Custom Car Care VA took the old motor out, wanted $13,000 to rebuild, I said F-that and I ended up with a mess of my old motor's parts, some things missing (brackets + 2 wiring harnesses), a couple scratches down the side doors, and a $1300 bill.

Apr 23: Towed my FX35 with a very cleaned up, EMPTY engine bay to Precision Auto

Apr 24: Dropped off builtzmotors.com (thx Todd) built longblock

After a long process of Ross @ Precision ordering parts and updating me here and there, we finally got a couple of wiring harnesses replaced. $125 for the two (from main to injectors and from main to spark plugs).

There were a ton of delays and I wasn't able to go to the shop often because I live on the other side of the water (NN - C-peake). Everytime I was given a date that it should be done by, something would delay that and I would get another date.

Around mid-June I told Ross I really needed it by the end of the week or very shortly thereafter because I was going on vacation to Chicago and planned on driving there, starting July 2nd. He said it was definitely going to happen, but on Sunday, July 1st it still wasn't finished and I had to buy some last-minute plane tickets to go home the next day.

July 2: Get the call that the car was finished and ready to pick up. I picked it up approx. 2-3 hours before my flight. Even if I didn't buy the tickets there's no way I could trust this car to get me 900 miles away after it had JUST been finished. Missing 1 centercap and battery cover, two things I know were in the car at the start, and had 1 small dent in a fender that I know wasn't there at the start. He told me he'd find the centercap and battery cover and have his dent guy take care of the small ding.

On the way home, I got a service engine light and I hear some noise from the front wheels. The noise from the front wheels got worse and I felt some steering wheel vibrations. When I got home I checked 'em out and 3/5 lugs I could twist off with my fingers. After swapping out to another set of wheels, the other front side (which had a centercap on) was the same. Told Ross about that and the service engine light and he swears he tightened the lugs down, and set up an appt for the SEL. Long story short, the 20mm spacers didn't quite fit the Nismo long studs, but for some reason fit perfectly in the rears, so that was causing the lugs to loosen up, completely not Ross' fault.

The SEL needed a new knock sensor to clear, $46 not entirely too bad.

July 18: Dropped off the car for knock sensor, install oil cooler and remove dent.

July 20: Picked it up with new knock sensor, no longer throwing a code, and oil cooler installed w/out any leaks, and no dent.

Now the car's running as smooth as ever (ran smooth when I first picked it up btw) and no dent. Only issue I have is that some sort of coolant hose came loose and sprayed the whole engine bay with coolant and it wasn't cleaned up before I picked up the car, so that extremely clean engine bay I talked about was spattered with dried up coolant spots all over.

 

glad to hear everything worked out.