I read this and thought to myself, what a sh*tty deal this poor guy got.
I PM'd him and told him to ship his engine to the shop and we would get him fixed up.
Delmas paid for the ride both ways and I agreed to sell him the parts he needed at my cost with NO LABOR CHARGE. I have no warranty work so I figured what the hell. LET’S HOOK A BROTHER UP!
My buddy Dave pulled the engine apart and documented everything that he found wrong. The following is a list of his findings and what we did to correct them.
The first two pictures are of the piston we pulled out of the engine. The piston is galled and seized. This was nothing that Demlas did wrong. We measured the piston to cylinder wall clearance and found that we had .0012” of clearance. Wiseco recommends .002” for their Blaster pistons. Any engine in the state of tune that Delmas paid for should be running .003”. This is where all of the metal flakes came from.
We bored the cylinder to an oversize piston and set the clearance to .003’.
The next picture is of the primary crank seal. It’s a bit fuzzy but the seal is sticking out of the case by .125 Sloppy work at best.
We installed new seals and set them at the proper dimension.
The next picture is a shot of the transmission bearing sticking out of the case. That bearing should be flush with the surface of the case. Not his problem but it was going to be another issue down the road.
We set the bearing to the proper dimension, used Locktight on the outer race and peened the case around the bearing.
Next shot is of the crap that the builder left in the cases. Yamabond is my best guess. Here’s my philosophy, “If you charge a guy over $1000 to build an engine……………….clean the thing”!!!!!
We used the ultrasonic cleaner to clean all of the engine parts.
Here’s where I tossed my lunch. The next picture is of the stator plate. This was a Ricky Stator plate. The “builder” didn’t set the plate inside of the three guides. The picture shows how the plate was installed on top of the alignment boss. This caused the plate to distort and break one of the coil wires as seen in the next picture.
We couldn’t fix this. I gave Delmas a used stator plate.
The next shot is of the shift cam bolt. No locktight.
We installed it and used Locktight on the bolt.
The last shot is just the drain plug with a bunch of crap on it. My guess is that it was never removed during the assembly.
Here are a few of my observations.
The porting was clean and looked professional. Delmas requested a trail port. I tossed my degree wheel on it and found the exhaust port duration to be at 200 degrees and the transfers to be at 130 degrees. These are drag porting numbers boys. No doubt it’s fast but good luck in the tight stuff or up long hills.
We did nothing to correct this.
The finish cut on the cylinder head was horrible.
I cut the head so it would seal properly.
The new engine was filthy. Here’s my philosophy “If you’re paying good money to have an engine rebuilt, it should be returned to you working perfect and clean as a surgical instrument.
The end of the crankshaft on the stator side was cut down. I see no reason to do this other that the crank was pounded out of the engine at some point in its life.
The builder (Wildcard) charged Delmas for new main bearings. The retaining cage on one of the bearings was cracked. The bearings were used. I installed new bearings and told Delmas not to worry about it. On me.
We shipped the engine back to Delmas after checking it on our kicking stand to insure it was at 160psi.
I called him on Saturday and all is well.
My summation of this build is that it was rushed by the previous builder and he could care less about his work or his customers. Too busy, too tired or too lazy to do the job right. Very sloppy work at best. We’re glad we could help Delmas sort this mess out. It was also cool to see the work our “competition” is shipping to their customers. If what we saw is par for the course, KOR will be on top of the pile for a very long time.