No and thats actually to my benefit. As you can read from the posts his "warranty", if you wanna call it that, had 1000 escape routes and loop holes that would keep him from being liable. For all I know he wrote that up after the fact and sent it when he knew it was going to fail. Convenient this covers "Oil starvation for ANY REASON and Bearing damage" as things he is not liable for. Well he starved the engine of oil and it resulted in bearing damage. This guy is a real character. Bankruptcy or not I'm going to press on with the litigation. I've been studying up on it and it'll hurt him a lot worse than me if he does it. He can only keep $5000 worth of his tools and either has to buy back or sell the rest. I KNOW there is way more than $5000 in tools in his shop. Plus a bunch of other stuff, like his other car, has to be sold. Hey even if I don't get a dime he'll be out several grand so it makes me wonder if he'* bluffing. I'm going to call his lawyer Monday and see what he has to think of all this and depending on that conversation I'm going straight up to the court house to file it with small claims court. This should be interesting. I appreciate the offer, I am planning on using posts I had made earlier saying how I was intending on pampering it and that I would not use nitrous on it and my involvement in this club as grounds for the common knowledge that you can't just build an engine and go hauling *** all around town, it needs to be broke in softly and I'm not going to risk a nearly $10,000 total investment on 100miles of fun. Ya know to him its just another engine he built but it was my main mode of transportation and a very large investment, I would never have gotten crazy with it. I dunno, we'll just have to see how it goes. I'll keep you guys updated as things proceed.

This may be beating a dead horse, but get a lawyer (shudder) to verify that his "Warranty" is even legal. Your state will have laws as to what is or isn't his fault when it comes to damage to the engine.

just what exactly has to be replaced in the engine? Do you have to take it apart piece by piece and check every part or what? Dammit, you were so close...

If you need help with anything fell free to ask.

Aiiight well I went into a local shop and talked to the guy there about all my worries on what could be wrong and one thing that came up was the placement of the rod caps. On the caps they have a diagonal knotch in them that is supposed to face to the front. He put them all back on facing eachother, 3 in 3 out. That forces the whole assembly to shift and grind it all down. I said "So whats the worst case scenerio?" "A whole new engine". This thing could get uglier than I imagined. Its getting towed here in about 20min down to Auto Authority, a better established company that has dealt with 3.8'* more. He says he'll have a diagnosis in about a day but it seems aparent that this problem coupled with the no oil issue may have caused some serious damage. I called his lawyer today but he was in court this morning, I left my name and a message so we'll see what his lawyer has to say. Bankruptcy or not this thing is going to court, or a hefty out of court settlement which doesn't seem likely. Either way I guess I'll know probably tomorrow what the extent of the damage is. Luckily it didn't run TOO long with the caps on wrong so it may just take new rings, bearings, a crank regrind, and a rod cap recondition. hehe Like how I say "just take"? He says if its salvagable and thats what it needs I'm looking at $2k towards the higher end. I have a plan of attack on getting restitution for this I'll get into later though. But yea, he says it'll take about 2 weeks to get done, lots better than 5months huh?

Un...freaking...believable... How do these types get into the gene pool?? The "Darwinian Process" is definitely not taking hold here...Good thing you constantly posted here, though...time stamps will help.

Lol.. we can solve the whole darwin theory hiccup thing.... Good luck man i hope you get this resolved soon!

Ill cover that part...

when we had the upper intake go on our bonnie they told us it could possibly be a total engine replacement too. (yea, yea, totally different problem, but the concept is the same). Turns out it was only about $1100, compared to $5000+ for a new engine. The point of the story is, these suckers are pretty hard to kill, mine had 137k miles when the intake went, and yours had all new, higher quality parts. Dont give up yet, these babies are stronger than most of people give them credit for.

He isn't an engine builder, that'* the problem!

Ok there'* my bad joke for the day (or this thread, there might be others out there) i'm going to bed...