This will probably make me a lot of enemies, but I feel I have to vent a little after forking over a lot of money for my 446 stroker kit in my 95 Wolverine. First, time frame,I sent it in Feb., just got it back yesterday !!! no engine build takes that long, no matter how busy you are. My real concerns are mostly with the condition of the motor when it came back. To my surprise, it was as dirty and oily as when it left, am I wrong to expect the parts would have been run through the solvent tank and cleaned up before working on them? how much dirt wound up inside the motor? Second, I was charged for new valves, he said the old ones were "all burnt up" I have them ,and they look fine, not a mark on them. He also loat both of the plastic caps you use to time the motor, and "refunded" me 10 bucks to cover them. After looking the motor over top to bottom, I also noticed to my horror, a huge crack in the oil filter cover, rendering it useless, so I will need new parts before I can do anything with my motor. After waiting all these months, I must say it was a big letdown to see a dirty motor sitting in the box, I know, I should have cleaned it myself, but it was below zero in my shed when I pulled the motor, and had no way to clean it. Speaking of the box, I was charged 150 bucks for "special packaging", which consisted of 3 old cardboard boxes stacked inside each other, then the foam I used to ship it was busted up and jammed all around, then 1 wrap of tape, not very special by my standards, I had put it in a plastic tote, lined with plywood, then foam packed, and used a ratchet strap around the outside for extra tight packaging. Sorry for the long post, but I felt a bit robbed after waiting so long and getting charged so much for a very sub standard job. Go ahead, take aim and fire at me, I'm sure I upset more than one person on the forum, sorry for that, but I feel I was not given the service I paid hard earned money for and waited 4 months to get it back.

 

YOU GOT SCREWED! The engine should look like brand new when you get it back. They should have cleaned it BEFORE they did any machining, IMO. That's just one of the checkmarks in the "Bad" column. I think the bad outweighs the good by a long way on this job. I hope you at least get the performance you should, after you finish fixing it yourself. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

 

This isn't the first time I have heard of long wait times paired with shoddy service from that company. FST seems to get great reviews from certain mags, but online is a different story. Personally, I have never dealt with them and have no first hand experience, but this is a story I have seen repeated multiple times. Sorry to hear about your motor, FST does build some fast stuff so hopefully it will be a runner once it is back together.

 

The owner of FST used to be on here:

Last Visited On: 08/31/2004 10:38 AM

I removed quite a few of his posts years ago because he was advertising on the forums.

 

The worst part is, I'm in the middle of moving across the state for my new job, so it could be weeks before I get the parts and get it running. I have the motor in the frame, but without the oil filter cover, I'm pretty much hosed until I have all the parts to at least turn it over. My biggest fear is it will take some time to get it going, I'll have a problem, and I'll get the " you should have told me right away, I can't warranty any work after this long" story. From the mag articles I have read about his work, I assumed Mickey Dunlap was the guy to have the work done, but after all the excuses for not getting the job done, and the extra charges, I am sorely dissapointed at the poor quality work I received for the large amount of money spent.

 

Man I hate to hear that 95wolv, when I got the 488 kit for my wolvy, he said turn around for the crank if I wanted to do it would be about 6 weeks. I wasnt wanting to be down that long so i just did the 488 instead of the 500. It took about 2 weeks to get the parts for the install and that was after I called him 5 days after they should have been shipped "his wife didnt send them while he was gone somewhere" and they got shoved into a corner.
I dont think you should have been charged that much for special packaging which didnt consist of more than your used foam and stuff, he shoulda put everything back in the package you sent it in so that it would be safe. You could probably claim the broken oil filter cover on the shipping insurance.

I always clean a motor up before I work on it so why mickey didnt I dont understand unless that is just laziness on his part.

But hopefully you will be very happy once it is done.

 

some positive news: I got off the phone with 4stroketech, they are giving me full list price to replace the missing timing covers, and filing a damage claim on UPS for the oil cover damage. He said they had shipped without the cover on in the past, but then the case gets damaged if dropped, so they bolted on the oil cover to prevent case damage. As long as they are standing behind everything, I feel a lot better, just wish I had more time to get everything back together, so I can get it running and broke in. Well, I'll keep you all informed on the progress, might be a while, I'll only have weekends to work on it for now.