ratman

i just took my parts back from a local machine shop i was gong to have build my long blocks. i saw some bad things going on with my parts and caught the shop owner lying to me. i drove from tampa and took all my stuff to mark a mer/ he did a great job on too olds stuff. mark just called me to advise me that the local shop (godwin singer machine) in st. pete ruined one set of my pistons by grinding meat off the underside at the wrist pin location. ground and hacked up my keith black billet cranks, and one set of oliver rods... as well as charge me through the nose for doing so. i feel my damages are over he limit for small claims court so need advice on how to go after this moron for damages to my parts. any help would be great. thx in advance ratman.

magnum

Sorry to hear about your misfortune Ratman,I tried to send you a pm about what my buddy has to say about local machine shops.I'm affraid its not encouraging news.He's had his new aluminum block to two machine shops and neither one was capable of following simple instructions.Luckily only the sleeves were f'd up in his case but it sounds like you got hit hard.

Chris L

This is the first time I have ever heard Godwin Singer botched up anyones 5hit. I lived in St.Pete most of my life,They have built several BBC for us. My brother-in-law builds drag cars for a living in St.Pete. He also uses them.
Thanks for the info. seems you never know who to trust in this market today.

happy hours

I used godwina couple years back to surface and flux a head for me for a 3 liter i re-didi Not rocket science but they did an OK job. Sorry to hear about your stuff. Hopefully somebody will post who we can use in the area.

Chris L

Call, NBS that is right (No Bull ****) this is my brother-in-law Andrew Stephens. They build some nasty drag cars powered by even nastier power plants. Ask him who he would trust to do the work you need done. Tell him Chris Leclair sent you.
He will tell you straight out where to go in order to get done what you need or want.
5649 70th Ave N
Pinellas Park ,FL
(727) 541-1833

cuda

Godwin Singer has been there for a long, long time. What did they say about it? I've used them before, never had any problems.

ratman

steve the owner is who i was dealing with, and tom his "best" guy... the crank throws were for 6.700 rods and i had bought 6.535 rods. instead of calling me to tell me i needed longer rods for the pistons to clear the crank throws. tom starts grinding on the crank throws, then after hacking up the cranks he still couldn't get the pistons to clear the crank so he ground a lot of material of the bottoms of the pistons in the wrist pin area. now the pistons don't have enough material there. mark at mer feels they would come unglued at hi rpm. the set of oliver rods that tom opened now have several huge dings on them from being thrown in to a box on top of the other rods. the cam bearing were installed before the block was final honed to size (try cleaning the oil pasages after the cam bearing are installed would be foolish as stone from the hones would be trapped by the bearing). there insn't enough clearance for the rotating assm so tom sanded material off the face of the bearing shell that rides on the crank jornal to get clearance. he tossed my bearing into a bow then trhew the main caps in the box and gouged and scratched up a lot of the bearing to the point i don't want them in my engines. steve charged me 3500.00 in labor to hackup my parts now i have 1 set of non returnable rods1200.00 2 sets of ruined pistons 1700.00 and now have to pay mark at mer to redo everything from scratch. did i mention he took 2+ months to get this fine workmanship. in all the treated me and my parts like crap. i really want to go afterhim legally to recoup some of my coin. i will at least sue him in small claims court for the max they allow i think its 3k but i feel like im out me than 5 k by the time im done with fixing he screw ups. so any lawyers that can give me a bit of advice would be a huge help n getting the ball rolling. thx in advance, ratman

ratman

almost forgot any one running .010 piston to cyl clearance? thats where godwin singer set em up. nice work, this will add 2 months addl wait to hit the water dealing with these idiots. no to mention the cost of replace in the stuff the screwed up and the cash i gave them 3500. for thier wonderful workmanship. if you have a bone stock 454 you might get a motor that won't intantly self destruct but aanything more advanced than that forget about sendnng it to godwin singer.

Chris L

Sorry to hear that but!
They have done a lot of work for motor heads for years and years.
(might be more to the story) Good luck

ratman

what more to the story??? i have over ten thousanths clearance in the bores wanna run that loose in your motors??? ever have some one grind 200 thoasanths off a crank throw instead of getting the correct length connecting rod??? ever have someone grind so much meat off the piston under wrist pin to wear they aren't safe to run the piston makers take as much off as they can. they use engineering and years of r&d to come up with the pistons shape not a grinder!!!! one set of rods had a few small dings from being roughly handled...put cam bearings in the block before the final honing was completed... ever try to clean the oil passages in a block with the cam bearings in place or would you rather was the grit from the honing stones out of your engine one oil change at a time as your motor ingests itself??? but don't get me wrong they do a great job of babbiting bearings for model a's but this isn't a model a is it? i use the hang out with steve the owner as we had some mutual friends and i waored at the local kawasaki dealer here in st pete 15 or so years ago. i use to think steve knew what was going on but he doesn't even go intop work until 11ish from what i observed during to couple months he had my components. i think he has people working for him that are lost when it even comes to good common sense man. my parts will be here in a few days i'll be happy to post some pics of the screwed up parts. you will be amazed when you see the pics...