I think a few additional statements of clarification will help here. To date, August 28,2008, my cobra has has less than 100 miles on it, TOTAL, for several reasons.(this includes both SA motors) After the 1st engine failed it took several months to get the first motor out, stripped and parts transferred to the replacement motor and reinstallation. I was travelling with my family for most of August 2007 and I travel extensively for my business in the fall and am away from home for most of Sept, Oct and part of Nov. I do not know how many of you drive your cars in the rain, but I do not! Last year it started raining Labor Day 2007 and stopped raining here in May 2008. It just started raining again by the way!
In addition, the replacement motor was in such poor shape and required sooo much work that I frankly gave up on SA and the car. Yes, the first failed motor was at my garage for a long time, but this was not a simple pull the motor and reinstall the replacement. It took time, and since my "experience" with SA was already going downhill fast, I needed to make sure the replacement motor ran. It did, albeit not well, and the car sat in the garage and out of the rain until late April / May 2008. The weather was bad, I did not trust the replacement motor, and no, I did not share any of this with SA because I got little help before and did not want to deal with the frustration.
In order to gain some confidence in the car and motor and in an effort to make it run the way it should have two years ago, AutoStrada suggested that we trailer the car, with a handfull of engine hours to Meridian Performance for a dyno, it broke again on the dyno and the rest you know!
I had not talked with SA, and had no intention of doing so ever again, until the replacement motor with ridiculously low miles failed on the dyno - then I was pissed!
I did send the invoice to SA with expectaions of full reimbursement. All charges were the result of the engine failures, except the dyno which frankly was not something that we should have had to perform in the first place.
It should aslo be noted that both failures were diagnosed and the motors were both shut down before major warranty damage occured. I guess we know maybe a little something about motors right guy's?
When I heard nothing from SA I sent an email and Susan replied that she was sorry it took so long and that she had sent a check. I felt like I had closure and truly wanted to move on and therefore sent a thank you ... I then received the partial payment and nasty letter from Bill wrapped around the check and here we are today.
FYI, Unique installed the first motor. As an expensive crate motor my expectaions would be that we would wire, plumb and simply start both "new" motors. Adjusting timing, spinning distributors, tightening rockers, solving leaks should not be an issue for expensive new motors with less than 5 hours running time in a garage.
We did not need a "crystal ball" to tell that the replacement motor had never been run because we became very familiar with the replacement motor and its condition when it arrived as we spent much time moving around parts and hardware. This was when we noted that the
oil pan was full of clean new motor
oil and started to explore if in fact it had been run on Bill's "test stand". We also joked at the lack of attention to detail as we know it is a major no-no to ship a motor with fluids inside.This inspection and reinstall was performed by AutoStrada in my heated garage as I did not have a way to transport the car and did not want the the car out of my care and custody.
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