Well, I had a for sale thread going as I sold my S2k in January and had parted out a couple pieces. The only thing I had left was my 2.5L stroker, on 5/1/2008 Mike @ Autowave came into the thread and started bad mouthing myself and the motor. I did not think it was appropriate and made the following reply when Autowave made a second comment. Thankfully, I saved this in word so all I have to do is copy and paste. Keyboard warrior is what he decided to name me.

Mods, I can understand why my for sale thread was deleted and do not need an explanation. However, if you are going to delete this thread, I will definitly want one.



I sure am a keyboard warrior thats what I do with my life. Thats why I made several threads on several forums trying to ruin Autowave's reputation...ohh wait, I never did that. I walked away from you guys happy to have my car back in one piece and decided I would only let people know the truth if they asked.

And your absolutely correct I have no idea how engines work, about thermal expansion, or anything really. I just some dumb kid who has stayed out of your business and never wanted to hear from you guys again. But out of nowhere, you surfaced.

On 12/19/06 I realized a mistake...I cracked my block using a tapered fitting to T off for a oil pressure gauge in the location of the stock oil pressure sender. After a few days I decided it was an opportunity to have a 2.5L motor built and called Inline.

I placed my order on 12/27/2006

I originally planned to have a local Honda shop do the swap and then drive to a tuner. But after several phone calls with Inline, I decided to have everything done at one place. Around the mid-end of January 07 I called Autowave as I had heard their great reputation. My question to them was not "can you" it was "are you comfortable with." I wanted to know if they were willing to do such a job as I knew that it was something many shops may not feel comfortable with. Shane stated that it would be fine and to let them know when I was going to have the car towed in. I was happy and comfortable with this.

The car was towed in and received by Autowave on 2/26/2007 at 5:30PM as it shows on my invoice. The engine arrived there + or - 1 day of that.

The car was finally done on 3/23/2007 this date is not on my invoice but I have pictures of my car on 3/24 which was a saturday just after I got the car back and washed it. It took nearly a MONTH for Autowave to simply take my old motor out, take the head off of it, have the head resurfaced (took 2 days...but nobody could pick it up for a week), put the head on the stroker, put it in the car and tune it. Sure it was a decent amount of work...but how long would other companies take, who actually put focus into a specific car? However, I was patient with them. I did call at least 4 out of the 5 days in a biz week, but I was just interested in progress and the phone calls rarely lasted more then 2 minutes. Yet, this bothered Shane enough that he would often make fun of me calling way too often and let me know that they were doing their job. Either way I would always mention I didn't want to hurry them and wanted the job done right the first time which was why I was taking the car to them. I paid $3700 for them to do this work...$750 just for tuning. I was under the impression that I was paying once to have it done right so I wouldn't have problems later on...boy was I wrong.


On 3/25/2007 I noticed excessive oil consumption/loss. I noticed some pooling around the valve cover and decided maybe that seal was leaking slightly. I removed and retorqued all the bolts holding the valve cover on and oil loss stopped. I drove the car back to AZ and lost ~ 3/8qt over the drive which I was told by Autowave when picking the car up would be normal with an engine breaking in.

This is me fixing it that day







3/26/2007 I started the car up to go to the bank. Pulling up to a stop light I noticed a large cloud of white smoke behind me. I pulled into the bank parking lot and it appeared that the smoke had stopped. I called both Autowave and Inline and let them know about it. Neither knew what it was but told me to keep an eye on it. I did, later that day, the smoke came again. My heater also wasn't working...this wasn't a good sign. I ran the car one more time with the EMS hooked up to watch coolant temps as I hadn't had a chance to install a temp gauge yet. It was getting a little hot for comfort. I did not run the car again incase there was water in the cylinders...I did not want to cause further damage by any cause.

3/31/2007 I brought the car back. Due to the fact nobody from Autowave was willing to meet me on Saturday my friends and I decided to attend the Spugen BBQ before dropping the car off. Some may remember seeing it there. And Mike, I understand what your business hours are. But when you have a customer that pays $3700 and then has a problem, and can only drive out from AZ....8 hours that Friday night, get into SoCal at 4 AM wouldn't a good business send somebody out for 15 minutes to recieve the car? Wouldn't they be sorry this happened and try to be accomidating?





It was a full week later before Autowave even looked at my car. They pulled the head off and found that the head gasket was indeed blown. There was a lot of calling back and forth between myself, Inline, Autowave, and my father. Autowave felt it was a problem with the engine and wanted to send it back to Inline. Inline felt it was the tuning. I didn't care, I just wanted a working car.

Autowave said that the cause of the blown head gasket was because the timing chain cover was not milled at the same time as the block and the it was sitting .004" higher then the rest of the block causing it to be canted and thus ultimately blowing the head gasket. This was their final reason, the first was that the sleeves had dropped and that gaps in the sleeves/block showed this.

I retract my previous 1-2 month statement before shipping it, I'm sorry and I was incorrect. It was actually 2 weeks. My problem was more related to the fact that they told me they had other customers and my car would have to wait until they were done! Didn't I just spend a lot of money with you? Don't great business continue service after the sale?


The ship date on the block was 4/12/2007 here is how it turned up on 4/19/2007:



















I will not say much about this, but I will let those reading this decide. Would a reputable company who cares about their customer ship an engine like this? Is this UPS's fault or did the shipper perhaps not consider that the item was over 100 lbs?

Inline was shocked when they received it. They offered to build my engine as a complete long-block if I had the head shipped back to them and would ship it frieght for free. I opted for this as I no longer trusted or had faith in Autowave, but I also couldn't afford to take my car to another shop. Only to have to pay for labor again.

On 4/24/2007 the head was sent out by Autowave and surprisingly was packaged much better and arrived unscratched.

On 5/08/2007 Inline had measured the deck surface, it was not .004" higher, it was actually .001" LOWER, if you look closely you can see where Autowave said it was higher with a sharpy mark.




On 5/21/2007 after remeasuring every aspect and clearance, blueprinting and documenting everything Inline was putting the engine back together, and they found this.





Look at the ring grooves and you'll notice that the piston was beginning to MELT. After THREE DAYS!!! Please call tuning shops, mechanic shops, ask them what causes a piston to melt. I don't think that a timing chain cover being imaginarily .004" higher then the deck surface causes that. I also don't think that sunken sleeves which are level with the deck surface would cause that? Again, I wont say much, I don't think I have to and I think the picture really is worth 1000 for this.

Nevertheless, this caused a delay. I needed a new piston, so Inline called CP and they would have one in 6 weeks. The week after July 4th they received the piston. They ordered it with another batch of 4 which were also being gas ported...thus CP messed up and this piston was gas ported. No what...well, Ya had a 2.5L at one point and at this time they were building the 2.7, they took the best piston out of Ya's motor and put it in mine so that they could get me a car again. The engine was assymbled and shipped. This time frieght as it was a full long block. In all of this problem, I would like to send ANOTHER thanks to Inline. They were extremely helpful and did whatever they could to make things better and never asked for a dime.

The motor was received by Autowave at the end of July 2007 again, I wish I had an exact date. It is not listed on the invoice. We will give them benifit of the dobut though and say as late as 8/5/07. This time all Autowave needed to do was put the engine in the car. It was already fully built, I did not want them tuning it again...it just needed to run.

On the back of Autowave invoices is a little clause:

"All new replacement parts and labor have a limited warrant for 12,000 miles or 12 months whichever comes first. Warranty valid only if vehicle is returned at customer's expense to our service department for adjustment. Warranty will be voided by overheating, lack of lubrication, or offroad use for non-offroad vehicles. This warranty extends only to the person to whom the services were permitted and not any subsequent purchaser."

On 08/31/2007 I thought my problems were over as I got the car back from Autowave. They told me the total was something like ~1500 or so, and that they were doing me a favor by charging me 50% on labor. This is after we made it clear on the phone that I would not be paying them and not to think about asking me for money to fix their problem. After talking for a little total due was $0.00 as it should have been. I was "satisfied" but not content...though over time I let it all go and never made a post like this to explain my life for the 9 months.

Upon washing my car after getting it back, I noticed THOUSANDS of little spots on it...looking closely I noticed it was little rust specs! Though, some of them I could feel as a raised lump? I came to the determination that over the 5 months that my car sat outside it was uncovered and that either at the shop or next door somebody was doing metal work. These little shavings floated in the air and landed on my car. Then the shavings adhered to my car...then they began to rust! Do reputable companies treat customer's praised belongings like this? I started to clay bar the car to see if these specs would come out, and they did...40 man hours later of clay barring.

On 12/10/2007 the gasket failed again...this time, as mention the tuning was very conservative. Nothing was wrong with the block, and I truly believe it was related to a one off bad gasket as the originals back in 2004 had problems and these gaskets are not mass produced. This time I was running a coolant temp gauge and turned the engine off before temps got above 215...and it wasn't necessarily the temps that had me concerned but it was the rate of rise. Over the 4 months, it never looked like it did on that drive.

On 1/31/2008 I sold my S2000. I put a stock engine back in it and made my decision based on the fact that I am no longer a student and am a pilot starting my career. I could not afford to replace the headgasket. I need a car that I do not have to worry about. And I had an S2000 that was everything I ever wanted...so I couldn't keep a stock one. If I had a more disposable income, and two cars I would have kept the car, and the engine and simply replaced the gasket and tried again.

I have simply stated the facts and the way the events happened. It is up to you to decide how you feel about Autowave. Really I never wanted to have to spend the time to make this post, but I sure am that keyboard warrior . Make your own decisions, for me Autowave didn't even know what the words Customer Service were. Like I said, I'll never go back there...not after how I was treated.

Eric

 

damn....

 

i dont really like popcorn that much...

 

im speechless...

 

I never had any intention to post my story...you can see that this all happened quite some time ago. Autowave decided to come into my for sale thread and start posting in there...I told them I had a full story with pictures ready to go, but they didn't care.

I just want people to know, you can make your own decisions.

 

link to the for sale?

 

I was feeling your pain the whole time this was going on. And I can vouch that you never made a bashing post about autowave...... for them to come out and say what they did is just

 

Holyshit dude, wow

 

Mods deleted the thread...


And BlownAP, yeah I know you were there. I remember planning to meet up with you after the Spugen BBQ but then all this went down. The only things I mentioned about Autowave, were that the original tune caused my first headgasket to blow...that was in my sale thread

That was what riled them up I guess...but that was the truth. I never came out in public and let people know my horror story. Until now

 

read it word for word and i'm glad you are not posting a worthless thread. it's posts like these that makes a consumer aware of what they are getting themselves into and a company history.

THANK YOU!