Engine replacement upgrade suggestions?

[Lune]

Man, this has been a long hard road. I thought I'd drop in to give an update.

 

I am now just a few days away from getting my car back. We are pretty exhausted with the trials and tribulations of this rebuild. The heads were the real hurdle to overcome. After finding mine were likely unusable the first set I found was from a salvage yard in PA. Those ended up being worse than mine with badly rusted and corroded valves and deep grooves on the cam channels. Luckily I was able to return those minus the shipping fees. My backup plan had been to get the ATK remanufactured heads off Jegs but their estimated shipping date was over a month out and they didn't even have heads to remanufacture. I didn't stop looking for options and ended up getting a nice pair of heads from Angel at Horsepower Techs from his own car.

 

I canceled my Jegs order and had Angel's heads sent off to our machine shop. There was a potential problem when the machine shop found that a valve cover bolt had gotten stuck in the head and someone had broke off an extractor in the head trying to remove it. The extractor was well and stuck. I contacted Angel and he had honestly just not seen it. I find that easily believable as it was something that I missed when inspecting them, my mechanic and his friend missed and the machinist missed until after finishing machining the heads.

 

Angel seems like an honest guy and I'll likely end up hiring him for any future tuning work that I need. In fact, I wish I knew about Horsepower Techs prior to all of this as I likely would have avoided having a blown engine in the first place. They are familiar with BCP as they have had several cars come through after having been to BCP and having problems. This is now the 3rd mechanic I have heard that from.

 

At this point my mechanic has the engine built as much as he can and ready to go back in the car. The only part I'm waiting on to complete the engine build is the IAG AOS. The tuner that I ordered it from has been a bear to deal with and it took weeks to even get an invoice together and more to get the parts on the way. I did everything I could to avoid the situation of having my mechanic be waiting on parts and despite my efforts that is where I'm at. Worse, after finally contacting the tuner he was annoyed that I was reaching out to try to get tracking information or some kind of ETA.

 

Once I get those parts the build will be done and I can get my car back. I have the Cobb AP and I should be getting a base map from the tuner soon (I hope!). Then I'll be breaking in the new engine and hopefully happy to have our car back again. I'll likely post some pictures. In fact, I should probably just start a new thread and list all the new parts it has. Maybe I'll try to post a video too.

[Max Capacity]

You not tell telling us anything a lot of us have learned over the years. Glad it looks like your getting to the end. Once your behind the wheel and it runs good, you'll be a different person.

 

Some of us learned from others, I was lucky to be able to do my ej257 on my own time line. I have a good network of local shops if I need anything.

 

Having a plan, spare car and time makes this much less stressful.