what’s up cb7, hope you are all doing a whole lot better then I am today...as you can read by the title this post is going to be about a company, and as you also might have guessed it is about the company listed in the title. As some of you know I am in the process of rebuilding my turbo motor from last summer, and this time I decided not to pinch pennies and actually spend some good money on internals, ensuring longevity on the engine. I purchased all forged internals, and at this point I am at about 99% completion of the engine. I have everything sitting in my basement ready to put into the engine, but just haven’t had the opportunity to build and then have some boosted fun.
The only reason I am at 99% right now instead of 100, would be from the company in the subject. If you have done business with them in the past, and you are satisfied, then please take my post with a grain of salt. If you have no idea who the company is, what they do, what they sell, then please read on...you might save yourself a lot of time, money, and heart-ache in the future.
The first thing I bought for my new engine was the pistons. I knew I wanted some forged aluminum pistons that could handle at least 20psi of boost, even though I am not going to run near that, I wanted to make sure that if I wanted to upgrade in the future I would be able to. I found the company listed above, and asked them what kind of deal they could hook me up with. They told me they had some .020" over arias pistons that they would sell me with rings, and everything I needed to drop them right in for a little under 5. So I decided to go with them, this was 3 months ago. I got the pistons in a fairly good amount of time, no complaints there because I was still at school, but about a month ago the problems with them started to come one after another. One of our cb7 patrons was asking me where I got the pistons, how much they were, etc. I told him, and he brought to my attention that arias don’t even make pistons in .020" for our engines (f22). The only they sell is .040" over, which is 1mm over stock. Changing it from 85 to 86. I was quite confused with this fact, considering that their 'knowledgeable' staff would sell me a set of pistons in a size that wasn’t even offered...so I just wrote it off as negligence (spelling) on their part. Cleaning my email I found at least 6 emails, of one of their sales people telling me they were indeed 85.5mm (.020 over). This infuriated me, because I had already dropped my block off at a machine shop and had them bore it to the size of the pistons; luckily the shop measured the pistons also, and bored the sleeves to 86 mm, which the pistons were indeed that size. I called the company and asked what I am suppose to do now, because the safe boring limit according to Honda for our sleeves is .020 over, which I doubled. They told me that "who they get their info from knows better then my corner garage" (corner garage to them is apparently a Honda dealership) and proceeded to tell me that it was very irresponsible of me to have the block cut without looking at what I had. I have to agree with him there, but when I purchased the pistons I was under the impression that I was purchasing them from people who knew what they were talking about, not someone who would tell me what I wanted to hear in order to make a buck.
So I shrugged their mistake with measurements off, and decided I was just going to run the sleeves the way they are, frankly because I don’t have enough money for new sleeves and installation (it is about 300-400 for install, and I want to get darton's) and also because they look like they still have quite a bit of iron left before I hit the aluminum.
So I am in my basement last week, assembling the engine, slapping on some Arp mains and heads getting ready to put the rings on the pistons before attaching them to the rods and then installing them, when I come to one of the sets of rings for my brand new pistons. The middle ring on the pistons has a chunk taken out of it about 3 inches long. The mid ring now looks like a 'c' and is unusable. I decide it isn’t a big deal, I will call the company in NV and they will just send me another set out. I call them up, Maine to Nevada, and talk to them fro about 30 mins about how we are going to correct this problem. They tell me last Wednesday that they can order a new set from arias in cali, get it there (in NV) in 4 days, then ship it out to me once they get my broken ring set. So I go to the post office the next day (Thurs) and ship it 2 day express for like 20 bucks, and they get it on Saturday. I know this because I called the USPS number and they confirmed the delivery, and someone even had to sign for it. So today it is Friday, and I have been waiting all week for my new rings, so I can finish my engine and install it, and still no rings. I felt like the time frame was getting kind of ridiculous, so I called them this afternoon. I was on hold the first time I called for about 10 mins, after asking a simple question about if they had shipped my package and by what means, and if I could have a tracking number. I hung up and called them right back, just trying to get through, and again on hold again. After 5 mins, I hang up and call back and just tell them that I am being charged for being on hold, and if they could just call me and let me know sometime soon, and they tell me 'no problem, give us about 20'. 3 hours roll around, and I call back. The owner is there, and he tells me he doesn’t return calls, and that he doesn’t understand why I am making 'harassing' phone calls over a dollar part, and then tells me he regrets even picking up the phone and talking to me for 10 mins over something so trivial. He finally admitted he received the rings I sent last Saturday (only because I insisted I had delivery confirmation) and he 'didn’t know if they were shipped yet to me'. After a couple more minutes of me asking if he could check a computer or something to tell me either they had or hadn’t been shipped, he tells me that he is going to ship them out 'at his leisure'. I told him this is the only part that is stopping my engine from being done right now, and he still didn’t give a shit.
needless to say, I want to finish this engine by the end of summer, and I cant just sit here and wait for someone to ship me something 'at his leisure', so tomorrow I am calling 'race engineering' and seeing if they will send me a set of total seal rings in .040 over.
First I would like to thank those of you who have read my entire novel, just trying to inform everyone that reads this, that the company may seem cool as shit when you are getting the stuff, but once they have your money, customer service goes right down the drain. Spend the extra few bucks, and get any product from a company that will actually treat you like they aren’t better then you are, and also stand behind the product they sell. And yes, I have called arias, and they said that they can’t send me a set of rings, they have to go through dyno-flo because I purchased the pistons/rings from them.
Thanks again!
The only reason I am at 99% right now instead of 100, would be from the company in the subject. If you have done business with them in the past, and you are satisfied, then please take my post with a grain of salt. If you have no idea who the company is, what they do, what they sell, then please read on...you might save yourself a lot of time, money, and heart-ache in the future.
The first thing I bought for my new engine was the pistons. I knew I wanted some forged aluminum pistons that could handle at least 20psi of boost, even though I am not going to run near that, I wanted to make sure that if I wanted to upgrade in the future I would be able to. I found the company listed above, and asked them what kind of deal they could hook me up with. They told me they had some .020" over arias pistons that they would sell me with rings, and everything I needed to drop them right in for a little under 5. So I decided to go with them, this was 3 months ago. I got the pistons in a fairly good amount of time, no complaints there because I was still at school, but about a month ago the problems with them started to come one after another. One of our cb7 patrons was asking me where I got the pistons, how much they were, etc. I told him, and he brought to my attention that arias don’t even make pistons in .020" for our engines (f22). The only they sell is .040" over, which is 1mm over stock. Changing it from 85 to 86. I was quite confused with this fact, considering that their 'knowledgeable' staff would sell me a set of pistons in a size that wasn’t even offered...so I just wrote it off as negligence (spelling) on their part. Cleaning my email I found at least 6 emails, of one of their sales people telling me they were indeed 85.5mm (.020 over). This infuriated me, because I had already dropped my block off at a machine shop and had them bore it to the size of the pistons; luckily the shop measured the pistons also, and bored the sleeves to 86 mm, which the pistons were indeed that size. I called the company and asked what I am suppose to do now, because the safe boring limit according to Honda for our sleeves is .020 over, which I doubled. They told me that "who they get their info from knows better then my corner garage" (corner garage to them is apparently a Honda dealership) and proceeded to tell me that it was very irresponsible of me to have the block cut without looking at what I had. I have to agree with him there, but when I purchased the pistons I was under the impression that I was purchasing them from people who knew what they were talking about, not someone who would tell me what I wanted to hear in order to make a buck.
So I shrugged their mistake with measurements off, and decided I was just going to run the sleeves the way they are, frankly because I don’t have enough money for new sleeves and installation (it is about 300-400 for install, and I want to get darton's) and also because they look like they still have quite a bit of iron left before I hit the aluminum.
So I am in my basement last week, assembling the engine, slapping on some Arp mains and heads getting ready to put the rings on the pistons before attaching them to the rods and then installing them, when I come to one of the sets of rings for my brand new pistons. The middle ring on the pistons has a chunk taken out of it about 3 inches long. The mid ring now looks like a 'c' and is unusable. I decide it isn’t a big deal, I will call the company in NV and they will just send me another set out. I call them up, Maine to Nevada, and talk to them fro about 30 mins about how we are going to correct this problem. They tell me last Wednesday that they can order a new set from arias in cali, get it there (in NV) in 4 days, then ship it out to me once they get my broken ring set. So I go to the post office the next day (Thurs) and ship it 2 day express for like 20 bucks, and they get it on Saturday. I know this because I called the USPS number and they confirmed the delivery, and someone even had to sign for it. So today it is Friday, and I have been waiting all week for my new rings, so I can finish my engine and install it, and still no rings. I felt like the time frame was getting kind of ridiculous, so I called them this afternoon. I was on hold the first time I called for about 10 mins, after asking a simple question about if they had shipped my package and by what means, and if I could have a tracking number. I hung up and called them right back, just trying to get through, and again on hold again. After 5 mins, I hang up and call back and just tell them that I am being charged for being on hold, and if they could just call me and let me know sometime soon, and they tell me 'no problem, give us about 20'. 3 hours roll around, and I call back. The owner is there, and he tells me he doesn’t return calls, and that he doesn’t understand why I am making 'harassing' phone calls over a dollar part, and then tells me he regrets even picking up the phone and talking to me for 10 mins over something so trivial. He finally admitted he received the rings I sent last Saturday (only because I insisted I had delivery confirmation) and he 'didn’t know if they were shipped yet to me'. After a couple more minutes of me asking if he could check a computer or something to tell me either they had or hadn’t been shipped, he tells me that he is going to ship them out 'at his leisure'. I told him this is the only part that is stopping my engine from being done right now, and he still didn’t give a shit.
needless to say, I want to finish this engine by the end of summer, and I cant just sit here and wait for someone to ship me something 'at his leisure', so tomorrow I am calling 'race engineering' and seeing if they will send me a set of total seal rings in .040 over.
First I would like to thank those of you who have read my entire novel, just trying to inform everyone that reads this, that the company may seem cool as shit when you are getting the stuff, but once they have your money, customer service goes right down the drain. Spend the extra few bucks, and get any product from a company that will actually treat you like they aren’t better then you are, and also stand behind the product they sell. And yes, I have called arias, and they said that they can’t send me a set of rings, they have to go through dyno-flo because I purchased the pistons/rings from them.
Thanks again!
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