What Would You Do?

[craig3x]

So I bought an old Ford Ranger from a guy who made a mini dragster out of it by putting in a Blueprint 306 with a modified C4 transmission which only had a verified 48 miles on it. I just wanted the drivetrain for my '65 mustang, so I found a local Hot Rod shop to do all the swap work. Long story short, He gets it running in my car, but the engine has a major vibration at around 1800rpm and gets worse as it revs. He thinks it's something with the actual engine because he verified the numbers on the flywheel and harmonic balancer to be the correct ones. So we call up Blueprint and they have us ship it back for inspection because it's still under warranty. Upon their inspection, it turns out that the flywheel was off by 73 grams...even though it has the correct part number. Thankfully Blueprint is not going to charge me for the inspection, but now my mechanic wants to charge me $1500 for the time it took him to pull the engine out, and now to put it back in. I'm obviously pissed at the manufacturer of the flywheel, but I sorta feel my guy, as a "professional car builder" should have suspected that and tried a different flywheel before going through all the work to pull the engine out. This engine swap already went way over budget and now I'm supposed to be on the hook for this $1500?
Thoughts?

 

[rbohm]

why should your mechanic not get paid? he did the work, he pulled the engine, should he really work for free? i think $1500 is rather excessive though, perhaps closer to $800 for an R&R job.

as for him trying another flywheel, why? supposedly everything matched numbers wise, and its possible that the crank might have been the problem. better to pull it apart rather than destroy an engine.

 

[tos]

You can't expect the mechanic to eat that cost. If the flywheel has the part number that should match your harmonic balancer then he would naturally look elsewhere. There are a few things that could cause vibration and he probly moved on to other possibilities. Your mechanic did nothing wrong and many would have done the same thing. Its unfortunate for you obviously but the engine builder is more at fault and should have test run this engine and found the problem before shipping it originally. I would first try to get them to refund a little bit of the money but then you are not the original purchaser of the engine so I doubt they would do that. Pay the mechanic and try to recover some of that cost from the engine builder or the flywheel manufacturer.

 

[craig3x]

why should your mechanic not get paid? he did the work, he pulled the engine, should he really work for free?.

So if a mechanic misdiagnoses a problem and does a bunch of unnecessary work, he should be paid for that? A car that overheats due to a bad thermostat, but the mechanic changes out the water pump and the radiator and all hoses and charges for that is fair?

 

[craig3x]

Blueprint Engines test run and dynos their engines before shipping them. The problem is that they don't supply the harmonic balancers or flexplates. This is in no way the fault of the engine builder. It is the manufacturer of the flexplate. Yes, I will have to pay the $1500. Just seems it would have made more sense to swap out the flexplate with another one just to be sure before going through all of the unnecessary work of tearing out the engine. At one point, he had the transmission disconnected from the engine while in the car and all accessories disconnected too. Ran it and it still vibrated. At that point, it would have taken 15 minutes to swap out the flexplate, and the problem would have been solved. As for going after the manufacturer of the flexplate...I'm guessing that's a lost cause.

 

[craig3x]

as for him trying another flywheel, why? supposedly everything matched numbers wise, and its possible that the crank might have been the problem. better to pull it apart rather than destroy an engine.

I see that you're a mechanic. So let me ask you, in all your time working on cars and ordering parts, have you never ordered a part which turned out to be inaccurate? In my limited time working on cars, I can say it happens to me from time to time. I can only imagine a professional mechanic sees this quite often.

 

[rbohm]

yes i have ordered parts and gotten the wrong one. most of the time its obvious when it happens, there are times however when you get a bad part from the manufacturer, and it isnt obvious that the part is bad. it happens.

 

[tos]

Blueprint Engines test run and dynos their engines before shipping them. The problem is that they don't supply the harmonic balancers or flexplates. This is in no way the fault of the engine builder. It is the manufacturer of the flexplate. Yes, I will have to pay the $1500. Just seems it would have made more sense to swap out the flexplate with another one just to be sure before going through all of the unnecessary work of tearing out the engine. At one point, he had the transmission disconnected from the engine while in the car and all accessories disconnected too. Ran it and it still vibrated. At that point, it would have taken 15 minutes to swap out the flexplate, and the problem would have been solved. As for going after the manufacturer of the flexplate...I'm guessing that's a lost cause.

So you are saying they run the engine with their own flexplate and balancer then remove those? Doesnt make sence. If they ran it with the same flexplate and balancer you have ( which tbey should have) they should have easily caught this. Your mechanic is working from experience and following normal protocol and be cause somebody else threw him off with their mistake then he should not be heald accountable for someone elses mistake. If a doctor says, i think you have a broken vertibrae but i will take an xray to confirm it. The xray tech messes up and gives the doc the wrong xrays so the doc takes another route and does a bunch of extra tests. Its not the docs fault but hes gonna get paid for his work cause he didnt do anything wrong.

 

[craig3x]

So you are saying they run the engine with their own flexplate and balancer then remove those? Doesnt make sence.

Correct. When they sell an engine, they don't know if you need a flexplate (auto) or a flywheel (manual). It shouldn't be big deal if you use a balancer and flexplate that are correct to their specs.

I'm not saying I'm trying to get out of paying the mechanic. I do however feel that the cost should be negotiated since this could have been avoided with a little detective work. The engine was in the car, disconnected from the transmission. Very easy time to swap the flywheel to be double sure that wasn't the problem. He actually swapped out the harmonic balancer to eliminate that. Why not the flywheel too? I hired an experienced professional HotRod mechanic for a reason. If I just wanted a simple engine swap, I could have done it myself, or found some backyard mechanic to do it for 1/3 of the price.

 

[Rusty67]

Sorry to say but this but you are indeed on the hook for all of it. I would talk to the shop and explain you feel like they missed an easy troubleshooting step that could have avoided a large amount of labor and ask them to split the difference with you on that portion of the work. Explain that you are happy to pay full price on everything else but you just feel like they missed something so basic that you feel like you shouldn't have to pay for ALL of that work. Don't be mean about it and express that you appreciate the help they have given on your project so far and you don't have an issue with the quality of their work in general just this one thing. If they are a cool shop they will understand and should be willing to come down on the labor price for just that part.

I've been friend with multiple mechanics over the years and generally speaking if the customer isn't an ******* about it and they did indeed miss something easy they would almost always be willing to discount some labor because they felt bad about missing something easy.

 

[tos]

Correct. When they sell an engine, they don't know if you need a flexplate (auto) or a flywheel (manual). It shouldn't be big deal if you use a balancer and flexplate that are correct to their specs.

I'm not saying I'm trying to get out of paying the mechanic. I do however feel that the cost should be negotiated since this could have been avoided with a little detective work. The engine was in the car, disconnected from the transmission. Very easy time to swap the flywheel to be double sure that wasn't the problem. He actually swapped out the harmonic balancer to eliminate that. Why not the flywheel too? I hired an experienced professional HotRod mechanic for a reason. If I just wanted a simple engine swap, I could have done it myself, or found some backyard mechanic to do it for 1/3 of the price.

Well I would say to talk to your mechanic and ask him to adjust his price but don't demand it. I can tell you why he tried a new balancer and not a different plate. Balancers are known to go bad. They are two piece and have a rubber section separating the two and the two pieces can slip and misalign and become more of an imbalance than they were intended to be. They can go bad or even be misaligned from the manufacturer. Its not that uncommon. What is highly uncommon is to have a misnumbered flywheel or flexplate and they don't go bad. A flexplate can loose a weight but if the mechanic visibly sees the weight and checks for the right number then he moves on. A good mechanic will go with the easiest, most probable possibilities first. Most mechanics have never seen this type of thing happen and most never will. Ok, I'm jumping off my soapbox. I hope you get it sorted out so you and your mechanic are somewhat satisfied. Just try to see it from his perspective.

 

[WORTH]

I had my own shop for 20 years, and if that was my shop I would probably do the swap for free, IF " I " supplied the bad part. If the customer brought me the bad part then labor would be on him. BUT and it's a big BUT, I can pull a small block out of a '65 Mustang in an hour or so, and get it back in in 2, so $1500 seems real steep.