Several other boards have them I find them useful

 

I dunno. Most of the car/truck sections have taken care of that among themselves. Bad vendors on Ebay are normally bad-mouthed in the OT Section......

Dusty

 

just thought one stop checking might help ...
I just encountered a bad ebay seller ...carpartswholesale

 

Jeff, that would be a good posting for your vehicle's section.With the millions of vendors on Ebay, it would be next to impossible to keep track of all the good and bad vendors. I've been on Ebay for almost 5 years and it's like walking in a minefield................

Dusty

 

Yes this ones a real winner they had a K&N intake($178 retail)for buy it now $16 + $34 shipping ... great price so I hit buy it now and pay ...
the check out will not add the shipping ( I believe this is intentional so you have to email them), so I pay the $16 and email them for the true paypal addy , several days goes by and I get an email to call an 800# for the "ebay department" call the # they say the ad was an error and unless I pay $145 they will cancel the auction ...I argued that it's a binding contract and they must sell it to me for the price, I also showed they had 12 other auctions for the same price for other intakes ... They lament and send the part , on day of deleviry they stop delivery ... Ebay refuses to help as I have no email showing they refuse to sell the part , or an email from them asking for additional money (thats why they use the 800#) since mine they have pulled the same thing on 80 others I've emailed 16 or so and no one has gotten the part ...

 

Beware:






01-09-2007, 07:40 PM [/align]


Chuck
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[/align]Registered User[/align]



Join Date: May 2005[/align]Location: St. Petersburg, Florida[/align]Vehicle: 99 Dakota R/T CC[/align]Posts: 401 [/align]iTrader Rating: (4[/size]5)[/align]Reputation: 10 [/align][/align][/align]


Yeah, back to the topic.

Many of you know I had a KRC 408 up for sale a few months back. Lots of interest but no one could afford the big tab for the complete motor. I ended up parting it out and I'm glad thats how it went. If I'd sold the complete package I might have ended up in trouble here.

Here's the lowdown:

I bought my KRC motor new in the crate from another forum member who hit some very tough times. I'm not going to discuss the guy's personal life, but those of you who know him know the things that happened to him. I felt that I got a decent price based on what KRC hits you for on their web site. The motor showed up looking very nice, and the seller included a lot of things that KRC didn't.

I didn't know my way around the Dakota as well as I do now. I had prior experience with the SBC Chevy and the BMW 3.2 liter inline six. This was my first Dodge project. I spent the next couple of months assembling it in my spare time, with lots of calls to KRC for advice and to order parts, and many posts across all the forums to gain info.

There were a couple forum members that had just gotten new crate motors from KRC. All sorts of wild stories were floated. One of them posted up that the motor had been delayed prior to shipment and it was because Marty wanted to "tune it in". He had it set up at his place on the engine dyno and was, IIRC, at 485hp, and he was "going for 500hp".

Due to my inexperience with these motors back then I didn't realize there really is no way to "dyno tune" the thing unless you're using a standalone computer or a carb. The factory PCM absolutely CANNOT be tuned on a dyno unless you have the software to do so, and until Mopar has a change of heart only two guys in the entire nation outside of DaimlerChrysler have that software.

Anyway, I got caught up in the KRC hype. Some things that happened in my personal dealings with Marty:

- I called to ask what pushrod length I would need. Marty calculated it in his head and told me 6.850. I ordered the "Smith Brothers NASCAR heat treated rods", only to receive regular Comp hardened pushrods.

- Marty told me the cam I got with the motor, a 224/236 with a 502/520 lift, was all wrong for the PCM. I could use it but then I'd have to get the custom flash so it would run right. I asked him what cam I should get, and he told me that based on everything I was putting in the motor, plus his Hooker long tube headers, I should go with the 218/224 108LSA cam, and that would have me around 465hp.

- Of course, later on Marty told me that for best results, I should get his custom "KamKal" . So after I spent over $300 for a cam to save the $500 on the flash, I end up paying for the flash anyway.

- I also said I'd picked up a set of FMS 30# injectors and he told me not to use them, that they would be too much for the motor. He said the 19 would be fine, 24 if I wanted to use the custom flash. I mentioned that stock LS1 injectors are 30lb, and most of the guys upgrade to 36 fairly soon. That is on a motor with just under 350 cid, and he was telling me to use a 50 percent smaller injector on a motor with 50 cubes more?? I persisted, and he then said the custom PCM flash would be made to work with them. So I sent him my brand new Mopar 107 PCM (bought here from another forum member) and told him to give me a good tune. I called to talk to him not too long after that and was told he couldn't come to the phone because he was "writing the program" for my PCM. When I got my PCM back from him, the new one that I sent out looked like it had been sitting under someone's hood for a year, and I have doubts that I got the same one back. I didn't log the S/N off the case, so its my loss. I then find out that it was actually tuned by Dave at B&G (due to the big "B&G" sticker on the front of it.... duh), one of the two guys in the country who can mod the Chrysler Magnum PCM. And guess what? There isn't a custom fuel map available for 30# injectors. Dave doesn't even have one. You have to go with FAST or DFI for bigger injectors. Ultimately, none of this mattered because I later found that the PCM was burned out. It was, as I said, brand new when it left here but came back looking weathered and it was fried.

- while we're on the injector saga... my truck was at KRC and I got a call from Marty telling me that if I keep trying to run it with the 30lb injectors, I'd end up fuel-washing the cylinders. (This is after he took nearly $500 from me for the custom flash that I was led to believe he wrote, a flash which was supposed to make the 30lb injectors work. Of course, I wouldn't have had to pay for that flash if the cam he recommended would have worked with the factory software.) He talked me into trading a spare set of his 24lb injectors for my like-new FMS 30lb red tops.

- I needed to know the correct procedure to set the valves because I'd never worked with roller rockers before. I posted up on another forum and had three guys get in a heated discussion over what the proper setup was. One of them was a KRC mechanic. I figured - he works for KRC, he must know what he's doing. I used his method and it didn't work.

- I bought Cometics MLS gaskets from KRC, and installed them myself. There is nothing in the Cometics package that says "use copper sealer". Marty never said anything about that either. But when I sent my non-working truck to him to get it going (didn't know the PCM was bad) he told me they got it started and it began leaking immediately, and all the fluids mixed. He asked me if I put copper sealant on and I told him no. He said "Well we fixed it, retorqued the heads, changed all the fluids, and then let it cook off for about 30 minutes. Its good to go." Months later I noticed the truck was using water, and found out it was leaking at the back of the driver's cylinder head. I mean, pouring like a river. I pulled the heads and found out that the gaskets were never sealed like he led me to believe. (Of course, now that I think about it, why would he ask me if I sealed the head gaskets if he actually took the heads off and sealed them himself? It should have been painfully obvious. Just like when I pulled the heads off on this occasion.) I coated the gaskets myself and torqued the heads back down and had no more problems.

- By the time the truck was finished at KRC, one of his mechanics (the one who posted the wrong method of adjusting the rockers) told me the truck was running strong, probably about 400hp. I asked if he meant rwhp, he told me he meant at the crank. This was the same setup that Marty insisted would make 465hp... at the tires.

The motor made lots of rumpety-rump sound, and it really sounded good when it was wide open. It was fast, but not as fast as I was led to believe. It was slower than my stock motor was with the Kenne Bell S/C, using the same GTech that I always use.


After the KRC motor failed to deliver on their claims, I remedied that by ordering a new motor from Southeast Performance in January. A few months later, I think it was May, I put the KRC engine up for sale. Lots of bites, no takers. Many people offered to buy it in pieces, which is what I ultimately had to do.

I went to go pick up the new motor from Southeast Performance in July and on the way home my truck started to run hot and lose power. I had enough motor left to get back to my garage, unload, and limp into a parking spot. I yanked the motor out and when I pulled the heads off I found nearly half an inch of glassy black slag in each cylinder. I bet the compression was over 12:1 with the reduction in chamber volume.

At this point I had no idea what was going on with this thing. Was there a damaged ring? A bad valve seal or ten or twelve? A cracked block? I knew I couldn't sell it as a complete motor, so I started accepting offers to part it out.

The intake went to one of our forum members in another state, and the Fastman throttle body I had bought for the stock motor went to a local member. I sold the heads to a guy in Holland and a local R/T friend who was about to send KRC a payment for a stroker kit bought the bottom end from me. I threw the block in for free because I didn't know what was wrong with the "awesome" 408 stroker that KRC built.

My friend took the block over to his shop and had his builder go over it. It turned out that the bores were misaligned, the hone was done incorrectly, and the ring gap was not done properly. The "new" forged Eagle crank turned out to be a used Mopar that had already been cut .010.



So now you can add me to the list of people who have had a problem with KRC. The more I learn about how they do business the less I like them. They don't know how to port heads, they don't know how to select or prepare blocks, and they don't know how to spec cams or combine parts.

I now have a truck with a much hotter cam that runs a lot smoother than the rumpy thing I had from KRC.

I have to put in the disclaimer that I've met John Mercedes, did business with him, and I now consider him a friend. I've spent over $14k with him and he's yet to show anything even remotely like dishonesty. He will lose money taking care of someone rather than risking ill will and a dent in his reputation. People are going to accuse me of reigniting what I have discovered is an old battle between him and a few other vendors out there. Instead, I'd prefer if I was accused of trying to get people to spend their money wisely.[/align]