CCColtsicehockey

Damn sorry you are having to deal with that. Definitely hope they make things right for you quickly.

00TL-P3.2

Bummer to hear.
Hope you get a quick resolution, T!

BreezyTL

iTrader: (8)

Oh man, I know that feeling all to well. Dealing with the warranty company for my truck motor still. Been going on 5 months now. Hopefully they will makes things right.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Tim.
Fix and sell.
Another bump in the road but a big one.

TylerT

iTrader: (1)

Tim,

So sorry to hear what happened man, talk about shitty luck.

Legend2TL

Damn, so sorry to read this. Hopping RK comes through with a good solution and get the M5 back on the road.

ttribe

Well, not great so far. They are willing to look at the engine to diagnose it themselves, but they are unwilling to cover any installation costs or transportation costs.

Sarlacc

even if it’s their fault???

sounds like a lawsuit in the making.

ttribe

I'm not rattling any sabers yet, but suffice it to say that I know A LOT of attorneys who would be willing to do me a favor or two.

SuperTrooper169

iTrader: (2)

Damn T, I'm late to the news, sorry to hear about the engine failure. Ugh what a giant PITA.

TylerT

iTrader: (1)

This is the biggest / coolest dick swing reply I could have asked for.

Go get 'em T!

oonowindoo

So they installed the new engine that they provided and they wont cover the full cost when the "new" engine they installed is defective?

Hope they make things right.... FAST!

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

RK wasn't the one that installed the engine IIRC.

ttribe

Correct, Morgan. The installation was done by a local independent shop.

00TL-P3.2

If an install issue, I'd expect the shop to cover the labor.
If a defect with the engine, I guess I could see where RK has a leg to stand on with not covering the labor. But would expect some cooperation on it, goodwill or otherwise.

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

One could argue that the oversight during engine assembly resulted in the additional labor costs. I'd fight them to pay for it.

I don't understand why some companies will piss off a customer over $1-2k of work when the customer could cause them further losses through litigation, work of mouth, or both.

00TL-P3.2

Goodwill goes a long way.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Tim got a big dick for sure. I can tell.

oonowindoo

I see... i can see this will become a finger pointing shit show real fast. Hope the warranty will cover the entire repair.

oonowindoo

BreezyTL

iTrader: (8)

The warranty that came with my motor was the company covering up to $95/hour. Anything over I was to pay. Surprised they don't have something like that for your replacement.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

He ain't getting burned!

Sarlacc

@ttribe anything?

Aman

Fingers crossed for a positive update!

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

00TL-P3.2

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Proof of life, Tim.
Now!

Joneill44

I dont like this one bit

00TL-P3.2

1000hp M5 build inbound

1StGenCL

I hope so but....

TylerT

iTrader: (1)

Tim strikes me as a pragmatic kind of guy - I think this M5 will be out of his driveway in the near future.

civicdrivr

iTrader: (9)

If I had to guess, it's already gone

But, if he's still fighting the warranty, he may have gone silent so nothing said by him can be used in court (if it gets to that point). Tim is a smart dude.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Willie Nelson comes to mind, and yes, he knows when to fold em.

Joneill44

In Tim We Trust

ttribe

Sorry for being silent for long, gentlemen. I'm afraid the update is both somewhat lengthy and not nearly as exciting as all the speculation. The TL;DR is that I have the car and am driving it as part of an ongoing effort to chase a gremlin (not an AMC Gremlin).

Long version:

Shortly after I contacted RK about the possible warranty claim, my local install shop backed off their diagnosis of an out of spec crank and a failed engine. They clarified their position to be "we ruled out everything we know to rule out other than an out of spec crank." It turned out the car was driveable. The 'hiccups' and sometimes low power mode incidents were intermittent. RK suggested I get a bootmod3 license and run some logs on the engine. RK and my install shop both suggested I pick up the car and drive it. If it got worse, then we'd have a better idea what was causing the problems. In the meantime, all parties would be doing research. So, I picked up the car and started driving it as much as possible in my schedule.

It turned out the car was not only driveable, but it was VERY driveable. 90-95% of the time, there was no problem whatsoever. The engine is VERY strong and VERY smooth. No knocking, no vibration, no unusual noise of any kind. None of that seems to me to be consistent with an out of spec crank and seemed to be more consistent with RK's position that the internals of the engine are not the cause of my problems.

I ran a few logs, but need to fine tune the process to get better information for RK. Here are some examples:

https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=63d1...90c6abfeb82324
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=63d1...90c6abfeb82325
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=63d1...729bc11c5412b8
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=63d1...0b43941383d3ab
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=63d1...729bbe20878759
https://www.bootmod3.net/log?id=63d1...729bbe20878752

I drove the car for about a week with only the occasional hesitation under acceleration (the 'hiccups') and two instances of the car putting itself into low power mode. During the second weekend of having it back, I had been out at a concert and went to start the car, at which point it put itself into low power mode immediately upon startup. Three tries it did this behavior, but on the fourth it started up without that warning but still had a check engine light on. I decided to drive it home. At about 10:30PM, while doing 80MPH on the freeway, the engine decided to shut itself off altogether (no other indications of a problem just before this). I managed to coast the car up an exit and onto a sidewalk (there was an access 'driveway' of sorts for an adjacent water pumping station managed by one of our local power and water utilities). At this point it would not restart. It just cranked, wouldn't fire up. Notably, there was no knocking and the engine wasn't seized. I finally managed to get the car towed home by 2:30AM Sunday morning.

I contacted the install shop on Monday morning and, honestly, both they and I thought this could be a good development to finally get us some answers as the car was throwing a number of new error codes. So, I had it towed to their shop a few days later and their diagnosis work began...

As it turned out, this latest event had an easy fix, but didn't get us any further down the road to solving the original problem. A wiring harness that had been moved around during some of the other work wasn't fastened properly and got pinched causing the lack of spark to the engine.

So, I once again have the car back and we are sort of back to square one. I've been driving the car for a number of days and only felt one hesitation. Otherwise, the car has been driving really well. Last night, for example, I drove it pretty hard a number of times and it just kept performing. That leaves us in the gremlin chasing mode. The longer this goes on, the more I'm leaning toward this being some kind of electrical issue, rather than an internal engine issue. I could be proven wrong, but that's where my head is at the moment.

SamDoe1

Definitely sounds like an electrical issue, maybe coil packs or spark plugs? Guessing they already thought of these because these are the textbook responses lol. Is the engine throwing any codes when it has hesitation?

ttribe

I had new plugs and coils installed on the new engine. Those have been checked and re-checked.

The only code is the ongoing crank position sensor code. We've replaced that sensor three times now.

They also built a wiring harness to bypass the sensor to see if it still occurred (it did and that is the harness that got pinched).

Sarlacc

Ugh. That’s a pain in the nuts. Yet it’s also better than having to fight and get yet another new engine.

does the car work enough to just dump it to carvana or someplace similar and let them deal with it? Or would the loss be too great?

I remember chasing an emissions code in my challenger because of my modifications. And I had a last ditch effort to try before I had a decision about returning it to stock and selling because I had the car for close to 6 years and I was close to having to have its first smog test. And I went through the same things with my shop. New wiring harnesses and the like.

Sadly, it got totaled before I was ever able to make that choice. As shitty as that whole scenario was…in some ways it did me a favor.

1StGenCL

I'm torn, happy to hear it's driving and you don't have to fight for a new engine (most likely) but it sucks to not have a dependable car and deal with the headache. Hopefully they figure it out soon and keep us updated!

ttribe

I suspect I would take a five figure loss on the car were I to try to trade it in at a Carvana or similar place. I'm sticking it out for now.