I put off my IMS upgrade until my buddy had his blow. It blew 100 yards from his house and he had it towed to a local indie here in Houston. The bearing cage was destroyed and the stud was broken, fortunately the pistons and valves never met.
I went with him to the shop and saw the damage myself. He got the whole song and dance how it needed to have the race ground out with a dye grinder and how they would need to drop the pan to clear out the remaining parts of the IMS (standard procedure). Nearly 7 weeks later and $4500.00 later he was told he could pick up the car the next day. The shop manager drove the car home that night and found that the car was lacking power and when he got it back to the shop they discovered that the timing ha skipped a tooth an it would need to be re-timed.
(WTF) they did not check the timing before assembling the car and starting it!!
Two weeks later and another $1,500.00 the job was done. That was enough to encourage me to do my own, did it in a weekend I used the pelican parts IMS and it cost me less than $1,000 in parts.
This weekend I helped my buddy chase down an oil leak coming from the front of his motor. It turned out to be the oil pump housing. While apart I found that the oil pump gears looked like they digested rocks and the oil pan did not look like it had been removed. When I drained the oil that was allegedly changed with the IMS job, twice, it was in no way 1500 mile oil. When the pan was dropped I found the remaining bits of his IMS. My buddy had been robbed!! :troll:
This is why I do my own work, this shop is one of the highest rated Indies in Houston, after seeing there work I would not let them work on my lawn mower.
