94Firehawk161
New Member
- Joined
- May 17, 2006
I'm the mechanic that originally worked on Spencer's car. First of all, 24+ lbs. of boost and out of alcohol- HOLY CRAP! Most of us know that that is a recipe for disaster! When we first got this car, I checked compression on all of the cylinders and found that 3, 5 and 6 were all way below spec. with 3 and 5 being the worst. It was extremely obvious that it had HUGE blow by, since most of the compression could be found coming out of the oil fill tube and the breather. When we performed a leak down test, we found that there was obviously a major failure in the number 6 cylinder (beyond head gasket failure). At this time I recommended that we just pull the engine, instead of pulling the heads off just to find out that we wasted time and were going to need to pull the short block out too. Since Spencer's father was paying for it, he had the ultimate say in what we did. He agreed, even though his knowledge is limited on cars, that wasting time and money was not a good idea. Due to Spencer's restrictions on time and funds, I recommended that if the damage was not too severe, we could repair only the cylinders that had problems and get it back on the road before Spencer went off to boot camp, instead of building the "most expensive turbo Buick motor ever". That is why we recommended using a stock replacement piston for any cylinder with piston damage. Now for the "irritating" part. After talking to Spencer's father and getting approval on the repair (removal and failure analysis only), Dale shows up at our shop unannounced. Dale knew right away what the problem was, before even hearing what our findings were. It was amazing, almost like he had ESP or something??? Then before leaving, he informs us that he only stopped by to look at the car and see what it was like, so that he could buy it real "cheap" from Spencer. This immediately threw up a red flag. Why would someone that is suppose to be a fellow Turbo Buick enthusiast be trying to take advantage of someone when they are down? This told me that he couldn’t be trusted and that he did not have Spencer’s best interest in mind. Don’t get me wrong, Dale seems like a nice guy and all, but I did not feel comfortable having him around other customer’s cars. After tearing down the front of the engine, I received a call from Spencer telling me that he wants to try repairing it himself. At this time he still did not agree with my diagnosis, but this sometimes happens and I was not about to stand in his way. He explained that he was in Autotech at his high school and he thought that between his own knowledge and his teacher’s knowledge, they could repair it. Since I had been in his place myself when I was in high school, I figured that this would be a good learning experience for him. I told him that the whole front of the engine was torn down and it may be a little tricky to get it back together without help from someone who knows these cars, but he didn’t seem to mind. I also informed him that we would have to work out a time to get it out of our shop, since we only have one overhead door and that day we had more cars in front of his that were apart for repairs. We worked out a time and he agreed to pay me for work that was already completed. I was really fair to him and only charged him a couple of hours for diagnosis and the beginning of the removal. Now, I am not sure which part of this seems shady. Sure, we don’t work on these cars every day, but that is mostly due to the fact that most of you guys work on your own cars. My only interest in working on Spencer’s car was to help him out of a bad situation and make sure that he did not get into an even worse situation by taking the GN to an average shop. I was not aware that Spencer was taking this car to another shop, and after talking to him for nearly two hours while he was waiting for Dale to show up with his trailer with sides (what a disgrace to a GN!) I did not get the feeling that we were parting on bad terms. I guess in the end, all that matters is that the car went to what seems to be a good shop and should be back on the road for all to enjoy and admire soon.
