ReflectingG0d

At first, they denied warranty because he said a nut or bolt made it's way into the combustion chamber and broke both intake valves off at the stems. Said he wanted $2500 and a cylinder head to rebuild it.

Since I had everything off the car, I posted my AAM TT Kit up for sale in a FB group. A friend asked what happened to the car and asked why I was selling the kit, so I told him I got sold a POS motor that failed in 3 weeks/700 miles. He asked where I got it, I said IPP, and Kyle swooped in out of nowhere to start the biggest internet fight I've ever been involved in. Childish. I requested that he send the motor back and I'd deal with it here.

The motor arrived about a week after the childish internet fight, upside down on a broken pallet.

After months of no contact I filed a complaint with the BBB. Kyle stated that the intake valves broke, they don't do any work on the intake side due to VVEL and therefore are not liable for anything.

Took the motor to another machine shop that said a valve seat fell out and that was the start of it all. They also pointed out that it is not the intake valves that are broken, it is the exhaust valves, and work had definitely been done on that side.

Kyle sent me an email saying that all the work is done by "the machine shop" so they would be the one to warranty the motor, not him...again deflecting any responsibility.

That first machine shop was very busy and slow to respond, so I took it to another one. At first he said either the valves hit the piston or the valve seat fell out, but it's impossible to know which happened first. After talking with Kyle (who had started recording all of their conversations) they came up with the idea of inspecting the other head that didn't have any damage to determine if anything was done wrong on the destroyed one...that's when Kyle was now 100% sure it was the timing, not a valve seat, not a bolt or nut, and he was informed that it wasn't the intake valves. So, I sent him a picture of the timing being set properly by the installer.

I offered a resolution to meet in the middle and end the dispute, he replaces the short block and I take the hit on the heads (I would never trust heads touched by this guy or "the machine shop" in my car ever again anyway). He ignored it and continued on with more theories about what happened and how they have nothing to do with the cause, despite being the only people to see or touch any of the internals since the car left Japan.

Now he is hung up on a broken timing chain tensioner, and is 100% sure (again) that it was the cause of everything. He pretty much gets really worked up and clings to anything that makes it not his problem.

In any case, there's a long road ahead in getting this one resolved. He's blamed all the misinformation on "relying on his old *** memory and not having his notes in front of him" which makes me wonder how many of their motors suffer catastrophic failures and get sent back to him. How else does one get them mixed up?

At this point I've got to secure some other machinist opinions then lawyer up.