anyone got any feedback on The Engine Shop engines? They seem to get mixed feedback, lots of bad, but also good. Got a customer that doesn't want to pay 2k+ for a heritage one, so thought the £799 one might be worth a try?
I spoke with the boss at Vanfest a few years ago and he seemed a V nice knowlagable man. My mate had a high performance engine off them and had some rocker problems due to articulation. They paid for the engine to be removed picked it up and returned it with the problem solved. he only had good things to say about them.
I don't think you'll get a definitive answer. Some are good, some are no so good, from any of the major sellers. Pot luck, really.
I brought one from there and it was the worst thing i ever done, im a mechanic and i wasnt happy with the quality of the build at all. i paid for the best 1641 i could get because i didnt have any spare time to build one, but i wish i had.
Laurie used to rate his machining. But it's budget end isn't it, I'd guess some are inevitably better than others.
http://thevwenginecompany.com/our-prices.html Just looked ....decent website but a bit more money circa £1200 for 1600
I got my 1641 from TES about 6 years 10k miles ago and not had a problem really, swapped the 009 copy straight away that came with it, and it has a very small drip that doesn't seem to need topping up between changes, can't really complain for the money I paid.
After I had problems with a Heritage engine not all there fault I must add I bought a TES short block it's been in 3 years and about 12,000 miles no bother so far Nice guy to deal with and the block wasn't machined so much that it needed a special pulley unlike the Heritage one
Difficult to compare the above with VW Heritage engines as Heritage have changed supplier over the years and are still doing so now and again IIRC. Same for the likes of CoolAir. These shops are suppliers, not builders.
Had one and blew it up- ran it too lean, the head studs pulled out TES took it back , popped new case savers in, sent it back. TBH, I moaned at the time, but they were actually pretty great to me. The only problem was that the delivery guy just dropped the returned engine off the lorry, so that took a day to repair. Engine's don't USUALLY just "go" because they've been badly made. Sure, some of them do, but the MAJORITY are destroyed because people tune them incorrectly or fit poor quality or damaged ancilliaries*. I guarantee pretty much every engine manufacturer gets frustrated at the amount of returns they have to do, and really they know it's because people don't know how to set their cars up- but there's not a lot of proving it. *or if someone drops them 4ft onto a concrete floor, apparently.
There was a spate of suppliers attaching heat sensitive stickers to the crank cases which caused a lot of debate a few years ago. Do they still do this?
Had it "gone off"? Not that I remember the critical warrenty temp, but buying an engine like this would worry me. Surely a problem with the engine could equally cause it to run hot, eg too high compression. Or perhaps heat build up when you stop after a run. Heat from heads an barrels got to go somewhere, the case is a good heat sink and the sticker is on the top.
Not sure what the max temp was. The bar was about half-way up the scale. Stuck on the top of the crankcase. It was one they sent me to replace the full-price Vege recon from JK that had seized solid.
