Operation Turbo engine build again.

Once I had the engine put together and running in Germany I notice it had a slight knocking to it. After months of trying to figure out what the noise was I was at a loss. I deployed to Iraq for a year and while I was there I had the car shipped to Turbo Charging Dynamics (TCD) to figure out what was wrong with the engine.

Long story short, the engine had to be pull out and disassembled. The German BMW "race" engine builder had screwed the hell out of me. He did not check the engine like I paid him and assembled a worn out engine with so much wobble in two of the cylinder that the pistons where knocking at TDC. The guys business is Motorsport Edelmann, Mettenheim Germany. His name is Heinz Edelmann. DO NOT EVER DO ANY BUSINESS WITH THIS CROOK! Additionally, the cutting ring head gasket he sold me (195.26 Euro) failed only days after the engine was running. I had to quickly replace that gasket before the car had to be shipped back to the states.

Here are some pictures of the pistons showing damage caused by the HG failure and the cutting rings getting hit by the pistons. You can also see that the ceramic coating is just about gone in a very short time. Looks like the guy who did that was a crook too.

So, TCD had the block bored and installed JE forged pistons.

UPDATE - June 2007 -

Well, got screwed on another engine rebuild. I experience two head gasket failures in 3000 miles. Being very frustrated, I was given advice to contact Paul Burke of Kansas City, MO. He had built a 700+ HP S38 for a friend of mine. I pulled the head and took pictures of the surface and sent them to Paul. His reaction was amazement at the poor preparation of the cylinder head surface.

With information I received from Paul, I researched what was required for the preparation of an aluminum head that will used with a MLS head gasket on a iron block. The industry standard is a roughness average (RA) of the surface to be a 20RA or lower. I sent the head to Paul and he measured the RA with a profiometer and determined that the RA of my head at the lowest was a 90 and highest 120.

You can actually feel the groves with you fingers. Unbelievable bad work!

Due to the very bad surface, the head was tearing up the surface of the MLS gasket and thus the gasket would fail. Upon further inspection of the head, all exhaust valves would not seat and seal due to and extremely poor valve job and the exhaust valve guides all leaked.

I paid the shop that TCD used for a valve job, for the head to be torn down and checked/reassembled and the head surfaced. The end result of this shops work was a damaged head that cause multiple head gasket failures and me lots more money. I did not receive any refund for the sub standard work from TCD.

Paul then built a M30B35 head for me and it's surface RA was a 16. The head had been on the engine for over 5000 miles and is working great. I have much more power than with the damaged head.

Here are some pictures of his work -

Of note is the above picture of the valve job. Those angles are machine cut, not stone cut. Amazing work.

With the new cylinder head on the car, I was still experiencing cooling system overpressure under boost. This had occurred with three different head gaskets and two different heads. Only common part is the engine block. I along with others feel that there is a crack in the block that allows this to occur. I paid the shop that TCD used to pressure check the block, which they obviously did not.

CAR HAS BEEN SOLD. Block will be checked to verify if it had a crack. I will travel out to the new owners location in November to go over the car with the new owner.

DEC 07 UPDATE - The new owner of the car had the engine removed and checked. BLUF, the block's deck was not flat thus combustion gases were passing under the gasket into the cooling system under boost. .008 had to be remove from the deck for the block to seal properly. So thats it, the shittiest head work in the world and not checking and thus decking the block which I asked TCD to have done. TCD should be proud of their engine builds. Case closed. I have closure now and I know that no matter what I did, the engine was doomed due to poor machine work. $8000 engine build for nothing. Well not nothing, I recieved lots of slander from TCD, and his friends, on the web when I adressed this problem on the mye28.com board

Please see my other cardomin page that features my new car, a 1966 Sunbeam Tiger Mk 1A.