350zDCalb

iTrader: (21)

oh, anxiously awaiting as well... but WHAT can they say? They showed their analysis, I am shocked that they missed so many obvious findings.

As our machinist told me, he has been through this before with other machine shops in town! They tear down his motor after somethign went wrong, explain to the customer some of the facts (as soon as they find a descrepency that justifies their diagnosis for the symtpom) and leave the customer understanding that they have an engine that was machined and assembled carelessly.

When we list ALL of the facts (and this took a majority of my day off yesterday mind you all) you can see the clearer picture of what occured with this engine. I'm not saying we CAN'T make mistakes, as everyone is human, but in this case we PROVED that we DID NOT make a mistake!

Funny to read what GTM wrote in the last thread accusing us of such poor quality work, so on and so forth. Gotta love being able to view past threads.

old thread:
https://my350z.com/forum/forced-induction/292739-my-unenviable-experience-concerning-builtzmotors.html

page 13, Sam wrote the following, Hindsight is 20/20... wow, he was kinda mean
08-09-2007, 10:39 PM
Put yourself in Don's shoes for a moment. You think you bought a solid engine from a professional engine builder, you install it yourself, you have a problem since day one, your local tuner cannot help you and he is lost as to why the car is not running properly. So Don had to make a 400mi drive to us so we can really find out exactly what is going on, and we did.

The BuiltZMotors engine was a poorly built engine since day one.

In my conversation with Todd, Todd was looking for a way out and denied any responsibility since day one, he kept saying it could be a tuning issue ,or maybe the rings got washed out, the engine was over revved, etc. Basically he was looking for any possibility or excuse he could come up with to make this a end user or tuning issue so he can rid himself of any liability.

Let's be objective and look at these issues individually:

First Issue: Poor cylinder compression in cylinder one.

Car had a misfire code (P301) from the get go.
Todd states this issues could be due to cylinder washing base on a excessivly rich start condition. If Don would have changed his EMS or fuel system upon installation of his new engine then I would agree that this could be a possibility, since none of these components were changed that is not a possible excuse for the poor compression in cylinder one. The car fired right up and idled fine. The car was driven for 250 miles before going to get the car tuned. I want to reiterate that they P0301 code was present before anyone touched the car including Dynocomp.

Second Issue: Pistons hitting the Heads

Upon inspection we found the pistons are hitting the heads. We explained why earlier in this thread. Lets assume for a second that our calculations are wrong and our measuremetns are incorrect, how does this change the fact that the pistons are hitting the heads?(which is a undeniable FACT)
Todd states that the reason the pistons are hitting the heads because the engine was over-revved.
If this was the case (again we are being objective) the valves would have hit the pistons and become bent. No valves are bent on this engine. Also you are going to tell me that Don is going to over rev a car that is not 100% tuned and is being broken in? I don't think anyone can say that Don is that incompetent. Therefore this is also not a valid excuse for the pistons hitting the heads.

Third Issue: Engine severely Contaminated

Upon inspection we found that this engine is also severely contaminated. Rod bearings are scored, a lot of foreign objects in the oil pan. Basically signs of a quickly and poorly assembled engine and/or improper cleaning and preparation of the core to be used for the build. I don't much needs to be said here since the pictures speak for themselves.
Todd states that the bearing wear pictured is normal and that some metal and RTV is normal for a newly built engine to be present in the oil pan.
I think its obvious, and we all know that the bearings pictures above DO NOT show normal wear and that the amount of debree (metal, RTV, etc.) found in this engine IS NOT normal.

GT Motorsports and BuiltZMotors previous business relationship:

Just because Todd and I are friends well not let me fog my vision between what is right and what is wrong. What is a good job and what is a bad job. What is ethical and what isn't ethical. So a few months back I decided to step back and slowly sever our ties and business relationship with Todd for several reasons...

Most of the cores we would get from Todd to be machined we unacceptable, some of them looked like a hand grenade went of in them. That was brought to Todd's attention and his comment was "it should be OK". When it comes to cleaning the blocks before and AFTER the machining process Todd would instruct us not to clean the blocks any further so he could save $100 in cost. The endless questions and tech support got really old and tiresome over time.

Even though Todd and I were friends and had a business relationship does not mean I am going to hide facts from a paying customer (Don) on what the situation is with his motor. I beleive it would have been wrong for me to cover up Todd's mistakes and that would have severely affected my conscience. I cannot bring myself to do that to someone.

On several occasions Todd has sent me several messages (some of them not very nice to say the least) regarding why am I telling Don that this is a machining issue and that I should have consulted with him first before letting Don know what is really going on.

Remember, history repeats itself...

Building engines on the side, and subletting jobs out does not work, you may get lucky sometimes and sometimes you may not. There are too many variables to worry about and you are not in full control. This is why GT Motorsports has invested over a million dollars in equipment to do this job in house so IF something goes wrong, finding the culprit is a lot easier than involving multiple parties.

Don,

As I told you on the phone we do respect and support what ever you decide to do, I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. So if getting another engine from Todd is your best option, I will do everything in my power to make your life easier, not harder. The question you have to ask your self is what will happen if this next engine is not right, who will pay for the R&R of the engine AGAIN? (Todd should have to think about this as well)

Sam

GT Motorsports

You can re-read the responses that I posted, addressing the claims Sam had made, I don't want to further lengthen this thread by more copy and pasting.

-TODD

350zDCalb

iTrader: (21)

Thanks for the props on the write-up, glad to see you can be objective, let me address your questions:

look at piston #4 as well, the top of the exhaust side shows signs of a lean condition as well, consistant with the findings on the valves. I know that we don't pit our valves and heat them up until they discolor before we build a set of heads, so this was a result of the operation of the engine, and we know that this occurs as a result of detonation. Detonation does not need to consistantly affect the entire surface of a piston or valves/cylinder head surface, as it rarely does. I'm not claiming that the detonation itself damaged the piston or the valves, but it gives evidence to support that the cylinder temps were excessive- explaining the piston collapsing and the ring fatigue.

The cylinder DID not shrink, the pistons collapsed and shrank in size. Not sure I understand your question about the remaining .0055" not found???

You may have missed some of the details in our write-up, please reference the first page, as all of the measurements of the used pistons were recorded, the bore size was recorded (with pics of the reading on the dial bore gauge), and then the math was done.

The new pistons varied in size from 3.7760-3.7765", I dodn't list all six sizes, so here they are: 4 pistons were at 3.7765" and two were at 3.7760", these were new pistons, so they are not numbered.

Hope that helps clarify.

TODD

THE ROADSTER

iTrader: (3)

How did it get to this point ? Did the original owner try to resolve it with original engine builder ?

IIQuickSilverII

iTrader: (13)

NP its a lil more clear now... and the only side i was from the beginning was Dons, Weather the attitude of the 3rd party sucks, or the owner or 3rd party sucks(agreed) in the first place had nothing to do and they were never questioned on findings regardless of their attitude, as as this was all regardless of you Todd as well cause we know you are a nice guy and i agree but it had nothing to do in the first place. So i am also quit eager to hear their side all the points you touched .

Is it possible there was an assembling issue... overthigtening the headgasket... coolant getting into the banks.... i dunno..as i said i am just aware for sure that before gtm touched the engine the troubles were there and i know there was no lean condition at dynocomp.... but not its up to the 3rd party to respond to their findings since they are being questioned now...

350zDCalb

iTrader: (21)

I understand you wanting to back up Don, do you think I am acting unfairly? I hope Don can realize that we are on his side, this turned into an unfortunate vendor war, I hold no beef against a customer who was misled.

no signs of coolant in the cylinders, I have PERSONALLY assembled over 15 engines, I am confident in my head torquing abilities Heads are torqued in several stages, gradually increasing the torque in each stage. The heads are allowed to sit for several hours, then re-checked before the cams are assembled and it is timed. So we can "what-if" all day long, maybe there were tiny unicorns inside poking holes in the manifolds

I am eagerly awaiting their response as well. Bet they are wishing they would have truely objectively analyzed the engine components more carefully (as everyone had assumed they had)

QuadCam

iTrader: (8)

where did he have an EGT probe? how many inches after the exhaust was the probe placed? the placement of the EGT probe will greatly affect the temperatures reported. Did he have EGT probes in both banks? each cylinder?

failsafe306

iTrader: (38)

An improperly installed headgasket would have been very evident from the beginning.

bboypuertoroc

iTrader: (4)

Awesome write up.

IIQuickSilverII

iTrader: (13)

i wasnt there when they checked so Don will have to answer that.

IIQuickSilverII

iTrader: (13)

"as everyone had assumed they had"
up till now or they respond.

No I am not saying you are acting unfarily...
Quesion... about the cam that wasnt "positioned" well... what do you determine/feel the error was there...

Sam405

iTrader: (8)

wow great write up and now im late for work. I hope everything gets settled.

failsafe306

iTrader: (38)

I hate to do this but....https://my350z.com/forum/showpost.ph...3&postcount=51

The car seemed to have been driven a bit before Dynocomp's initial tune, presumably on the old stock motor Unichip map. OP states that there's hesitation after 5k rpm (no mention of boost though), which seems a little hard to be pushing a brand new un-broken-in motor with a basically untuned turbo kit. There seems like there was plenty of opportunity to heat up the motor before any tuning took place.

Sorry Don.

350zDCalb

iTrader: (21)

when testing a valve with a vacuum test, the valve must be closed completely. If the position of the cam on the cylinder in question is not pointing upwards, the lifter of the valve will be contacting part of the cam lobe- opening the valve slightly. When we first tested the cylinder #1 valves, I was anxious to see the results, as they visually appeared fine. When we pressurized the port, I noticed that the cam was not positioned in the proper testing position, pointing upward, it was interesting to see how much the test results varied with the cam barely opening the valve, compared to the valve being completely shut, error on my part that took me all of 10 seconds to realize.

savvy

iTrader: (1)

sounds like you covered all your bases nicely and very professionally. Props on the extra effort to make things right.

westpak

iTrader: (19)

Very nice write up and detailed inspection.

You might want to clarify that since the engine was disassembled and reassembled the position of the cams was not an error of original build but just part of the setup to test the heads, you know how people get when reading stuff they do not understand

350zDCalb

iTrader: (21)

good point, i assumed that was obvious..but thanks for pointing it out

350zDCalb

iTrader: (21)

oh, i just checked visually a set of old arias pistons that came out of a motor with over 40k and detonated and broke a piston... on one of the good pistons, i pulled the top ring off, and it had more rebound and was slightly larger in size than the rings out of the engine in question! I thought that was interesting.

THE ROADSTER

iTrader: (3)

I looked at Builtzmotor's website and they are using GTM to install Darton sleeves ? I guess GTM & Builtz have done business together before.

Alberto

iTrader: (14)

Great write up-very proffesional of you to do this, Id do the same thing if my name/word was sort of on the line.

bboypuertoroc

iTrader: (4)

That says three things.