Problems with fresh 455 rebuild, machine shop

If the seals are properly installed I've seldom had an issue with out doing anything to the crank. If it gives another level of confidence, then the hash marks can be smoothed out some with 400 emery.

 

You absolutely should remove the car from your shop today! You already know what is going to happen next. I have run several business including KENNE BELL PERFORMANCE. We NEVER used corroded bolts or cleaned them, bent bolts, I'm sure. A corroded timing cover, that oil pump keeps the engine alive!!! I would remind the owner again of the bent and corroded bolts, oil leaks, corroded cover, lousy paint job. It's clear from the outside what the inside looks like. You are not a jerk if you refuse to reinstall or be blamed for a piece of garbage someone else threw together.

 

Sounds like the machine shop is afraid of a lawsuit and keeping the risk to a minimum. Some people sue in a heartbeat; maybe they have been burned before. Lawsuits have a way of shutting people up. Step away, slowly, quietly.....

 

The car is is at the machine shop that built the engine, not in my possession. The owner of the vehicle and I decided it would be best to give the machine shop the opportunity to check it out while still in the car, so they can see it run, can check the oil pressure, so they can do whatever they wanted to do. Rather than continue to pay me for my diagnosis and potentially jeopardize his warranty, we agreed that letting them check it out would be the prudent move.

In hindsight, I should have at least checked the oil pressure with another gauge first, and drained the oil and cut open the filter myself first. I wish that I had done this, but at the end of the day, I feel that I should be able to count on the engine builder to make an honest assessment. This is a shop that has been in business for 61 years, has been passed down through at least two generations, and has an excellent reputation around town.

As for stopping work when I saw that it was leaking coolant.. I did stop, and called the machine shop to see what they wanted to do about it. All he told me was to just pull the one leaking bolt, slather it up with thread sealant and screw it back in. Disgraceful. I told them I would do no such thing, that the water pump needed to come off to inspect the gasket, as well as drain the coolant so I can properly clean those holes. They wanted no part of that, and in fact the only thing they offered was to give me another water pump gasket. It was clear they would take no responsibility for it, nor would they reimburse the owner of the vehicle for my time that he now needs to pay for. In that situation, with as yet no specific reason to believe the internals of the engine were going to be a problem, I saw no benefit in trying to force the machine shop into fixing it right, nor did either of us trust them to fix it right, and the owner of the vehicle seemed confident that he would get them to make him whole after the fact, so I proceeded.

As for being afraid of a lawsuit.. they should be! This is not a situation where they might get burned, but quite the opposite, and they know it. They're burning the hell out of a customer who doesn't know any better, and of course they're going to do whatever they can to cover their asses. Judging by this experience, if they've been "burned" by a lawsuit before, they very likely deserved it.

They only have three yelp reviews strangely, with only one very generic sounding positive review, and two more specific negative reviews. I'm not sure how they only have three reviews, despite being the biggest name in town, having been in business 61 years. That seems a little fishy to me.

 

Oh absolutely. This is not by any means the first time I've gotten involved in a dispute with another shop/business on someone else's behalf, but this is the first time I've been absolutely stonewalled from the start. In the last year and a half, I've persued and successfully gotten full refunds back for two other customers who were completely screwed by other shops. Over 15+ years in this business in two different states, I've never heard one person try to claim any kind of customer privacy issue. Talk about absurd.

I sincerely hope for his sake that it goes well for him the second time around, and that they give him back a quality finished product. Sadly, I have little confidence that will actually happen. But, with the machine shop being in possession of the whole car now and having taking on responsibility for the entire project, largely outside of the customer's view, I feel very confident that the customer will never learn of any more problems going forward, but will only suffer through delay after delay after delay. Hypothetically speaking, if they put it together wrong again, will they tell the customer? Hell no, they'll just keep delaying, using any number of excuses to buy themselves more time. All the customer will know is that he still doesn't have his car, he still owes them more and more money, and the machine shop will be laughing about what is surely just another in a long history of screwjobs they've perpetrated.

 

I'm betting that at this point you regret not taking that left at Albakoikee
Ignoring that and you are assuming responsibility for their junk...or giving them the opportunity to toss you to the wolves.
Time to call the custy and address your concerns, not about who pays for your time to fix annoying details, but to assume the internals are subject to the same lack of regard, and to make a decision to discontinue work without more in writing.
If you take pride in excellence, then insist on it from both sides.

 

There is no warranty on work like this. You take possession of their gold plated bullet proof guaranteed engine and soon as you touch it and somethings wrong "Its your fault" and warranty void. They do install and get it started, customer drives out the driveway and somethings wrong "Its the customer's fault" and warranty void, because of the way he drove it or some BS. The only winner with some businesses like this is the shop's bank account.......

 

Did your customer ever say what was all done to the engine?I'm just curious,was it a complete rebuild machine work,aftermarket cam ect..If the outside of it looked like crap and leaking everywhere it makes me wonder if they just rolled some bearings in it and a cam and charged him for work that was never performed.Sad that there are businesses out there that just don't give a crap.

 

One of the cup plugs pop out in the front of the block?
If they did not stake them in place, 70 psi cold oil is enough to push 'em out
From the sounds of it, dropping pressure to zero, sounds like a likely scenario

 

Mark, I'll bet you hit the bullseye on this one.....

 

He was given an invoice with a basic parts and labor list. It wasn't real heavy on the details, but it looked like a basic rebuild. Bored .040, surfaces decked, new pistons/rings/pins, new valves and lifters(don't specifically recall if it mentioned springs), new bearings, timing set, gaskets/seals. They reground the existing camshaft rather than replacing it, for reasons unknown. I don't specifically recall what if anything else was on the invoice. The engine had head studs already, which they reused, but there was no mention of internal hardware that I can recall, so I'm assuming whatever was in there was reused. This was supposedly an engine built by Kenne Belle some years ago, but it ended up in the hands of some knucklehead kids that beat it into the ground and abused it, plus slathered some things up with silicone after the fact. It was a mess when I pulled it out of the car. The owner bought the car knowing that it needed major engine work.

The engine was assembled with all tins, intake, timing cover, water pump, balancer and flexplate installed. I did not get a good look at the majority of the internals, but from what I could see through the breather holes in the valve covers, distributor and fuel pump holes, it did look very clean inside, like it was what they said it was.

I came across an issue on another customer's engine a few years ago, where the owner was slowly building a very nice '62 Mercury, and the engine had been built by another shop a few years prior. It had been broken in and driven briefly (a few dozen miles) before the car was torn apart for restoration. Fast forward a few years, the car is now almost finished and the owner starts driving it, but after just a few hundred miles, it develops some rod knock. As it turns out, the gauges had been disconnected at some point when some dash work was being done and never reconnected, so the oil pressure light never came on. Well, the owner brought the car to me, and I found that it had almost no oil pressure, even when stone cold. I pulled the pan to inspect it, and everything inside the motor looked beautifully clean, fresh hone marks on the cylinder walls, looked every bit the part of a fresh rebuilt engine, but with one problem.. they had reused the old oil pump pickup which was packed full of silicone and nylon teeth from pre-rebuild. The engine now had a steel double roller timing set, and there was no silicone to speak of visible inside the motor, so everything packed into the pickup was clearly there from before. Unbelievable! And it ruined his professionally rebuilt engine, just one little screwup like that. So it wouldn't be surprising at all to me if the same mistake was made with this Buick, or maybe another equally careless, inexcusable mistake.

But they won't talk to me, and the owner of the car doesn't understand this stuff or even seem to really care about the details, so odds are I'll never find out.

 

That shop may have done good work some 50 years ago, the name of the shop may have a decent reputation, BUT it all comes down to the employees, do they give a crap, or are they there for just the paycheck

 

Indeed. When I first started getting into this stuff around the year 2000 or so, there was a local machine shop where I lived at the time which was also a multi-decade, multi-generation shop with a great reputation. However, the newest owner, a very young guy who had just recently taken it over from his father, was a real arrogant piece of work. Very condescending, did not like being questioned on ANYTHING, and if he even perceived that he was being questioned he would get very defensive. Very much rubbed me the wrong way, and I ended up taking my first engine to a different shop to have it cleaned and machined.

Met a great old timer that seemed to really know his stuff, was very pleasant to talk to, answered every question I asked with all the detail I could ever wish for, taught me a TON about machining and engine building and in general was just a great guy. I gave him all of my machine work from then on, and eventually trusted him with my very special to me Pontiac 455 that had been in my family since new, and he did not disappoint. He went above and beyond, did an excellent job the way that I wanted it done, and I was (and still am) completely satisfied ten years later. But inevitably, he retired and sold off his business a few years back, and it was a very sad day for me as I no longer had a great machinist that I really trusted.

There is no question that I will always be assembling my own engines from here on out, and may even entertain the notion of doing so for customers as well, but I still need to find a machinist I trust first. This is starting to get very frustrating indeed!

 

It's sad to say but too many people have experienced similar situations as you are. Back in 1990 when a shop in West Allis Wisconsin (which is now out of business) was tooting their own horn about building engines for the late Alan Kulwicki (NASCAR) I decided to have them straighten out a botched Buick 455 build that another shop in the area jazzed up. Without getting into all the many details, the second shop actually ruined the engine worse than the first shop. Not to mention between the two shops it took over 1-1/2 years for them to complete their shoddy product. I ended up filing a complaint with the BBB on the West Allis shop. Between the two shops, ...... It turns out that since I was so fed up with throwing good money away that I went out and purchased all my own engine measuring instruments. I learned as much as possible, found yet another machine shop to handle just machining and I started building all my own engines. Soon I was building them for customers alike. In an odd way I am truly grateful that nearly thirty years ago I was forced into a situation that since then I can't imagine not taking part in. I hope this turns out to be a "Silver Lining" for you as it was for me years ago. Setbacks will still occur but can be managed as I am once again in process of locking in on another quality machine shop.
http://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/time-for-a-new-machine-shop.318246/

Larry

 

Jim, I can see that, .... One would think with 1/4 inch of crank end play that the oil pressure reading may actually rise due to the rod journal feeds being all but blocked off.

Larry

 

Ok, time to get everyone's opinion here. I'm going to pursue every complaint/review path I can to warn others not to use the shop in question, but my only question is about the timing. I plan to file a BBB complaint, tell my tale on Yelp, facebook, anywhere and everywhere else that I can put the word out.

Being that the machine shop is allegedly going to rebuild the engine again, and is in possession of it and the customer's car, there is a part of me that thinks I should wait until the job is finished and he has his car back in running condition first. What I'm afraid of would be a worst case scenario situation where they might be so pissed about it that they just tell him to pick his car up, we're not going to do anything for you, too bad too sad. That's obviously something that I very much want to avoid, as that makes it worse for the owner of the vehicle/engine, as well as potentially for me if he decides to come after me as a result. At the same time, as I was not given the opportunity to inspect the alleged damage or improper assembly, and I have that fact well documented, so it would be extremely difficult to hold me responsible for whatever happened to the engine. I have a large number of photographs to document the work I did, the problems I found both before and after initial startup, and of course video of the initial startup, from several minutes prior to startup when I primed the oil pump, to after shutdown with no oil pressure.

However, on the flip side, posting some negative reviews and filing a complaint with the BBB and such might make them smarten up and start talking to me, so we can actually get to the bottom of what's going on. In a best case scenario, it might make them wise up and take care of the customer properly. I'd like to think that they care at least somewhat about their reputation, and if someone with a very clear tale of incompetence is putting you on blast all over, I'd think you'd want to make things right so you could put a stop to that. I know I would. Of course, I'm not aware of anyone ever doing that with me, as I try my damnedest not to screw things up, and when I have made mistakes, I have always made them right long before anyone had to put any pressure on me.

The downside to waiting is that they will very likely take a long time to rebuild it again, as they took three months the first time, but now they're going to be doing the whole installation and break-in, which surely means they will take even longer now. In the meantime, they will be happily chugging right along, taking in more new customers that don't know what they're getting into. That frustrates me to no end, which is why I want to tell my tale to all who will listen. Shops that punish their customers for their own incompetence do not deserve to be in business, and I firmly believe in holding people and businesses accountable for their mistakes when they can't seem to figure out how to do it on their own.

Your thoughts?

 

As mentioned above (12 lives) walk away you've said your peace. Life is short, enjoy it.

 

Public pressure either way could be viewed as extortion, and I've had it happen to me.
It's no fun to be on either side of that.
I would simply just not consider using them.
They might have viewed your approach on handling the water pump/timing issues as exactly that and you see how that went.
Gotta take responsibility for how you handled some aspects of this and where it went, even if you feel like you got the short end of it.

 

What state are you in KenneBelle455

 

Never thought about this, especially since mine are screw in now for years, kind of overlooked the orbital way in my head