If the guy has a good reputation and been in business a while then this is strange indeed.
All my time in Motorsports it amazed me how much people spent on engines and how long they lasted.
In the Bristol area we had Anderson Race engines and a mate of mine regularly spent £10,000 on a Vauxhall redtop I told him I bought a Maserati for that much.
I only ever outsourced the machine work and built my own and never had any issues.
For his reputation he should sort correctly is my opinion.
Good Luck.
Yes it's very frustraiting, he has championship winning engines out & about, he does a lot of VW stuff, but this is a peugeot, but in my simple mind a 4 pot N/A engine can't be that different to another? The engine used to run well & make good power & never blew head gaskets. It dropped a valve seat which was the reason for the origional falure.
I sopke to him yesterday & being in buisness myself I understand that things go wrong & customers arn't always happy, on the rare occasion we have issues I always work to sort a resolution for the customer, regardless of cost 'my reputation is more important than my bank ballance, if you like'....This fell on deaf ears yesteray.
I think the main issue is he can't afford to rectify the problem (he went belly up a few years ago & now works from someone else's premises & I get the impression its all a bit hand to mouth) But I have offered to cover the cost of the replacement pistions, which I think is more than reasonable.
By piston profile I mean the top face, The old pistons had a D shaped bowl (no longer avalible from Omega) which complemented the D shaped intruder on the head casting, the current pistons have a round bowl, he is saying that because of this there is not enough 'squish' to force the gasses from under the intruder on the head, the fuel & air are igniting in thes area causing a pressure spot & forcing the gasket out? If this is the case & he knows about all this stuff (I don't which is why I got an 'expert' to build it) why was this not flagged up when the new pistons arrived.
I have spoken to a few other engine builders, trouble is there seems to be no single answer each has their own take.......Everything I go back to him with he poo poos, "they obviously don't know what their talking about." What everyone has said though is check the compression ratio! Even the guy on the rolling road questioned it. My guy is adamant that it is correct, he said that with my cam profile he ideally would like to see it higher.
Either way he built the thing & it dosen't work, His problem no?
The pistons he wants need to be custom made & are currently 6-8 weeks from the States, only he has the specification for the piston he wants to fit, so I am treading carefully, atleast until the pistons are ordered. I have two people to chat with today, I want to be sure the different piston will solve the issue before investing more money & another 8 weeks.....which then means most of the season will be over! If I can get someone else to confirm his thinking I'll get him to order the pistons, once this is done I might commence the shouting.
There have been a lot of conversations, like I said this is a very long story, I just want the thing built & running, trouble is, if our relationship compleatly breaks down, I'm bu**ered beacuse no other engine builder will pick up from where he left off & I'm in for starting again, so I need him to sort it, but I dont feel I should pay......Grrrr