- Thread starter
- #226
mattasi
15+ Year Contributor
- 838
- 5
- Feb 22, 2008
-
Springfield,
Oregon
fWell it has been a while since I have updated this build so I wanted to give an update as lots of things are currently changing. Good and bad things... First with the bad, real bad 
... Well, last month the fully built English Racing complete long block they built me snapped a timing belt!! So I was forced to say goodbye to my EnglishRacing engine that I saved up a long time to pay for, it only lasted 20K miles till the timing belt snapped...And to think I went so far out of my way to have them build it so I wouldn't have problems like this ...
Very disappointed with how long it lasted, especially with how easy I drive the car most of the time. This shouldn't have happened when a professional builds a complete long block for you but of course it happens to me... I never though I would have to write this kind of an update because of all of the great things I have heard about English Racing from others, but here I am with a blown up motor after 20k miles with no real help from them, and now I have to pay to rebuild it all over again instead of being able to just enjoy driving my car like I should be right now.
I have taken lots of pictures and talked with English in emails but all I really get is Lucas said he is sorry to see the damage and that I would need to bring them the whole long block to let them look at it to find the cause. I understand they want me to pay them more money to fix it ($1500-$2000 they said, and that doesn't include my gas money and driving for two days to drop off and pick up), but the point here is that the engine failed because of them (explained below) and so I can't see myself paying them thousands of dollars more when it should have been built right the first time.
They reused all my old timing components on the build including the timing belt! Yes they reused the Timing belt from the previously failed (spun bearing) motor...I can't see why any builder would do that (pro or not), and to be honest the further we go into taking this English Racing motor apart the more and more we are finding that they took many many shortcuts. When I asked English about reusing the belt they told me that they reused it because the belt previously only had around 1k miles on it when it was on the engine that spun a rod bearing, so it was still good to use in their opinion.
Yes they did reuse the old timing belt, but the belt is not what actually failed first (I think). The part that failed and ultimately caused the belt to break was the timing tensioner arm piece that the self tensioner arm pushes on (#MD130032 Tensioner Arm). Since this old part was installed by English already worn out, it let the belt shift around on the pulleys, in turn rubbing up against the inside of the timing belt cover. Over time the belt wore down on the cover and snapped.
So after the belt snapped I bought all new Mitsubishi timing components, did research and followed the FAQ for a timing belt job and put a new belt on the engine just to do a compression test. Guess what? yep zero compression on all cylinders... So no choice but to take the engine all apart again. So this time I took the head over to Garage 808 as they are local and specialize in performance builds and don't take shortcuts. When I dropped off the head they asked me questions that English never asked me, like did I want the Valve springs shimmed to the correct/same height? and the valve tips grinded?, gasket match the head? ect. I asked English about this to see if these things were done during my build and they said they don't do these things when building a head unless the customer specifically says they want that done and the customer provides the shims... (how is a customer suppose to know how much to shim things anyways?... That is what I pay them to do right?..). As a customer it's really hard to know exactly what to tell them at the beginning if your not an expert in the field, I guess I kinda just expected that since I was taking it to the "dsm gods" that they would ask me if I wanted these things and other important things done as they were suppose to be the best place to take my 4g63 engine...Garage 808 doesn't even specialize in DSM's but Garage 808 still asked me if I wanted to do the "oil port mod" while they had the head, why did English not ask me this or even bring it up as an option when they specialize in DSM's? Lazy and just didn't care about me and my build if you ask me...My feeling from this whole experience is that since I wasn't spending 10K+ for the engine, that they just put it together without thinking to ask me these simple things and making sure the engine was done correctly, because I was small money to them and they were busy. (My build was done while they were moving to their new shop, a busy time for them).
Another thing; I dropped off the long block to them with the Colbalt Oil Pressure sensor, the turbo oil feed line, and one other stock sensor still installed on the engine so that they would know that I needed the oil filter housing with 3 outputs on it like the one that was on the engine when I dropped it off. Well,... the long block was returned to me with a 1 output port version, and they lost my rare Colbalt sensor... This mistake (that I didn't notice until I got home) resulted in me needing to rent a trailer to drive the whole car up to them in Washington just to have them switch over the oil filter housing to the correct one... If I did it myself I would lose my "Warranty" for the first start up as I may contaminate things if I did the work I was told by Aaron. That means I had to take one whole day off work to drive it there and another day driving later, gas money ect, to pick the car up,..Again...What a headache that was...
When Garage 808 was inspecting the head they commented on how rich I was running as everything was really black for only 20k miles. So I let them know that a few months ago I took my tune over to a guy I know that started up a DSM tuning shop (JWTuning) and owns a 650hp GSX to have him take a look at the tune as he had also said that I was running way to rich. This guy (JWTuning) said that English basically just put a generic tune onto it without actually tuning it in specifically for my car. When I dropped the car off to English I told them that I was hoping for around 400awhp with this build, so they got it to 400 on the dyno and then just stopped there even though the lower RPM's wasn't done being tuned. So why did I pay $350 for a tune when it wasn't really actually tuned in? I don't know much about tuning but there are two lines in the graph in dsm link that should line up together, the wideband and something else but they were not even close, so I had the tune fixed before the timing belt failure happened and man what a difference it was. It drove so much smoother at low RPM's and had better gas mileage, why didn't English tune it right in the first place? I paid them $350 to dyno tune this thing and that is what I got, a basic simple tune that I could have had anyone else local do for much much less money, but I wanted them to do it as they were suppose to be the best, guess they proved to me that I was wrong. Not only that but when English "tuned" my car on the new engine, I gave them the sensors and wires needed to switch me over to speed density at the same time as the tune. Well,... they only installed the Map sensor and not the other IAT sensor.. Aaron explained to me later (after I noticed some time later that it was not installed) that ECMLink doesn't really use the IAT sensor for the tune and it only complicates the tune so they didn't install it. Not only did they not install it like I wanted but they also lost my IAT sensor, Bung, and pigtail wires that I provided to them when I dropped off the car.
I could go on with other issues with this one build but I will stop for now as this is getting long...
Soooo...As of right now I am waiting for the head to be finished with the rebuild from Garage 808, I am also upgrading to GSC lifters on this head build. Since I have the car all apart right now I have also taken the opportunity to upgrade the fuel filter and regulator to Fuel Lab kits with -an fittings, and bought FIC 1250 injectors. Fuel was my limiting factor, so after I have the car back together and running well I will install the new fuel upgrades I will have it tuned to the max on pump gas with plans later to install a GM flex fuel sensor and have it tuned for E-85/gas mix. JW tuning in Junction City Oregon will tune it like a boss.
I hope that English reads this (I know they have read this build before) and tries to make it right with me in some way as I have tried already through emails with no luck. He did tell me that they don't reuse parts on builds anymore, but what about me? The bottom line is that this English Racing Long Block lasted 20K miles at 400hp before complete failure, and they are not taking ownership of it like you would expect a high reputation shop to do, just so disappointed in my experience.
More updates to come, stay tuned -Matthew
... Well, last month the fully built English Racing complete long block they built me snapped a timing belt!! So I was forced to say goodbye to my EnglishRacing engine that I saved up a long time to pay for, it only lasted 20K miles till the timing belt snapped...And to think I went so far out of my way to have them build it so I wouldn't have problems like this ...Very disappointed with how long it lasted, especially with how easy I drive the car most of the time. This shouldn't have happened when a professional builds a complete long block for you but of course it happens to me
... I never though I would have to write this kind of an update because of all of the great things I have heard about English Racing from others, but here I am with a blown up motor after 20k miles with no real help from them, and now I have to pay to rebuild it all over again instead of being able to just enjoy driving my car like I should be right now.I have taken lots of pictures and talked with English in emails but all I really get is Lucas said he is sorry to see the damage and that I would need to bring them the whole long block to let them look at it to find the cause. I understand they want me to pay them more money to fix it ($1500-$2000 they said, and that doesn't include my gas money and driving for two days to drop off and pick up), but the point here is that the engine failed because of them (explained below) and so I can't see myself paying them thousands of dollars more when it should have been built right the first time.
They reused all my old timing components on the build including the timing belt! Yes they reused the Timing belt from the previously failed (spun bearing) motor...I can't see why any builder would do that (pro or not), and to be honest the further we go into taking this English Racing motor apart the more and more we are finding that they took many many shortcuts. When I asked English about reusing the belt they told me that they reused it because the belt previously only had around 1k miles on it when it was on the engine that spun a rod bearing, so it was still good to use in their opinion.
Yes they did reuse the old timing belt, but the belt is not what actually failed first (I think). The part that failed and ultimately caused the belt to break was the timing tensioner arm piece that the self tensioner arm pushes on (#MD130032 Tensioner Arm). Since this old part was installed by English already worn out, it let the belt shift around on the pulleys, in turn rubbing up against the inside of the timing belt cover. Over time the belt wore down on the cover and snapped.
So after the belt snapped I bought all new Mitsubishi timing components, did research and followed the FAQ for a timing belt job and put a new belt on the engine just to do a compression test. Guess what?
yep zero compression on all cylinders... So no choice but to take the engine all apart again. So this time I took the head over to Garage 808 as they are local and specialize in performance builds and don't take shortcuts. When I dropped off the head they asked me questions that English never asked me, like did I want the Valve springs shimmed to the correct/same height? and the valve tips grinded?, gasket match the head? ect. I asked English about this to see if these things were done during my build and they said they don't do these things when building a head unless the customer specifically says they want that done and the customer provides the shims... (how is a customer suppose to know how much to shim things anyways?... That is what I pay them to do right?..). As a customer it's really hard to know exactly what to tell them at the beginning if your not an expert in the field, I guess I kinda just expected that since I was taking it to the "dsm gods" that they would ask me if I wanted these things and other important things done as they were suppose to be the best place to take my 4g63 engine...Garage 808 doesn't even specialize in DSM's but Garage 808 still asked me if I wanted to do the "oil port mod" while they had the head, why did English not ask me this or even bring it up as an option when they specialize in DSM's? Lazy and just didn't care about me and my build if you ask me...My feeling from this whole experience is that since I wasn't spending 10K+ for the engine, that they just put it together without thinking to ask me these simple things and making sure the engine was done correctly, because I was small money to them and they were busy. (My build was done while they were moving to their new shop, a busy time for them).Another thing; I dropped off the long block to them with the Colbalt Oil Pressure sensor, the turbo oil feed line, and one other stock sensor still installed on the engine so that they would know that I needed the oil filter housing with 3 outputs on it like the one that was on the engine when I dropped it off. Well,...
the long block was returned to me with a 1 output port version, and they lost my rare Colbalt sensor... This mistake (that I didn't notice until I got home) resulted in me needing to rent a trailer to drive the whole car up to them in Washington just to have them switch over the oil filter housing to the correct one... If I did it myself I would lose my "Warranty" for the first start up as I may contaminate things if I did the work I was told by Aaron. That means I had to take one whole day off work to drive it there and another day driving later, gas money ect, to pick the car up,..Again...What a headache that was...When Garage 808 was inspecting the head they commented on how rich I was running as everything was really black for only 20k miles. So I let them know that a few months ago I took my tune over to a guy I know that started up a DSM tuning shop (JWTuning) and owns a 650hp GSX to have him take a look at the tune as he had also said that I was running way to rich. This guy (JWTuning) said that English basically just put a generic tune onto it without actually tuning it in specifically for my car. When I dropped the car off to English I told them that I was hoping for around 400awhp with this build, so they got it to 400 on the dyno and then just stopped there even though the lower RPM's wasn't done being tuned. So why did I pay $350 for a tune when it wasn't really actually tuned in? I don't know much about tuning but there are two lines in the graph in dsm link that should line up together, the wideband and something else but they were not even close, so I had the tune fixed before the timing belt failure happened and man what a difference it was. It drove so much smoother at low RPM's and had better gas mileage, why didn't English tune it right in the first place? I paid them $350 to dyno tune this thing and that is what I got, a basic simple tune that I could have had anyone else local do for much much less money, but I wanted them to do it as they were suppose to be the best, guess they proved to me that I was wrong. Not only that but when English "tuned" my car on the new engine, I gave them the sensors and wires needed to switch me over to speed density at the same time as the tune. Well,... they only installed the Map sensor and not the other IAT sensor.. Aaron explained to me later (after I noticed some time later that it was not installed) that ECMLink doesn't really use the IAT sensor for the tune and it only complicates the tune so they didn't install it. Not only did they not install it like I wanted but they also lost my IAT sensor, Bung, and pigtail wires that I provided to them when I dropped off the car.
I could go on with other issues with this one build but I will stop for now as this is getting long...
Soooo...As of right now I am waiting for the head to be finished with the rebuild from Garage 808, I am also upgrading to GSC lifters on this head build. Since I have the car all apart right now I have also taken the opportunity to upgrade the fuel filter and regulator to Fuel Lab kits with -an fittings, and bought FIC 1250 injectors. Fuel was my limiting factor, so after I have the car back together and running well I will install the new fuel upgrades I will have it tuned to the max on pump gas with plans later to install a GM flex fuel sensor and have it tuned for E-85/gas mix. JW tuning in Junction City Oregon will tune it like a boss.
I hope that English reads this (I know they have read this build before) and tries to make it right with me in some way as I have tried already through emails with no luck. He did tell me that they don't reuse parts on builds anymore, but what about me? The bottom line is that this English Racing Long Block lasted 20K miles at 400hp before complete failure, and they are not taking ownership of it like you would expect a high reputation shop to do, just so disappointed in my experience.
More updates to come, stay tuned -Matthew
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