I love how a "shop" can take 4 months to get a car running...

But I can take an LT1 from a shortblock sitting on an engine stand in my garage to a fully running in my car in a week's time. Taking the time to degree my cam, check pushrod length, torque everything to spec, clean up my wiring harness, check my oil pan height.. etc etc etc...

Absolutely amazing.

Judging by that flywheel.. it looks like he "cut" you a good deal....

(seriously, listen to rskrause to see what you can get out of this.. this is BS)

 

ROFL!

 

A guy in my town builds the 383 himself and installs them as well. He does other people's motors at the same time as yours.

It takes him about 6-8 weeks to pull the motor, order parts, build the 383, assemble everything, and re-install it.

This is ONE guy.

 

I like the core for shortblock swap method personally

But 3 months is too long to wait to have a car back, (IMHO) even if they are stroking it.

Assuming none of the parts have to be custom ordered and made,
a shop should be able to assemble the whole thing and have it in your car
and tuned within 2 weeks (at the very most). Hell, NRT did a complete
custom rebuild of mine (bored, balanced, reassembled, tuned and some custom fabrication)
and had be back on the road by the end of the week.

Now, having to go back and fix someone else's "creativity" is a whole new story.
Based on that the flywheel, I can only assume they probably broke plenty of other stuff too.
Worse yet, locating parts damaged by their work and proving it was their fault may not be easy.
The cost of labor quickly runs up against the cost of just replacing the whole thing.

Sorry to hear about the downtime.
Hope you and up and running again soon.
The new shop sounds a heck of a lot more competant than the last.

 

Many thanks for all the replies guys! Ok, I took the advice here and called back Strictly Performance. I went over it with Rob, basically telling him that Haddad has taken over the job and I want credit for expenses incurred there only for things fixed that Strictly should have got right the first time (like the oil leak for example). Rob seemed nice over the phone and was cool with giving me credit. So maybe this will work out after all. I'll post a follow up here when this is all concluded. I'm glad I cooled off for a few days before deciding to do anything, cuz damn I was pissed this weekend ;(

I still am confused with the Strictly Performance shop though and not quite sure what to make of it. I researched the place before hand and people seemed to have great things to say about the plice. Even GM High Tech Performance had one of his cars in it. I can only think that maybe he had the 'B' team working on my car, or maybe he had outsourced most of the project and got screwed by bad work. In any case, hopefully this will all be resolved soon.

 

"B" team ????
Sounds more like the "Z" team !
Your wait is NOT reasonable by ANY sense of the word, even if it is a ONE MAN operation, PERIOD !
Don't let anyone tell you it was...the picture of your flywheel is INEXCUSABLE and could have been caught by a quality control department staffed by PRE-SCHOOLERS !

 

I waited for about 3 months to have the 383 built on my car...however that was due to botched parts from certain high performance parts vendors and it will probably take me another month to slap everything back together again.

Keep us updated.... I plan on having Haddad tune my car.

-B

 

Ok, here's an update. Some of this was a misunderstanding as far as power numbers are concerned. Originally we were shooting for a 400rwhp motor. I had also stated at the time that I wanted to be able to pass emmisions, which he seemed to think was fine. What I didn't realize was that he then changed the type of cam that he was gonna put into the car to make sure it would pass emmisions. Long story short, he still has the original cam he was gonna put in there to get 400rwhp and he's willing to just give that to me, but the cam thats put in there now is like a hotcam "with more lift", hence why the power numbers are low.

The last dyno pull done at Haddad's was 310rwhp and 406 torque to the wheels, although it did get 320rwhp on an earlier pull. Do these number seem reasonable to you guys for a hotcam + ported lt1 heads smog legal 383? I have shorty headers on there, but the cats and ypipe are stock, with a flowmaster catback. This is thru an automatic with a 3000-ish yank stall.

Haddad fixed all the other issues and the car seems to be running ok now. The only thing left that Haddad has issue with is that he's saying the motor has 'blow-by' at full throttle. He's thinking it's probably an issue with the heads, but he's more concerned that it could be an indicator of other problems. Aside from that, everything is running.

When I talked with Rob at Strictly yesterday he seemed real nice and is willing to fix whatever needs to be done which is cool. You guys think I should bring the car back to him to get the blow by issue looked at or just leave it be? My only concern there is that maybe I'll get a goofy mechanic put on my car again and he'll goof up other issues that Haddad has since cleaned up. I'm inclined at this point to just take the car and enjoy it for a couple of years, since I figure in 2-3 years I'll be wanting to mod it with better heads and cam anyways so maybe the blow by isn't a big deal. What do you guys think? As always thanks for any input!

 

Do NOT bring your car back there, not for free, not if they paid you

 

I was going to say that there really isnt an HP mark for a 383. All of your power comes from the top end / cam. You might have blow by from too much flow into the intake. I would push more for your heads flow numbers, and what TB you are running. Ive seen a number of people jump on the monoblade for projects like these, which can cause this issue.

 

I'm using the stock throttle body. Ya, I'm gonna press him some more to get the head flow numbers. Turns out I have to bring it back to Strictly Performance again anyways since I picked it up last night and there are still problems with the car:

1) leaking tons of oil
2) air conditioning no longer works
3) still have the random flashing lights on the dash
4) cant drive with the windows closed because of fumes in the car

On #1, I'm thinking its the oil pan. Haddad was telling me that when I brought him the car the oil pan was in bad condition, it had a crack in it. He tried fixing it but maybe the fix didn't quite work out. Not sure though.

On #2, I haven't been able to test the AC in a long time since when I first got the car back from Strictly, the car vents didnt work. Haddad fixed the vents, but now I can see that the AC no longer works. Probably just a refill though.

Don't really know what #3 and #4 could be, but the fumes are really bad. After a drive I can pop the hood and I see smoke comming from the engine area so somthing is up.

In any case, I'm now up to $9500 spent and it needs more work. It could cost me a fortune to diagnose whats wrong with the car, so I have no choice but to go back to Strictly Performance (the original shop) since it would be all on warranty repair. In any case, Haddad isn't terribly keen on working on someone elses mod since he doesn't know how it was built from the get go, and I can understand that. So back it goes tonight.

I guess this story can be a warning for anyone out there considering a 383. Just understand that it can get hugely expensive and it may take you many many months to get it all working. I think I'm at the 5 month mark now, not too sure anymore since its been so long, but the end still doesn't seem to be in sight. I'll post more updates one day when I have the car again.

 

Do they have your original motor still? Ask them to put that back in and keep the sack of **** they gave you and give you your money back.

 

Could you explain what you mean by that.... too much flow into the intake will cause blowby????

 

I was wondering the same thing

 

That's weird, I thought Strictly was a decent shop. I know a lot of people that have gone to them.


Haddad seems like a great shop though. I talked to (and drove behind) Mike at a Halloween cruise north of LA last year. I was impressed with his knowledge (and driving).