I wouldn't obsess about your heads. Nothing wrong with small valve Mexi heads in a van, and they're unlikely to crack. New isn't always better. Not sure where the £250 pump cover comes from. I'd be more concerned about the "fast road cam", which you probably don't want in a van.
In the invoice for the engine they charged £30 for oil pipe and connectors. In the emails between me and them they deny dissembing the oil cover and say the pipes were left on. I then studied their build photos, and clear to see is a picture of the engine with the cover on but no connectors in the cover. So to say they never took the barbs off seems to be a flat out lie.
While I am not worried necessarily about the heads- the fact that they flat out say new and seem to be not being honest calls into question what else they claim to have supplied new on the build. I guess at the end of the day it amounts to fraud if you say you are supplying something new and you supply second hand.
Here's a pic of the cover. Seems very clear that the crack is due to over tightening. So proof that the supplier fitted the barbs is sufficient to prove their liability, do we all agree?
I don't think they are used to people inspecting what they do TBH. I doubt they have any memory whatsoever about what they actually did and didn't do so are focussed simply on not admitting liability for anything hoping you'll go away! it's what garages mostly do too - cold shoulder every attempt until you give up. Good luck, you'll need it, you've had the engine for several months, can you prove that fitting didn't get a knock in that time? Or that you didn't tighten it a bit yourself when it leaked? They have so many positions here I'm afraid pursuing them will only get you more and more annoyed. BTW £250 for a pump cover is outrageous! That's a CB one right? $67 including the pump in the US, £130 here - what a rip. And the pump is too big anyway, sorry for the doom but if you're telling them they owe you £250 for that pump I'm hardly surprised they are on the defensive... and the heads look new, I bet they're quite peed off with you.
^all of the above. You've had the engine for a while and can't really prove who overtightened the barbs. Don't like those nylocs holding the rocker shafts on....
Laurie once told me it didn't matter what he did inside an engine because nobody except him would ever see. At least he was honest. Nylocs on studs is just wrong.
Thanks guys for your thoughts. The engine has been in about 5 months with around 200-300 miles on it so not many at all. The £250 charge was from the garage that the engine company asked me to go to in order to get it fixed. The majority of the cost was labour withe only 25 quid charged for the cover as the guy luckily had one spare. If I had known they were going to be silly over the warranty I would have done myself, but was forced down that route as it had to be investigated and done by a garage they approved. I don't think they could ever say it got knocked to cause the crack as its pretty clear the crack is an over tightening stress crack. On principal I will pursue this further. If not for my sake then to make the company think twice before doing it to someone else and I am tenacious! For info have any of you heard similar stories about The Engine Shop TES? I have heard two since this situ came up and that's just from the tuning place who first noticed the leak, and then the first garage I took it to for a quote. Both really bad stories about TES and how they treated customers with warranty claims very poorly.
Choices when your increase in cc increases the compression. 1) increase the deck height out of the safe squish zone. 2) carefully increase the chamber sizes of both heads. 3) whack in a cam with longer duration - you were going to replace the cam anyway. Which approach, as a volume builder do you choose? I know, then call it a "fast road cam" - suitably vague and appealing. Probably pretty great in a Beetle, probably good in a bus with the revs up.
It's unlikely even if they were re-using stuff that they would reuse nylocs... Regardless, they shouldn't be there anyway.
I do feel for you, sorry my posts have wandered to and fro a bit, I'm trying to see it from both sides. The garage that changed the pump cover obviously burnt you thinking they were burning a business so you didn't care about the cost at that point? Lesson to learn. You could have DIY'd it into a 1776 for under £1,000, not broken the pump etc. You paid because I assume you wanted it done quick/didn't want to DIY. Cam, new bearings, outsourced machining, new set of B&P's, job done. 1776 is popular because it's easy. Not all that long ago it would have been £500 to DIY. I haven't personally heard any bad stories about TES, but all the volume builders are pretty poor when it comes to honouring warrenty - most build carefully enough that there are no claims, it's a focus for an engine builder because it's expensive and time consuming dealing with them.
I agree the crack in the pump cover is remarkably similar to the crack I made and repaired in mine. It was very easy to overtighten it, as the difference between "a bit leaky" and a "crack" is not much. It was sort of like using a torque wrench, the AvE "click" was real.. I think its more a flaw of the cover design and material (aluminium) than anything else. It doesnt help that somebody has sealed the barbs with stranded material covered in sealant (looks like a gas engineer's handiwork) adding to the force required to get it to seal - with the tapered thread most of the sealing should be metal-on-metal, with just the small gap at the peaks and valleys of the thread needing something sticky to block it off - something like Hylomar should be all that is needed. Its a pity you were made to pay out £250 to change the pump cover, when you could have done it yourself and just bought a new pump for less. But in the end, be positive : by a slightly painful course you now have a mostly new 1776 to enjoy.
Yep, all those brass into ali tapered threads are leaks waiting to happen. I seal them in with loctite while they new and clean which saves a lot of messing about and why would you ever want to remove them?
Thanks guys. I am going to go after them for the cost on the pump at least, it might make me feel better. If they flat out refuse I will go the small claims route as I'm pretty bitter about it and if I win I will put it out there to the community so Jo public know what they are getting in to with them. Any which way if you add up what they put in to the engine - cam, barrels, pistons, bearings and machine work it ain't much compared to what I was charged against what I was asking. Customer service wise its a shocker. They knew I was not a company by the way. Incidentally what's the prob with nylon nuts- is it deterioration with heat or something?
They won't do much after heat has softened the nylon. VW thought that bog standard nuts were fine, and they were right.
The good thing about it is that post tune up where the carburation was done professionally it pulls and drives really well plus stays cool as well. So maybe by happy accident the build combination of heads, cam, carbs and exhaust has worked well. The sad bit is whether it will last.
No! You want to be able to get them off again. They won't fall off. They don't fall off with a simple plain nut and wavy spring washer. What's wrong with lock nuts on studs is the opposite - when you undo them they tend to run the stud out of the ali head and as theese particular ones are shouldered studs (wider in the head) so that gets a bit messy with as the stud won't fit through the rocker shaft. It also defeats one of the purposes of the stud which is to stay in the soft aluminium rather than wear it out as a bolt would. Another is oil trapped in a blind hole could cause massive pressure as you screw it in and crack the head. You really do want the studs to stay put.
