Hughes Engines is ripping people off
 

You are wasting your time and money by dealing with them. I paid them $5,862.13 to rebuild my numbers matching 440 in my Coronet R/T. They claimed that it made 525 HP. It dynoed at 287 HP on a G-Tech and ran 15.4 in the quarter mile, .2 slower than the stock engine that had 104,000 miles on it.

The engine used a quart of oil every 100 miles since start up. The intake gasket blew at 450 miles and I found that the center two passenger side intake bolts were finger loose. Then a valve seized up at 2,000 miles and the oil pump failed at 3,100 miles.

I then pulled and took the engine to Gary Stanton Racing to be disassembled, examined, measured and inspected and found that the cylinder bores were out of round by .0035 and were bored .043 over when .030 over pistons were used. This caused oiling of the plugs which made the already limping engine run worse. A valve had seized up in the open position because they machined the valve guides too small on the ID and then hammered them into the heads. When the valve seized in the open position, the piston came up and smacked the valve back into it's seat and bent it. Then when the cam turned and tried to push the push rod to lift the valve, the push rod bent and fell into the lifter valley because the valve was bent and seized and didn't move.

In typical fashion, Dave Hughes said that this was all my fault and he wasn't going to back any of the poor machine work and assembly that he claimed was done by a disgruntled employee that he had to fire two weeks after building my engine.

It was all my fault because I started the engine. If I had never started the engine, I would not have had any of these problems.

"Heads you lose" when dealing with Hughes Engines, his "Heads you win" slogan is a joke. Poor quality, poor attitude, insulting and nasty toward cash paying customers and non-existant customer service. Once they get your money, you are done.

$5,862.13 for 3,100 miles? And they destroyed my numbers matching engine to the tune of costing another $5,500 to get it fixed and I had to go .060 over with new pistons to save the block. The heads were destroyed because he over ported them among other issues. He machined away the choke area above the valves completely and this is very important to scavenging the air into and out of cylinders.

I would really hate to see them rip off any of you guys so stay away. And before he tries to discredit me, let it be known that I am a senior design engineer at Holley Performance. He talked to me like I was an idiot and would not even reply to emails. When I called him, he talked to me like I was the dumbest SOB on the planet for 10 seconds and then hung up on me!

DO NOT SPEND MONEY WITH THESE CLOWNS, you will regret it believe me.

wow not good ! ! i bought there hughes airgap, its a nice product nice boost form stock , but its way over priced crappy fuel lines and gaskets . i would buy again though . i hear alot of whore storys from there products . i hear mancini racing sells alot of good mopatr performance

Mancini Racing is an excellent choice. I have purchased from them several times. Summit racing is hard to beat.

Dealing with hughes
 

I've been dealing with hughes for 3 years now. I've never had any problems with their product or their customer service. I bought an msd coil and adapter harness for my 98 Ram. turned out the harness was bad, Talked to dave ,told me to throw it out he was sending me another one. A couple days later, I had my harness and a Tshirt. Sorry you had problems. But i'm stickin with hughes.

Well, an aftermarket harness made by someone else is quite different and a $5k + engine build. He gets credit from MSD to replace the cheap harness. You can not replace a numbers matching block from an authentic musclecar!!! Truly unacceptable!!

I understand that. My point was the customer service.I mean he could've told me to go pound salt I have to buy another,but he didn't. I like Hughes and will deal with the again, but if I had a numbers matching engine, I sure as hell wouldn't truck it up to Illinois without going to check the shop out first. Especially if there was a reputable shop alot closer. Chalk it up to an expensive lesson learned.

I also had problems with Hughes Engines. I cracked the head on my 98 Ram and ordered a new set from them and sent them off to my Brother-in-law to put them on for me as I don't have a heated garage and it was February. Luckily for me he's good at what he does and noticed that 1 (ONE) of the valves in one of the heads was the wrong size. I'm not even sure how that's possible to do while assembling something. Of course it was 5:30 on Friday when I found out and Hughes was closed until Monday, so several days of tying up his shop and him missing out on a couple other jobs. They didn't want to spend the money to ship out a new head, but were willing to ship a valve and knock a couple bucks ($5 I think) off the cost.

I think I'll shop around a lot before I give them another chance.

Update. I have installed the rebuilt engine and it runs like a rocket ship. The tires chirp when the trans shifts to second under hard acceleration. That never happened one single time with the Hughes Engines built engine. I saw the Stanton built engine dyno in person and it makes 500 hp, less than the 525 that Hughes claimed. The engine went from running like a wounded pup to a scalded dog and that confirms my original belief that this engine never made the HP claimed by Hughes. It made much, much less than 500, closer to 375 HP, which are stock output numbers. So Hughes pretty much lied about the HP claims, no surprise there. As mentioned, Dave Hughes told me that Gary Stanton is a good friend of his and his good friend said that Dave flat out lies about his HP claims.

The Hughes built engine would not even break the tires loose without brake torqueing or turning the steering wheel. It now smokes the tires at half throttle and the top end feels like the car is going to fly off of the road. I kicked it down at 40 mph and the tires broke loose. Big, big difference. The car is now scary fast.

I have a few whore stories myself...wait...what?

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I would take them to court. Thats not right!!!