your post confused me! Is it tapping or what? Im sorry to hear that you are going to let it go. How are you going to sell it if it doesnt work?

Sounds like something'* wrong that isn't being touched? Maybe the block is bad?

Man that sucks dude. All that work and nothing.


Maybe you can start workin on a Series II engine?

Yeah I dunno what I'm going to do. I've got to prove that someone did it and I don't even know what the hell is happening to cause it. Its confusing as all hell. No driveability issues, idles great, drives fine, I babied it. Even if it shook itself to death it would be the maincaps to go first, not the case as it stands. Detonation would be noticeable. He gave me a bearing he claimed was from my engine, I'm in the process of contacting the manufacturer with the identifying marks for reference. Tomorrow I might have it towed to the dealership for a diagnostic and to make sure all the bearings were replaced properly. I'll have to see whats up from there but honestly I just wanna set it on fire. Not the engines fault but its just not worth dumping more money into....ahh...you know i'm going to change my mind and go at it again...its just so friggin frustrating. Rest assured I'm not letting this slide. Someone is going to court, someone is going to pay, and it sure as hell isn't going to be me again. I'm done playing around with jackass mechanics around here AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Gotta be a total mindset killer, you see it idling outside, and the exact same thing happens.

any word back on what'* going on?

matt

Well today I'm taking it back to him with witness and camera in hand to pull the oil pan. We're going to take the rod cap off and take a look at the bearing. Hopefully that'll tell us whats going wrong. I'm somewhat limited in what I can say right now but I'm confident I'll come out on top one way or another.

good luck man...

matt

Ok so get this. I go up there with my video and digital camera plus a witness. We drop the oil pan and instantly we smell GAS! Oh wow it was almost FULL of gas. Instantly I start suspecting something because as I posted before there were no driveability issues whatsoever, not on startup, not idleing, not acclerating, not cruising, no problems. Would you say if I had a messed up ECU or a really jacked up fuel injector there would be driveability issues? I mean we're talking 1qt oil 1/2qt fuel. After getting over the smell of gas I look at the crank, what do you know he never replaced it. I took some pictures and went home to compare them to what I have. The comparison is on my cardomain page, page 3. Take a look at them and tell me if you think he replaced the crank! We pulled two of the rod bearings and of course the set in the rear looked like crap, the set next to the pump didn't look too bad. This is what he claims from the beginning:

He pulled the crank saw scoring and got a different standard sized crank
Installed with standard bearings
No oil pressure
Installed an oil pump I supplied
3psi oil pressure
Realized the rod caps were off, quoted as saying "some were .10 some were .11" after confrontation he says "Oh they were just, just, just baaaarely off. Not even enough to do anything but I gotta warranty it so I felt I needed to replace it" (Funny, just, just, just baaarely off and not needing different sized bearings accounted for 42psi )
Ordered another crank to accomidate the different sizes
Installed with standard bearings
Correct oil pressure
Drove car and let idle for "7 hours" during which time he ran a scantool on it: Snap-on Modis model. No issues except a lazy o2 sensor and a trippy EGR.
Delivered car

After confronting him with the pictures and other evidence:

"I sent your crank out, got a new one, then I sent that one out and got another one. Who'* to say I didn't just get your original crank back?" I told him the problem with that is if my original crank was bad enough to warrant replacement wouldn't they have had to grind it down to the next size? If it was a standard crank and the score marks were 0.009" deep wouldn't they just make the whole crank .0010" under?? Remember, only two of them were messed up. First it was one, then two haha. He dodged the question and tried changing the subject. Keep in mind we were there for about 4hours so everything got brought up. He couldn't tell me what was going wrong in the first place. When I first took it to him he said I abused it, I denied any abuse. He didn't build the engine, I'm paying him to do a job, where'* my motive to lie about abusing it? Aparently he sticks to it and says it was abused. That was his reasons for not figuring out what went wrong to begin with. Load of crap. So basically if I was to rule out the glaring fact that the crank wasen't replaced here'* what he did: Removed standard crank and standard bearings, replaced with standard crank and standard bearings, sent me out the door. No diagnostics or what he aparently likes to call "speculation". He used that a lot when I asked why he didn't figure out what went wrong to begin with, "Well I could speculate all day, speculation doesn't get you anywhere." I said, "No, its called diagnostics. I had no reason to lie to you, I said I didn't abuse it, why didn't you figure out what really went wrong before sending me out the door with the exact same parts I came in here with? I came in with a standard crank, standard bearings, and two were jacked up, you called it abuse, i denied, you replaced with the same friggin parts and here I am again." This went around for a bit. Sooooo here'* what I'm going to do. I'm deciding if I want to take it to a local dealership and having them pull the crank although its obvious he didn't replace it. I have pictures of the unique numbers on the shaft of the crank. If they match I'm guaranteed 3x the amount of damage done, by state law. Since in this case it was (at this point) $1000 in "repairs" he did I get 3k. I'm going to do my homework and make sure foul play wasent involved. When I took my knocking car back to the original mechanic he sent an oil sample off and it came back with less than 1ppm of fuel, well within the good and I have that paperwork. After that the oil was drained and filter pulled, was never run again. I towed it to this mechanic and he rebuilt the bottom end and after 25miles its full of fuel...hmmm....Oh he also claims to have driven it a little to make sure it ran right, funny since the trip registered 0.0miles. So in doing my homework I got a large amount of the oil from the pan....I just got back from a local laboratory and after talking with all of the tech guys plus the owner they're going to get a think tank together. See its pretty simple. When I got the car finished the first time the tank was nearly empty so wanting to feed it the best fuel I searched everywhere and found the only place in town that carries 94octane. Wouldn't that be some **** if after the barrage of tests I ordered on the oil sample it came back showing 87octane? I'm not going to make any assumptions just yet but we'll have to wait and see. But yeah folks thats where I am right now. Shady mechanics, I swear...Lemme know what you think about the "replaced" crank pictures.

Oh and the silver you see on the installed crank is material taken off during the first rebuild but after the pictures I provided. Interesting side note, when we first dropped the oil pan I played dumb and asked him why it was like that. He said "When I got the crank it had casting problems with it so I went ahead and shaved those off. Its all standard practice" I said "Hmm thats interesting becasue I have pictures at home that match those marks exactly, thats what the first mechanic did." Later he denied it and claimed "I used a really soft pad that just smooths it out, not grinds." I guess when I review the video we took I'll see he was right...yeah...sure....