it something I don't want to see." I cut and pasted the whole thing to as new Email, I haven't heard from him since.
The oil leak has since been fixed, the oil pump housing was cracked, another $700+. The vibration has improved with time (still there but not as bad), I can't explain it, maybe something had to break-in. The total came to almost $10,000 for a job that should never have gone over $5000 and what should have been a month turned into more than ten
.
Last edited by Dave; 02-23-2004 at 02:45 PM.
01-16-2004, 05:33 PM
#2
Pro
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: N. Virginia
Posts: 549
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Sorry for your experience. There definitely a lesson to be learned....for me, its that when it's major work that alot of things can go wrong in, either do the job your self slowly, or get a reputable, LOCAL shop to do the work...all of it so that it can be covered under warrenty.
01-16-2004, 05:53 PM
#5
Burning Brakes
Dave, I remember you telling me this story that first time at Starbucks, and it's still amazing. I hope you get all your current issues solved so you can run at all the autocrosses next year. Perhaps a few DEs as well? I'm sure you'll feel better about the whole thing when you can thrash the car around on the track.
01-16-2004, 06:03 PM
#7
Race Director
Holy crap, you are a very calm individual. With all the stories Ive heard of said individual, I would have been posting the truth months ago 
But to get bumped out of a class that you were in would have really sealed the deal. Just cause "thats what I have laying around" puh-leaze.
But to get bumped out of a class that you were in would have really sealed the deal. Just cause "thats what I have laying around" puh-leaze.
Trending Topics
01-16-2004, 07:35 PM
#10
I used to kid you that you should have bought my old coupe when I had it for sale-in hindsight it would've been the best move. Maria is a saint, my wife would've been roasting me and JA.
01-16-2004, 07:36 PM
#11
Done With Sidepatch
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
I'm impressed by your patience. Hopefully a refund is coming your way from AMW.
Makes me glad I rebuilt my own motor. If anything screws up, I look in the mirror and blame it on him. Then I swill a beer and fix it.
Best of luck the rest of the way Dave...You deserve it!
Makes me glad I rebuilt my own motor. If anything screws up, I look in the mirror and blame it on him. Then I swill a beer and fix it.
Best of luck the rest of the way Dave...You deserve it!
01-16-2004, 09:18 PM
#12
For what you went through Dave, Anderson should pay you back the entire 10 grand. What a nightmare. I just don't understand how someone who has (presumably) built many 944 engines can make so many mistakes. I rebuilt my 944 engine 13 years and 140K miles ago (had a local shop do the head) and it still runs great (my first and only 944 rebuild). What you describe is pure incompetence. The man should be ashamed! I can't imagine that he'll be in business much longer.
01-16-2004, 09:45 PM
#13
Addict
Rennlist Member
Rennlist Member
I hardly know what to say about this. So many things can go wrong and did. Scares me a little to fire up my rebuild, although I know I took every precaution and then some.
Mike C. : Amatures built the ark; Professionals built the Titanic
Mike C. : Amatures built the ark; Professionals built the Titanic
