Who can build me a forged engine....

[MartinR]

Blah blah blah ! You can talk you're the first c**t to post s**t on a thread ! I just love reading it !

Thanks no need for name calling

Well this has gone stupid. So im out!!

But i have learnt that i'm not allowed to have an opinion on cs.

 

[scotiamr2t]

:banghead: Another thread that could have potentially been very informative for many a member ruined.

 

[Chip-mk1]

Quite agree.

Would also put forward that it's not the problems that occur, because everyone makes mistakes, it's how they're rectified.

Depends if the problems are mistakes, or if the problems are just that people are pretending they know how to do stuff properly when they simply dont etc. although I guess that comes down to the how they are rectified, as they obviously wont really be in that circumstance by definition.



If a company builds and maps someone an engine and it went straight out and melted a piston, or if it ate its plugs, then that company has either cut corners or they simply dont know what they are doing or if its a total one off it might just be down to a component failure of course (although if they supplied the component still down to them to fix), if that happens to someone they should tell others on here, as its useful information for people to know about what standard of work they might also get from that company, if two people both get the same issues in quick succession, then in my opinion you REALLY know to avoid that company.


But what if its not the whole job that the company is doing? Then it gets more complicated and I frequently see that on forums I use and in magazines I have written for etc.


Now say someone builds an engine and then takes it to a company to be mapped and it melts a piston, or it continually eats spark plugs, or it blows head gaskets, those could (and frequently are) down to bad mapping, but they can also be down to build issues or component failures.



So to use an example, my own turbo car melted a piston last year, who's fault was that?
Well in this case, its easy, it was my fault cause I did everything, but look at it as if it was a few seperate roles involved:

The mapper
The engine builder
The project manager
The customer

Now in my case, I was all 4.

But lets pretend they were seperate.

With my failure, which of those roles failed? The actual cause of the failure appears to have been one injector not delivering enough fuel under full load after a period of time (ie it was fine to start with, but wasnt later on)


Did I fail as a mapper? No, the car was mapped fine, drove mint, sensible AFRs etc
Did I fail as an engine builder? No, no issues with the build at all

Those are the easy bits out of the way.

But now the more difficult one, was it a project management failure or a customer failure?

Now in this case, the project manager should be telling the customer megane injectors are going to be a risk at over 300bhp, they arent reliable at the best of times, so pushing that hard with them is a poor decision reliability wise (although a great one initial cost wise).

If the project manager advises the customer that, and the customer says "regardless, to save costs I want to use them as I already have them" then its the customers fault that engine melted, not the other 3 roles.
If the project manager doesnt alert the customer to that, then its the project managers fault.


Now when it comes to these "fastroad / trackday /clubman racer" builds, the role of project manager is nearly always a mashup between the engine builder and the customer, with them making some of the project management decisions each, and that can make it really hard to decide who's fault it actually is, so it really can be a VERY difficult job deciding who's mistake it actually is when there is a failure! And if you dont know who's fault it is, you dont know who should pick up the costs to rectify it.

 

[Chip-mk1]

:banghead: Another thread that could have potentially been very informative for many a member ruined.

You dont think this thread has lots of informative information in it still?

I honestly do.


People get far too obsessed on here with threads going slightly off topic or becoming slightly heated, thats an issue only if you arent capable of reading intelligently and hence does it actually "ruin" a thread.
An intelligent person will normally be able to learn far more from hearing two sides of an argument than just one!

 

[Dan@SJM]

Depends if the problems are mistakes, or if the problems are just that people are pretending they know how to do stuff properly when they simply dont etc. although I guess that comes down to the how they are rectified, as they obviously wont really be in that circumstance by definition.



If a company builds and maps someone an engine and it went straight out and melted a piston, or if it ate its plugs, then that company has either cut corners or they simply dont know what they are doing or if its a total one off it might just be down to a component failure of course (although if they supplied the component still down to them to fix), if that happens to someone they should tell others on here, as its useful information for people to know about what standard of work they might also get from that company, if two people both get the same issues in quick succession, then in my opinion you REALLY know to avoid that company.


But what if its not the whole job that the company is doing? Then it gets more complicated and I frequently see that on forums I use and in magazines I have written for etc.


Now say someone builds an engine and then takes it to a company to be mapped and it melts a piston, or it continually eats spark plugs, or it blows head gaskets, those could (and frequently are) down to bad mapping, but they can also be down to build issues or component failures.



So to use an example, my own turbo car melted a piston last year, who's fault was that?
Well in this case, its easy, it was my fault cause I did everything, but look at it as if it was a few seperate roles involved:

The mapper
The engine builder
The project manager
The customer

Now in my case, I was all 4.

But lets pretend they were seperate.

With my failure, which of those roles failed? The actual cause of the failure appears to have been one injector not delivering enough fuel under full load after a period of time (ie it was fine to start with, but wasnt later on)


Did I fail as a mapper? No, the car was mapped fine, drove mint, sensible AFRs etc
Did I fail as an engine builder? No, no issues with the build at all

Those are the easy bits out of the way.

But now the more difficult one, was it a project management failure or a customer failure?

Now in this case, the project manager should be telling the customer megane injectors are going to be a risk at over 300bhp, they arent reliable at the best of times, so pushing that hard with them is a poor decision reliability wise (although a great one initial cost wise).

If the project manager advises the customer that, and the customer says "regardless, to save costs I want to use them as I already have them" then its the customers fault that engine melted, not the other 3 roles.
If the project manager doesnt alert the customer to that, then its the project managers fault.


Now when it comes to these "fastroad / trackday /clubman racer" builds, the role of project manager is nearly always a mashup between the engine builder and the customer, with them making some of the project management decisions each, and that can make it really hard to decide who's fault it actually is, so it really can be a VERY difficult job deciding who's mistake it actually is when there is a failure! And if you dont know who's fault it is, you dont know who should pick up the costs to rectify it.

Your injector failure is why I changed to 630cc DEKA's on my build. I had a megane injector fail, and luckily for me it completely died causing a misfire rather than a lean burn and a holed piston.

 

[Chip-mk1]

Your injector failure is why I changed to 630cc DEKA's on my build. I had a megane injector fail, and luckily for me it completely died causing a misfire rather than a lean burn and a holed piston.

Yeah I wont be using them again at that level. I knew it was a risk anyway of course as you know, but once its actually gone wrong, you get less willing to take the same risk again, lol.

 

[George182]

Exactly the reason I went for 630cc DEKA's too!

 

[Gray]

Exactly the reason I went for 630cc DEKA's too!

+1.

 

[bartebk]

+2

 

[MonkeyKnifeFight]

All in favour of burning Martin for being a witch?!.. Or possibly a short dragging? they are both good options.

 

[SharkyUK]

If you have a spare 18months that you can do without a car go to BTM.

Search sharkys trophy build

I'm not wanting to carry on any arguments here, and I appreciate your comments are likely meant to be taken light-heartedly, but there have been genuine (and unfortunate) circumstances leading to the lengthy build period. Looking back over the past 14 months I am not exaggerating when I say that there have been around 5 months of waiting (where parts haven't been available, or where parts have had to be returned due to faults). Take that 5 months off and the build doesn't look so lengthy I've also changed specification along the way (for example, to the better Arrow conrods). I'm wanting the job done properly, I'm prepared to pay that bit extra and I'm prepared to wait longer to get it done properly.

We (Fred and I) had a discussion right from the kick-off whereby we agreed it would be ready when it's ready.

And I'm happy it's with "It'll be done when it's ready" Freddie.

And it's nobody else's business anyway! LOL!
MartinR - I'm not having a go fella, just happened to be that I've posted this under your quote.

Tbf with btm you get a free V6!

It's not free... if I break it, I owe Fred 17 grand on top of the cost of my engine build.

On the plus side you get to drive around in a v6 courtesy car

As above, it has minuses as well as pluses! But it's a beauty of a car

Exactly, sharky has been looked after! It's had a bit more than just an engine build, the only original part is the crank, but Martin wouldn't know that!

Yeah - I have. And, as you say Fred, I don't think people realise that the crank is the only component retained from the last engine. It's a complete engine build from scratch, warts and all. With uprated parts, machining, tweaks and so on. It all takes time. There's been times where Fred has called me having not been happy with some component so we've agreed to change things or use different components. There's a lot going on behind the scenes in between posts going up on this thread. I think other people are more upset and impatient than I am... LOL!

Forged pistons and rods and a head gasket and belt kit are about a grand.

So if you just want to write "forged internals" on a spec sheet then you could do it for a grand.

If you want to build one of these engines properly though, I'd budget roughly ten times that including labour.


Almost none of the builds you see done on these engines include proper blue printing techniques like line boring the cylinder head to get exactly the correct tolerances on the cam journals, and same for the crank journals for that matter, rods can be had for a few hundred but spend several times that and you get better ones etc.


It really is a question of how much you have to spend, as you could easily get over the 10K mark without actually wasting any money.

Hell even a new set of standard lifters is best part of half a grand for example, thats long before you consider uprated bits.


Do you want it built to a particular price, or to a particular level of quality, because the too are VERY different beasts!

^ This, this, this.

If there are valid issues with a garage then surely it's in everyone's interest for those problems to be made public?

I agree. I just don't want folks to think there's a problem here with my engine build. There are no problems and I can't praise Fred enough. He can't help being a perfectionist.

Sorry if it's gone off-topic but I felt I needed to reply (although it might have been better in my project thread). Bottom line = all is good

To the OP - sorry to mess up your thread. There are some worthwhile nuggets of information in this thread if you can find 'em!

 

[Mr R.]

Ive been waiting for 5 week's so far for a set of supertech valves.

Still waiting.

 

[Ricardos]

At what BHP are Megane 225 rendered inefficient? If that makes sense. I see people going 630cc so at what point is it best to run the 630s?

 

[batesey]

At what BHP are Megane 225 rendered inefficient? If that makes sense. I see people going 630cc so at what point is it best to run the 630s?

id say 300bhp is on the limit, 260ish is safe enough

 

[Cupman29]

Agree with Chip-mk1 this is a very informative thread (if slightly agrivated at points) and I agree that these things take sooo much time.

 

[scotiamr2t]

You dont think this thread has lots of informative information in it still?

I honestly do.


People get far too obsessed on here with threads going slightly off topic or becoming slightly heated, thats an issue only if you arent capable of reading intelligently and hence does it actually "ruin" a thread.
An intelligent person will normally be able to learn far more from hearing two sides of an argument than just one!

I am under no disillusion that the thread does have information that may be of use to the forum users, although a 3 page thread could essentially be reduced to 1.

The question was a simple one "Looking at companies/people that can forge my megane", has it been answered? you could say yes as there has been a few companies mentioned. I also whole heartedly agree a that a good debate/discussion from two opposing parties can yield useful information for everyone.

It just becomes frustrating when threads meander off course, as rarely do they get back on course. I suppose that is the way of the internet forums though!

Also good that SharkyUK has been on and cleared it all up regarding his build, yet from reading his thread I'm pretty sure he's explained it numerous times, so why it was ever brought up is beyond me.

 

[jay70]

Now say someone builds an engine and then takes it to a company to be mapped and it melts a piston,

There was a thread on MLR with this exact scenario a couple of years ago, the way it panned out was golden!

 

[Cupman29]

There was a thread on MLR with this exact scenario a couple of years ago, the way it panned out was golden!

What was the outcome?

 

[jay70]

What was the outcome?

In short....The company that mapped it blamed the engine builder(Tim Radley) but the car was fitted with a hidden dash cam which showed the company ragging the tits off whilst using the car as a pool car whilst in their care. The cam also showed them taking customers out in the car, again ragging it yet these events were AFTER the comapny had told the owner the new engine was shot and mapping was aborted because so.

If I remember rightly logs pulled from the ecu proved it was down to mapping.