*I cut and pasted this from the other forum, I'm slowly losing feeling in my fingers from all this typing* lol
Let me see if I can frame together the events a little better so that it makes more sense. Warning though there is a lot here to read.
This starts before the heads ever get bolted to the car. While dealing with a different customer on stage 3 heads where Livernois made mistakes in sending out the correct flow information with the heads Mark is in the process of getting a set of heads at the same time. (For the record we took full blame on that mistake and error in that situation as we did indeed screw up and ended up refunding the money on that set of heads)
While this other thread is going on
http://www.modularfords.com/forums/s...ight=livernois
Due to all this with our error with this customers set of heads their becomes a question in Marks mind that his heads will be as good as they are supposed to be. Mark decides that he will get the heads independently checked out at this point to verify they are indeed what he ordered and wants. He offers to also post up the information for everybody to see after the results are in. We very much appreciated that. So Mark finds an independent head shop Superior Automotive who goes through the heads and checks them all out to make sure they are indeed what they are supposed to be. Superior Automotive disassembles the heads, measures them up, checks sizing and so forth on parts and does flow work on them. Here is the follow up to that test-
http://www.modularfords.com/forums/s...ernois&page=10
Based on what Superior Automotive said it seems to me that the heads were spot on and pretty good in their opinion. During all that testing we even decided to swap valve springs out for an even better set of more race oriented springs just because we wanted the heads to be bullet proof for what Mark was doing.
After this the heads get sent over to Mark's engine builder. From that point the engine gets assembled and built. This was where my questioning came from in regards to how the cams would have not been found to be bent at this point because the engine builder would have had to have done piston to valve and taken the cams in and out while mocking up the head with test springs and an indicator. Then turning the engine over would have shown it seems if the cams were binding at this point.
At this point the engine gets assembled and for a 1-2 week (don't know) period the car is attempted to be started without any luck. At that point somebody at the shop decides the cam on the one side is bent and it needs to be replaced. So Mark calls and lets me know this. I'm slightly confounded by this but I tell Mark to send them back so we can send them for warranty. At this point Mark who understandably just wants to get the car running wants to get any cams in the mean time and asks if we have stock cams here at Livernois we can send him out. I tell him yes and he pays to have them 2nd day shipped out there.
Upon receiving the Comp cams back I notice that the cam has kind of torn up journals. (Knowing now that the engine was attempted to start for 1-2 weeks with all that cranking it makes sense to me why they were starting to get tore up) Nothing horrible at this point but to the degree that I cannot put it in v-blocks and spin it over and get an accurate reading. So the cams are sent back to Comp to check them out.
In this time Mark and his engine guy have the new stock cams and they install those and get the engine running after fixing the other actual issue that was causing the no start condition. At this point the engine runs for some period of time and dyno runs and then fails (I don't accurately know the timeframe here). What seems to be an oil pump failure at first. After getting more information it turns out that the original builder that installed the heads had used stock head gaskets and not the big bore gaskets that would be required on a build with a 3.700 bore. This caused a hammering of the pistons into the gasket and head. The oil pump failure obviously caused some oil starvation at this point. (For further evidence of this I'm getting my hands on either pictures or the actual pistons from the engine) The top of the piston has been crushed down almost .035 around the ring where the gasket was hitting it. Obviously this is not a good thing and not right.
I did not know any of this information at the time when the heads were sent back. I knew there had been a possible issue with the cams and at that time I had no clue as to why the engine actually failed other than hearing an oil pump had broke. Now though knowing the pistons were hitting the head gasket makes sense that oil pump gears would break and starve the motor for oil.
When I looked at the heads I noted the cam journals being pretty tore up and told Mark that the one head was really bad. At that point we started this whole thing.
My initial reason for looking deeper into this was that it just did not all add up in my head. When Comp first came back and said the cams were not warrantied for being bent but for a lobe issue that was unrelated I started questioning where this info came from about the cams being bent. Then after thinking back on the whole thing I remembered that the heads were sent to Superior to be fully checked out and ended up getting pretty good reviews from them. Then thinking about how the engine builder would not have been able to do piston to valve had the cam been binding was my second clue as to maybe I did not have the whole story. Finally after hearing about the wrong head gaskets being installed and the pistons getting damaged and breaking the oil pump in the process causing the oil starvation I realized that my initial suspicions about everything were at least in the ballpark.
This is one of the reasons I said initially that I wanted to dig up all the facts for myself and get the full story. In cases that are cut and dry where Livernois has indeed made a mistake than its a no questions asked deal we will always 100% honor the warranty and fix whatever it is. Unfortunately as in a case like this sometimes a little detective work is necessary to get the full story and to be able to make the proper assessment accurately based on all the facts. I'm just doing my job and trying to give everybody a fair shake since that is all I would ask for myself.
As always if anybody has any questions or needs me to try and clarify something I would be more than glad to.
Thanks
Mike
Thanks Mike