I am looking for some advice on the best route to take. My friend bought my '06 Z and proceeded bolt on a Stage 3 Stillen supercharger kit. All the work was done by Stillen in Costa Mesa, CA.

Prior to getting all the work done he asked about the reliability and really emphasized that it would be his daily driver. Stillen insisted the car would run without a hitch for 200k miles with the setup they put on nit.

He had the car less than a month, and the bottom end spun a bearing. Stillen quoted him $18,000 to rebuild the motor

What would you guys recommend... he is sick and doesn't even want the car anymore.

1. Buy a used motor and drop it in, then part out the good parts of the bad motor and sell the supercharger kit
2. Put the car back to stock and take it to Nissan under warranty and hope they accept it
3. ?????

 

Put it completely back to stock and pray that nissan takes care of it.

 

Buy a new motor. Stage 3 has no warranty whatsoever, and if they said the motor would go 200k that is ridiculous. However, it is on your buddy for believing it.

You can get a good motor for $2-4k.

 

Unfortunately the only kit with warranty is the stage 2 and thats if you even pay the additional charge.

I doubt Nissan will accept the car in that condition plus it would cost you a nice chunk just to get it back to stock form.

I would just buy a gently used engine for about 2k and get it swapped, should be a simple job and not 18k like stillen is wanting to steal from your friend.

When did the kit get installed? Reason for asking is the stage 3 use to be just a smaller pulley and made the Z run lean. Prob. lean enough to screw up your friends engine. Now the kit has been pulled and is sold with an upgraded fuel pump.

Sorry to hear about your friends problems but why doesn't he just claim it under insurance and get a built engine instead of just rebuilding it with OEM parts?

 

He had a Stage 2 kit put on in the beginning of February. He just had the Stage 3 installed not more than 2 weeks ago. They put a smaller pulley and upgraded the fuel pump.


He doesn't want the car anymore... is disgusted by it.

 

Damn that really sux. It could be really a number of things. Maybe a faulty fuel pump or S/C water pump for the intercooler. Did he have any guages installed? If so what where they and what did they read prior to the event?

If he decides to part out the stillen kit let me know, I would be interested in a few items. GL

 

I don't think this will help too much, but Tony has a non Rev Motor for sale.
Link - He may know of a Revup Motor somewhere.

Go find a new used motor, put back together, then get rid of the car.

Hmm, I wonder how much oil he had in the car..

 

I wonder what the cause of it is....


And stillen has no response to this??

 

The car was equipped with a Pyrometer and a Boost gauge. I was actually driving when it gave out. Nothing out of the ordinary... Pyro was at about 11-14 and boost never got above 6psi.

He was in the passenger seat... we did a few runs coming home late at night, nothing crazy.

I will let you know if he is going to part out the supercharger kit... probably be posted on this site.

 

Actually, when he walked into Stillen with the blown motor his sales rep said something along the lines of... "This is the perfect time to build a motor... we can do forged pistons..." yada yada yada.

As far as the catastrophic event... they said they can't believe it. They called Steve and he was shocked. Who knows.. they acted like the car should have been bullet proof.

 

strange, maybe their was a weak link in the stock motor?

 

Tell your buddy to go bust some *****. "Not under warranty" doesn't mean a company isn't liable for a blown motor a month after they have modified it. I'd just be the squeaky wheel and raise hell until they rectified the situation: with a good factory motor installed for free at LEAST so your buddy can sell the car.

I'm sorry, but if they touched the car (knowing they've got a duty to make a good faith effort in that it's running right, at least right after it leaves the shop) and it blew up that soon, something wasn't right when it left the shop. They owe you something, and I probably would have cussed everyone out at the first mention of building the motor on anyone but Stillen's dime.

 

I would definetly raise hell, and he should of gotten something in writing...

 

$18,000.00 to rebuild a motor !!!!!!!

Thats some funny chit ! Thats the price of 4 motors . Only Stillen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Why wouldn't he just buy a new Z at 18k!

Whoever told OP 18k, I would have flipped out.

 

Well, being that they probably didn't open the motor up, they can only be liable if it were parts THEY installed that failed. If something else in the motor failed, it's not their fault since it's just part of the game.

Parts fail, that's just how it is. Nothing lasts forever and you always take a chance when you modify anything. Be it a tiny chance or a big one, either way it's a chance you're taking and you should always have a back up plan. Boosting your ONLY vehicle is not a smart move.

Your friend went in too deep and let his excitement get the best of him.

I wish him the best of luck in getting things resolved.

 

You don't mention if it's a manual or automatic.

Assuming it's a manual, (rev-up), wouldn't be suprised if it was consuming, hence the reason for throwing a rod bearing. Allthough detonation can cause a spun rod bearing I've seen some pretty bad detonation on VQ's and yet to see a spun rod bearing, more than likely oil starvation was the culprit. Of course there is always the possibility that when they had the pan off to install the drain line, well I'm not going there, couldn't picture stillen doing THAT.

But yeah, if it's a manual tranny you'll be hard pressed to find one for $2k, and if you do it will still need to be torn down and have some non rev-up rings put in it. Anyways I would go with option #2 first, but it needs to be a very very clean un-install, a local guy to me got denied at 2 diffferent dealers for '06 rev-up warranty work, the telltale signs were the plenums had been off and the tps wire was tap'd into.

 

A car running fine for thousands of miles, then blowing up immediately after modification at a shop isn't coincidence or "part of the game." Something wasn't right when the shop let the car go down the road, be it the tune or whatever. It's understandable if the car blew up 10K miles later, but that's far from the case, it seems. A Stillen stage 3 kit makes d!ck for power anyways, so it's not like it was making 500-wheel and had an accident.

Just because they've got a "no warranty" hold-harmless clause somewhere doesn't (even legally) justify immediately blowing up someone's motor after the shop's modification - whether they touched the motor or not.

Your buddy creates enough waves, he'll get something back. Right now, Stillen is hoping their little hold-harmless clause will trick him into not doing anything about it.

 

Spun a bearing? thats is pretty serious, the engine must have had other problems... Did it eat oil with the stage 2? Not to point fingers but i wonder if Still fuxored something up when they pulled the oil pan off

 

Maybe I missed something but why would Stillen need to remove the oil pan for the install?