The right way to balance a rotating assembly is to weigh all the parts separately and make sure they all weigh the same by removing material to match everything to the lightest one. But yeah the material shouldn't be removed to make stress risers and sharp edges in what you're balancing! Even using a belt sander or bench grinder a 12 year old could do a better job! A shop that takes pride in their craftsmanship would make sure the heavy rods that needed to be lightened didn't look like that when they were done! So yeah if this place balanced your rotating assembly then chances are that they did the hack balance job on the rods, unless TA balanced them but that should be easy to check by looking at your invoice if its itemized? Then after everything weighs the same they can get a accurate bob weight for the crank that have weights bolted to it with the balancer and flex plate attached they need to spin the crank on their balancing machine and the computer will tell them where weight needs to be added or taken away from the crank.(kind of like a tire balancing machine knows where the weight needs to be if you ever seen one of those?) So the shoddy shop seems to know how things are done but they don't do good work?! That shop should be avoided if they are in that much of a hurry to put out work like that to try to get to the next job especially for what they charged! How bad does the crank look? Check the throws and look for new holes and if they left sharp edges. Like Sean said! Derek
Called TA, they did not balance the rods as I sent them what they thought was a complete set from an engine. So by their procedure its not normally balanced unless requested. They also reiterated that the bearings must absolutely be at 3 and 7 and not lined up with the oil passages in the block at all. Ceralli sure didn't sound enthusiastic about looking at this block and told me it's a 3-4 month wait regardless. So I won't be able to have that second opinion. My best bet is to request Precision engine services to repair the damage as best as possible. My concerns are the cam bearings, the hone job and the rods. Even if they could just smooth out the damn things. I hate to have to go back to the same shop but at this point I have no choice unless I start over. I may end up just keeping this an N/A motor and leave the boost for another project. I don't have the cash to start over and I'm not going to risk grenading my motor over this. I wonder if the roller cam I have can be reground to something closer to a ta284..
Man, I really feel your pain, this thread could have been my biography. I have a perfectly good Corvette sitting in the garage for 5 years due to a shoddy 383 stroker build by a shady shop. I too am now short of funds and am going to have to do it all over at my expense. If my experience with "people" or "Machinists/mechanics" of this caliber is consistent I would have to say to not expect much more than lip service from the shop you are dealing with. They have your other parts and they are not going to want to pay to do it all over again.
I have a plan as far as the payment side of things. It may be questionable but certainly legal. I guess I'll find out how it all goes this weekend. Hopefully they do the right thing, but given how services like this go I'm sure both sides won't end up too happy in the long run. It's why I tried putting this off as long as I could because I knew one way or another there was a good chance of something not going how I've hoped. It's just a shock in itself because this doesn't have a reputation as being a shady shop and they are a quite well known dirt modified sponsor for the local speedway. I think the work I asked to have done was outside the norm for them and since I'm a young guy maybe the thought I'd never notice the difference
I would be down at that shop and get some straight answers about what they are going to do to make this right. Stand your ground, they should fix this. Is there only 2 machine shops in town?
The work done should not be outside the realm. Any shop should be able to clean and hone things, hold tolerances, etc. I'm not bashing circle track, but I do see a lot of Walmart pricing/quality mindsets...blame the customers for allowing that! It doesn't take much for anyone to research the peculiarities of an unfamiliar brand/type. This is why people buy crate engines
Brought the motor back today and picked up my top end stuff. It seemed like things were going to escalate to an argument but it calmed down and they said they would take care of it. The machinist explained to me that after doing the hone with fine stones he did a brush hone to knock down the rough edges. I told him it still wasn't satisfactory and he agreed to do it again. They also wanted to argue about the cam bearings but I explained there is a specific way to install them. They also said they would remove the staked in oil galley plugs and clean up the rod caps. I hope there are no other issues after this. I just want my car running again.
I have adjustable roller rockers. The crappy part is having to use multiple length pushrods to keep the geometry correct. That takes time and costs money. More money I'm not paying them.
This is the kind of work I might expect if they have to rebuild an engine at the track and just need to survive another round (heat?). I'm not a builder, but visually their work looks poor.
Sharp edge around the combustion chamber is irritating at best. It only takes a couple minutes with a flap rod (or ?) for the shop to fix. Brush? Are they using a diamond hone? Do they have a profilometer? Can you look through a loupe at that bore? What finish spec is your ring maker recommending?
They didn't tell me what hone they were using, getting the engine back the hone looks a lot better than it did before. Your next two questions I have no idea about unfortunately. I haven't even started on the rings yet but I will post all that once I do start. I finally stopped feeling sorry for myself about this engine and how much I have spent on it. I picked up the motor and they said they wanted $2250, didn't even try to credit me for the cam bearings I have now bought twice or credit me for the fact my engine has been there twice now. When I mentioned the heads they got upset and stated I should be able to adjust the rockers and use lifter preload to keep everything in spec. I explained that Buick engines use shaft rockers that are non adjustable and that these heads effectively become paper weights for anyone who doesn't have the $700 roller rocker setup and they didn't seem to care. I told them I have $2000 and that's all I'm paying. The guy started to get mad and then I began to explain all the things they screwed up in front of another customer and he promptly motioned for me to stop. He said "give me the $2000 and get out". So I'm on my own from here on out. I should have done more research and been more involved with the machining process and selected a better shop but I guess that's all in the past now. Precision engine services in Middletown, NY. Remember that name guys because I'll be posting all the issues I find in this thread. All I can say is that this is not a max effort turbo build. It is a mild engine that might see 10-14psi and if it lives it lives. Otherwise I start my next engine when the time comes. I did just a general cleaning of the block for now while I started chasing threads and looking for any other issues. All the threads are in good shape so no issues there. The cam bearings are horrible. I don't know what they used to put them in but there are nicks on every single cam bearing edge that are enough to cut your finger open let alone catch your finger nail. Some of the bearing surfaces are scratched as well. I have a bearing scraper on order to see if I can smooth out some of the areas of concern but if not I'll be ordering cam bearing set number 3. I also noticed one cam bearing is off just a little bit to allow one oil hole to be partially uncovered. While I'm sure it's not a huge issue it's enough combined with the damage to consider replacing the whole set. $100 bearings are cheaper than a $500 camshaft. I've ordered a micrometer and bore gauge set so I can check every bore and get a rough idea of where I stand. I am no machinist and these tools aren't the highest quality but I'm just looking for any red flags. Especially in the lifter bores. Finishing cylinders 1, 3 and 5 I found that the exhaust lifter on 1 and 3 seems a little tight at less than .001 clearance(an average i derived after measuring in 2 places 90* apart at the same depth in the bore). I based this off of one lifter though and even though I doubt the sizes of my brand new roller lifters vary by much I might find something a few ten thousands smaller for those bores or I might have to look into honing it out further as I believe lifter bore clearance should be more than .001 but less than .003 unless I am mistaken. Maybe I can give TA a call to be sure. The good news so far is up to this point I have no more than .002 clearance between the lifter and bore. Since they appear to have been honed my concern was that they took too much material out and my block was garbage. So once I finish measuring all the bores I will do a thorough cleaning of the block (I ordered an engine brush set). I am not sure what to use as a good cleaner since I don't have running water at my shop, let alone hot running water. My main concerns from here on out are my rod bearing size since they gave me standard size bearings and I am not sure if my rods have been resized or not. I need to check my deck clearance once the rotating assembly is in to verify I am now zero decked. I am also concerned about main bearing clearance and rod bearing clearance. And I know there are other specs I must check as I am assembling. I would appreciate any tips you guys have as to what I must look for and check from this point on. I finally cleaned up the shop a little bit and took all the parts out of my trunk. I forgot how much stuff I've bought for this build... I also threw the head studs in since I just think it looks cool and I wanted to keep crap out of my freshly chased and cleaned threads. Thanks for reading guys, I appreciate all the help you have offered. I'm not going to dwell on the fact I've blown a lot of money for shoddy machine work. I'll just have to make up for it by being focused during assembly and not making assumptions or cutting corners since I'm sure almost anything can be fixed at this point.
