Caveat Emptor.... Livernois Heads (Pic heavy)

This is not the first time I have seen problems with their heads first hand. And they are always dealt with badly.

I have not had any issues with mine yet, and I thank my lucky stars. If I was having the problems you were I would be driving down there (they are 35min from me) and jamming the heads up someone's ass.

I think you are making the right move by getting someone else to fix them for you. I decided when friends started having problems with theirs that if I did I won't even bother calling Livernois. I'll have Total Engine Airflow or RGR fix them and be done with it.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. You deserve better.

 

Every time I see this pop up I worry since I've got bronze guides in my heads. They are not Livernois head but stock ones that were cleaned up when I had my engine built. I've got around 17k miles on them since they were done so I'm hoping they continue to last.

Good luck and sorry to hear about these issues.

 

I can completely sympathize with you right now. I made the decision to have Livernois build and tune my engine a couple years ago based on this "reputation" also. In addition, I only wanted one shop doing the work so if something went wrong I knew who to hold accountable. The build took way longer than originally quoted. Hold up was the new head castings, core shift, etc. Dan Millen personally told me the new castings and CNC program were going to be worth the wait so that is what I did.

Finally got the car finished and back. Immediately I knew there was a problem. Big oil loss and blue puffs at start up. Livernois encouraged me to drive the car for the season and they would fix it over the winter. While they were "fixing" it I went to the shop to inspect the work. I didn't get to see the cylinder heads for whatever reason but I did ask to look at the cams. Good thing I did because they had been damaged on the mechanics cart (as it was explained to me).

Again after a long wait I got the car back. I was told the same story about the valve guide problem with their supplier and it was now corrected. I put a few miles on it and went to drop a borescope into the combustion chamber through the spark plug. Went to remove the spark plugs and the socket was the wrong size. Changed sockets, pulled the plug and found Livernois had swapped my highly touted new castings back for the old with out ever discussing this with me which in the end has now cost me more time and money.

Didn't really drive the car this summer because the thing just gets too hot. It drove better and more consistent before building the engine. To address the heat, this winter I took the blower off. While off, I peaked down into the intake ports. All looked good but the very last intake valve in the number 8. I was also surprised by the impressions left around the intake port by the OEM o-ring. The intake port had been CNC'd so long it was cutting into the cross section of the o-ring leaving a stepped transition and half the cross section of the o-ring to try and make a seal.

I mic'd the intake ports and OEM o-rings trying to make sure I got as straight as possible across but there may be a little variance. What I saw was th long end of the intake port measured 2.655" with the short being 1.164". The measurements I got on the inner diameter of the OEM o-ring were 2.654" (L) x 1.489" (W) with a cross section of .0575". Again these might be off by a couple thousands here or there but should be pretty accurate. At my request, another engine builder/performance shop, who has had problems with Livernois heads and now uses RGR, measured the intake ports on a set of RGR heads for me. They came out 2.5xx" (L) X 1.2xx" (W) (sorry I couldnt find the email with the numbers to be more exact).

Off to Livernois again to discuss this issue and they conveniently have a set of StageIII heads on display. Pulled out my micrometer while waiting and the length of the port was 2.5xx". I ended up speaking with Andy Ricketts who thought the oil might be due to a poor spray pattern from one of the injectors. We placed the injectors on the flow bench and nothing really stood out but one injector had a suspect pattern. While there Dan Millen also threw out the idea that there might be a leak around the manifold on that cyclinder. (With only half the o-ring trying to make the seal I bet that is a good guess.)

I also discussed the port size with Andy Ricketts and the impact it has. This discussion lead to the manifold being blamed as the culprit for any problems...makes sense right I agreed to run the car this coming up season with the cleaned injectors and make sure there were no leaks. At the end of the season the cylinder heads will be inspected again. According to Andy, Livernois stands behind their product!

OP, I hope you get this resolved in an amicable manner. You are probably much better off just moving on and having another shop repair them. My stomach turns over everytime I think about my car and dealing with Livernois at this point. I just wonder how many "bad batch" cylinder heads are out there waiting for other unsuspecting owners to discover.

 

This just reinforces my opinion that in most situations a really good builder doesn't necessarily make a good business manager. As in most trades, a guy can be especially talented and starts his own business. His reputation grows based on his talents and his business eventually gets too big to handle all the work himself. He must begin hiring others to do the work and he eventually spends all his time managing the business while others do the work he is so talented at. Obviously the employees aren't as talented as the owner at their trade and this is where the problems arise. Eventually word spreads about multiple problems and the company's reputation changes to "They used to be good but I've about heard lots of problems lately". Then everyone gradually moves on to the next up and coming rising star. Wash, rinse, repeat.

 

All I can say is wow and holy burning bushes batman! Still can't get past it being a livernois issue. They were on my top 3 reputable places to buy my future N/A stroker build from, tied in close 2nd with BBR. Seems SHM may make the #1 spot. I want to buy from people who will stand by not only their products but their customers as well. But not even an extra kudos of gratitude towards a customer who also lays his life down to protect the liberties to allow a business to continue to do business freely, fvcking shamefull just on principal.

 

This helps narrow down my decision when I decide to get my motor built next winter. Thanks for the details and heads up, as companies start getting bigger little details tend to go. I've seen this first hand with any business, the smaller they are the better the customer service and work but as they grow it quickly goes to shit.

 

Seems like I'm hearing more and more lately about the shotty work from livernois...

 

I think the rep comes from spending enough advertising dollars to get "stories" done in the magazines. Then someone will pay the money just to say so and so did the work on my car. But then again I think there is a conspiracy behind everything.

 

I was asked to have a look at this and see if I could offer any information. Read through the thread and issues with the head. I'm not normally very involved with cylinder head matters so I'm not really too abreast of this situation but I did try and get some info and get filled in.

I spoke with Dave and am sorry if there were previous issues with the product or service in any way, being that I'm not directly involved I don't feel like an apology coming from me means much to the OP, but for what its worth, nobody likes to see somebody struggle with a product or service or anything like that, so sorry that's taken place.

By looking at the pictures of the head and the resulting breakage and going off the fact that this has happened twice now, with the same head, and the same exhaust bank of valves I'm very inclined to think that something is wrong with that casting. The guide bores are drilled at the factory and are an exact angle and placement in relation to the the rest of the components in the head. If the bores are not aligned properly in relation to the camshaft follower then a scrubbing effect will happen which will bend the valve and eventually cause a failure. Just taking a guess based on what I see.

I bring this up because if you use that same casting and put a bronze guide back in it and hone the guide and cut a new valvejob it won't fix the geometry. On top of that you won't really have any good way to catch it or know if its wrong. The only way to check it would be to indicate in the guide bores between that head and a known good head, or a factory print. But just redoing the work using the same casting again could result in the same problem.

After talking with Dave he said that Livernois does want to work with the OP and get the head back to see if it can be checked and verified as defective in the guide bore.

Just felt like trying to offer some help based on what information I could gather and read on here. If what I have is wrong or the information I'm going off is wrong please let me know. But whatever happens the guide holes on that head need to be checked before just putting a new guide in and putting the head back together. You definitely do not want this happening again and I feel like it would be prudent to qualify that casting before going further.

If I can offer any help let me know.

Thanks

 

One more reason not to use Livernoi$

 

A friend of mine had issues with Livernois in the past when it came to his custom TT mustang earlier last summer. Dropped it off for a look through and custom tuning...a couple months went by and they never even touched the car...excuse after excuse and a decent amount of money later he hears back from them saying the car was "un-tunable"....

For the amount of work Livernois does they dont get much negative feedback, but I've seen it pop up more and more over the past year or two...especially with head issues. Hopefully you get everything worked out and best of luck to you on getting your car back up and running. Hopefully you have no further issues.

 

Interesting, guess the info I was going off was wrong. Well that makes for an odd scenario.

Out of curiosity do you happen to know what the lash was set at? The adjustment is controlled in the valve tip height or lash adjuster if an adjustment needs to be made. Curious where it fell, I don't have access to any of that info if there is more valve lash info that goes with the heads, thought you might know off the top of your head.

Saw the notes on lash listed before in your post but didn't see any specific numbers so I wanted to see what the actual numbers were that were used.

Thanks

 

Hell, I have stage II heads on my car.... No failures yet.... For the amount of money they cost, should have zero failures related to the heads in my opinion.... Keeping my fingers crossed now... Have bad luck when it comes to car stuff and failures.....







Looks like all steel guides too me in my, so hopefully I have zero problems from it???

 

DIdn't Lito just have some problems with this Livernois heads?