Warning! This Is A Must Read!

[Jim Downard]

ANYONE interested in buying a small block Ford motor, stay AWAY from Indy Mustang Performance. I recently purchased a 393w stroker and had to tear it back down and rebuild it. He advertised a .030 block with new Scat crank, stock rods with ARP rod and main bolts. TRW pistons and moly rings. Wolverine blue racer 292 dur. .512 lift cam. Roush 200 cast iron heads with valve guides. I asked him to build it with 11:1 CR. He said he doesn't supply a harmonic damper or flywheel with his motors (balance?), but I said on this one I'd like him to supply both items as I feel more comfortable with the balance if all components are supplied. I asked him if the Ford 10.5" clutch would bolt onto the flywheel and he said "no, but I can drill and tap it so that it will." The motor shows up. Ooops, forgot to send oil pump and drive. Go to the parts store and get pump, wait couple of days to get the pump pick up ordered in. Flywheel's bolted on, time for the clutch. Pressure plate won't bolt on. Turns out he didn't centerpunch the holes before drilling them. Then to make matters worse, he used a hand held drill to drill the holes and didn't hold the drill straight. Now, the holes are drilled and tapped crooked and the pressure plate won't bolt on. Call Jeg's and order a brand new 28 oz. flywheel. Cha ching, $269 thank you very much. Motors in the car, start it up and notice some vibration, mentioned this to him, and replied some vibration is normal. Broke in the cam for 15 minutes (later he told me that the high idle cam break in was originally intended for chevy and chrysler engines, not Ford) then actually made it 270 miles before rear main seal failed. Pull motor, disassemble, and notice chattered wear on all rod and main bearings. Mr. Schaffer says to send it back to him and he'll make it right, but I don't trust him now. I take it to Performance Engineering in Circleville, Ohio. Here's what he found so far. Rod bearings turned down .0003" under minimum. Crank out of balance 51 grams on the front and 243 grams in the rear. Cylinders over bored several hundred thousandths. Other things I discovered. No pushrod guideplates, he put washers under the studs to shim them up. Cam ended up being, unknown brand, 280/289 total dur. 204/214 dur @ .050, .450"/.474" lift. Not quite the cam as originally specified. He said he changed the compression ratio to 10.5:1 without asking me, it actually checks out to 9.8:1. Not that that's such a bad thing, but it would have been nice if he'd asked me before building it and shipping it. Motor didn't have any ARP bolts inside. All were stock. Apparently it was an oversite. He shipped me the parts to rebuild, but he shorted me a main bolt and when I told him it apparently pissed him off enough that now he says he did ship all ten bolts and I must have lost one when I opened the plastic box that held them. Also, he now says the motor was perfectly balanced and that I somehow screwed up and put the wrong flywheel on it. Oh well, I guess this was one of life's lessons. To all concerned, buyer beware, and heed my warnings.

Thanks for your time.

Jim Downard

p.s. Thanks Don Scott for helping me out in my time of need. You are a CLASS ACT. All hail Don Scott