cylinder head troubles are finally over, might be a little long

May 12, 2005, 10:56:26 AM

I bought my 86 XR7 about this time last year. I drove it around for maybe a month fixing the little problems it had. After I got the little problems worked out I decided to take the motor out and have the head rebuit because it was smoking a bit. So I found a pretty good shop that would rebuild the head for a rather good price. The next day he calls me back and say the head is cracked and he can't fix it. Then he tries to sell me a 2.3 head from a mustang saying that it will work on my car. For those of you who are not turbo people, you can't use the non turbo head without bad side effects. So began the 10 month long search for another head. I called place after place and everyone either did not have one or they wanted $500 for the thing. I finally found a place on the internet that said they had one and that they would ship it to me. So I wait a week for the thing to come and then find out it is the wrong head. Then I had to fight with this guy to get my money back and then after I had even shipped it back to him he charged more money to my credit card because he didn't charge me the right amount to begin with. So I have to call him back again and say what the heck are you doing and he gets mad at me and told me I should have been honest with him in the first place and told him he didn't charge me the right amount. So I had to be like whoa buddy I called you right after I opened it and told you it was wrong and I am sending it back. Then I have to go through two more people shipping me the wrong cylinder head when they promised me that it would be the right one. Well needless to say my dad and I got pretty sick of dealing with all this and started looking for a place that could possibly fix my head. So I finally find this guy in Akron who when I called him sounded like he knew exactly what I was talking about and told me it would be no problem. So I drop it off to him monday and got to pick up and perfectly rebuilt cylinder head wednesday. And the best part is it only cost me $350. The only thing that was cracked was two of the valve seats, so he machined them out and put in hi-nickel alloy seats and told me these ones will not crack again. He also did a 3 anlge vavle job, installed all new valve guides, and machined the head flat. The work that this guy does is just amazing. The head looks ten times better then all the other rebuilt heads that I have seen. I graduate saturday and have a couple weeks that will be dedicated to working on the car before the summer job starts. So everyone can expect some motor pics sometime next week.

Jim

Re: cylinder head troubles are finally over, might be a little long

Reply #1 – May 12, 2005, 02:25:22 PM

Glad you got it back on the road again Jim