Richie Russ

Well, i wasn't going to post anything as i know that some people will jump on my back over it, but, i couldnt give a monkeys now.

I had SCS build me an engine after doing research on a good company to use, a good spec, 430 bhp engine set up using BRAND NEW parts as my old engine was just scrap material was planned, Harvey promptly plonked my old engine in the bin for me, no doubt he took some bits and pieces from it though...

I paid out £8500.00 for the engine and was told upon collection that it'll last for a good while and perform well, in fact his words were "dont be scared to use it, its a great engine" well, that has not proved to be the case.

After getting the fuelling checked at EA and after gently running the car in for 1000 miles, i then got the oil changed to the recommended grade for the engine. I was waiting for a booking with Ahmed Bajoo to give it the final map, (which i was incidentally not told about at the time and an additional cost of £300.00 was forked out) but as i wanted to do things properly, i didn't mind.

In this time waiting for Ahmed (which was weeks, but again, didnt use the car so much so didnt mind), i tried to start the car, nothing, just turning over, tried all the usual diagnostic things but came back scratching my head as to what it was, so did a quite compression test and number 4 cylinder was 0, not good.

So, i got on the phone to Harvey and he told me to take it there for him to look at, so i took a day off work, paid a fair few quid to get the car towed up there (probably about £100.00 in fuel too) and Harvey found that the camshaft cap had snapped resulting in lack of compression, great, but he fixed it in 3 days ! foc, so off i toddled back up there again taking time off work and another £100.00 in fuel, but it didnt bother me as i had my car back !

So, still waiting for Ahmed, i know the guy gets busy and wasn't really using the car so i continued to wait and wait and wait.....

I was having a clean up under the bonnet on my drive, and was warming the car up when my neighbour approached (ex Brands Mechanic, Cossie expert) and told me that it something sounded like a bearing was going somewhere, he had a look and noticed that the locking nut on the camshaft was 'hanging on for dear life' which would have resulted in cambelt failure, so, i got this done at my cost, admittedly it wasn't much, but that's not the point...

After another oil and filter change to again the recommended grade of oil, i finally got booked in with Ahmed. Spent a day wandering round Romford and sitting in a cafe with some mates waiting for some news, Ahmed called me and asked me to go back quickly, the car was over boosting due to a wire on the air to air injector coming loose, Ahmeds comments were "its a bit of luck you dont drive the car too hard otherwise you may have had problems"

Ahmed set about taking the car out for mapping checking everything with a fine tooth comb, which was for a good few hours as you all will know, he came back and said "thats one of the best Cossies i've worked on, everything is all done" the car had only done 39k from new and had been garaged all its life so its in good condition as expected and sounded as sweet as a nut !!

So, fuelling had been checked, running in miles done properly, oil changed twice, mapped, ready to have some fun, unfortunately this wasn't the case.

After another few thousand miles the engine started to sound rattly, very rattly, so, off the road it comes, again i phone Harvey and tell him of my problems, again i take a day off work, spend another £100.00 on fuel to leave it with him.

The first thing Harvey said to me was that the engine was not under any sort of warranty and that i would have to pay for the repair, i'd only done 4000 miles so was feeling a little disappointed that already i had more problems.

Harvey advised that my car had been detonating, i didn't hear anything when driving the car but trusted his judgement, what i was shocked about was the fact that he charged me £1300.00 to replace the 4 pistons which included £600 in labour which i thought he could have knocked off after spending so much with him.

Then, came the blame, one minute Harvey was blaming EA due to them changing the chip in the ECU, but there were no changes in the values to my ECU by EA, then he laid the blame at the fact that when the locknut was changed on the cam, that the timing had been knocked out by 18 degrees, funny how Ahmed never mentioned this at the time of mapping, so that theory was thrown out the window, onto another possible excuse, my wiring loom got the blame now.

I know that wiring looms on these things aren't the greatest, as they get wet / hot / brittle and can corode easily, but even Ahmed said to me that all my sensors looked and opreated perfectly, but an easy way for Harvey to lay the blame at me, suddenly, when Harvey connected up a pectel monitor to it, it came back with 1 faulty sensor, which wasn't replaced, strange...so i paid the money very begrundgingly but i wanted my car back, so back i went again to get the car, incidentally, i asked Harvey to put some new front brakes on the car and do the front wheels bearings, it was noted in his diary, was it done ? was it heck, so drove home with crappy brakes which i wasn't happy about.

On the way home from picking the car up, my girlfriend notices white smoke coming from the exhaust, so the car was taken back to my house for further inspection to see that my head gasket had gone, i'd only just picked it up, also i had a really bad oil leak from the sump for the second time, wonder what that was blamed on...i got my neighbour to put a new WRC head gasket on and sort the oil leak out, which was again done at my cost.

In fairness, Harvey did offer to come and collect the car and take it back to his workshop to fix it, that was offered free of charge, again, strange..but i declined as i was totally fed up of his shoddy unreliable work. The car then had a pectel monitor put on it, guess what, all sensors were operating perfectly and still are to this very day, but im nearly 11k out of pocket for an engine thats done minimal miles, im glad to say that now the car is all sorted and as sweet as ever.

Bit of an essay i know, but i felt like i should post this detailing my experiences, not just of the poor workmanship i have received, but the truly awful, disgracegul and disgusting customer services of Harvey and his assistant Anne, i felt i was treated more of a pain than a customer and i am still fucking fuming at this, to say that he hasn't heard the last of this is an understatement, my advice for any people wanting new engines is dont touch Harvey Gibbs, to be honest, i think some old fella builds the engines anyway rather than Harvey himself...

So after spending 11k nigh on, im as mad as a hatter

And breathe..................

Anonymous

That last bit does sound fucking shocking

Did he advise you to change the loom and you didnt take that advice though as that would GREATLY change things?

Ryan

sorry to hear this mate, i know you had some problems after your phone call to me

Kev.H

I await Mike R his PA to reply

shit luck

Didnt Dan Monte have problems with SCS a long time ago odd power figures

Richie Russ

Its all been shocking really mate, im gutted, when i collected the car the last time, (he advised me to change the loom then as thats what he was blaming after failing to lay the blame at the other things) hence speaking with Ryan, but when everything was checked, all was perfect, all the connections had been re-soldered so no need for another massive spend up...

I wouldnt mind if he had been decent about it, but he has been really off, which was the worst part.

gwynny

I would never pay 8.5k for an engine, leave alone let em take the old one!!!

Richie Russ

And Damo, and others i know of !!

Phil

iTrader: (1)

Did EA change the chip in the ECU at all then?

From what I have read on here, EA and SCS aren't the closest of friends so you cold expect some blame to be sent either way there.

Anonymous

Richie, sounds really poor service indeed from what you are saying

Im sure Mike will get Harvey's side of the story and post it up though as things may look different from a different perspective of course.

Kev.H

I wouldnt use EA either to be honest

MONSTER

Fook me Richie, sorry to hear of the farce you've had mate

Looks like i'll have to find somewhere else to build me an engine now

Richie Russ

Harvey layed the blame at the door of Paul Hills as it had EA on the chip, Paul notified me that he hadn't changed ANY values in the ECU and is prepared to put that in writing, he just checked the fuelling throughout the rev range for me.

I know that Mike R will have different versions, but i have no reason to lie about this, if it was down to me, i would have simply put my hands up but i've had a really rough deal over this..

Disabled Account

Richie Russ, sorry to hear all this. TBH none of it is a surprise to me.

Ryan

damn i can see this thread going on a while.

Richie Russ

But to check the fuelling i saw no problems at all, closest to me and has been fine with my other cars..

Doug, why do you say that ?

Garage19

8.5k is a huge amount to pay for a rebuild. I expect about 5k of that is labour. So how many hours does it take to build an engine if it is your job????

....and to keep your old engine, bet he made a penny out of braeking and selling the parts!

Anonymous

fuelling wouldnt cause the problems you saw prior to getting it mapped anyway and if it had been detting THAT badly prior to getting it mapped by ahmed he should have known when it was mapping up so differently to other identical spec engines he has mapped and rang the alarm bells then surely?

Disabled Account

Well it's a long storey, goes along the lines of being told that the engine dyno was very important, but NEVER advised that I had to get the car checked over on the road (by Ahmed) until after it had melted a piston the first time it was used in anger.

Richie Russ

He stripped my old engine down and laughed at it, it was a Bluesprint jobbie previously, he said he had to bin it as none of the parts were fit for use, he did however swap the air to air injectors for my old T4, you live and learn !!

Disabled Account

Dont get me going on air injectors..............they NEVER fail safe

Phil

iTrader: (1)

Richie Russ

Even a reground crank is worth £250, the rods around £100 etc. I made plenty from selling parts of my old engine that melted a piston!

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

I would like to stay out of this as far as humanly possible, but must ask a question here:

What was the chip changed for if no data was changed on it? That would be totally pointless, so i am a tad confused by the whole chip change part of the story...

Kev.H

i reckon mikes on the bat phone right now

Richie Russ

Well, you live and learn, i worked my arse off doing 20 hours a day to pay for it, i just wanted a good strong reliable engine and thought SCS was the nuts, it looks like i got kicked in the nuts !

Richie Russ

Paul advised that he put a label in their reading EA so he knew that he had checked it, the car wasn't there long enough for him to do anything else and he was being watched and questioned at the same time

alanfordtw-15

fookin hell lad sounds a nightmare, i hate the stress and problems cars can bring about. sounds like you got a very bad service for the amount of money you spent there. ive got better service in places where i spent a tenner!

Tarren

11K lighter

Bad news mate is it me or is £8500 alot money for a engine

Disabled Account

I know Mike is gonna come out fighting.....so just to add:

I beleive that Harvey/SCS can (and do) build YB engines that can take A LOT of stick. My gripe is with the way it is installed in the car, which I would describe as shody in my car (drive in drive out job).

Also, when quoting the price for the job he should point out that when the car leaves his place you need to spend a few hundred quid more..........

Harvey should be saying (verbally or in writing) that despite the expensive dyno session and impressive results you MUST get the car checked over for fueling by Ahmed, with a warning that it could take months for this to happen as he is allways very busy.

Richie Russ

I thought i was getting an unbreakable engine.

£7300.00 engine + turbo
Vat on that £1277.50 gbps
Mapping : £300.00 gbps
Fuel and sundries : £650.00 gbps
£1300.00, pistons replaced, of which £600 was labour !

thats £10,827.50

dojj

iTrader: (3)

if your account of things is true, thats totaly shocking mate

soudns like there were problems with the engine at the build rather than the engine while it was being mapped and all that, which brings into the equation "who buiklds the engines"?

does harvey build the engines himself or does he farm the work out and put a few quid on top?

as before, i'll wait until the other side of the story has been told as it might shed light on a fwe other matters, but thats a lot of money to be shelling out to have something going wrong time after time

Tarren

Fair enough Fella

I feel for you thats a hole lot of wonga

hopefully you have a happy ending

reality

So the engine was built and mapped on the dyno.. put into the customers car to run in.. then it went to EA's rolling road and run flat out on the rollers to check the fuelling.. did they also det check it too? I appreciate that you were waiting around some time to get the car checked by Ahmed but taking it to a rolling road wasn't really the thing to do!

cahzz

disgusting treatment i dont care, no-one deserves it, im glad that youve posted up mate as i probably would have got him to build my motor in the future.

Richie Russ

I dont see what anyone can say to be fair, what i have said is what happened, but it will be VERY interesting to see if someone else does say something.......

I hate to put these type of things on BB's as i know people get a lot of business from them and can ruin their name to a certain degree, but with what i've gone through, it had to be said.

Anonymous

Well wait for Mike to post before you decide one way or the other!

There have been a few "tuner is a cunt" tales on here that have looked differently when looked at from the other side, so damning as this post seems, wait for answers before deciding that harvey's long standing reputation is now worth fuck all!

Kev.H

Ive just had word Mike was at the gym he is suiting up and will be with us shortly

Richie Russ

Not quite.

Engine built and mapped by Ahmed on the dyno, put into car by neighbour (he had built about 50 so knows his beans) driven to EA for them to run it and check the fuelling, ear muffs were worn so yes checked for det, which there wasnt any of. Harvey tells you AFTER its all done and paid for that Ahmed has to map the car, he didnt say specifically Ahmed had to check the fuelling, i even called Harvey and told him who had checked the fuelling and he was pleased that all was good

jb fletch

iTrader: (1)

Agree with Chip !

I had a Harvey 400+ engine built by him years ago & the thing never missed a heartbeat ! He & Anne were very friendly & chatty & anytime i've rung there since they've always remembered me !

I can't say a bad word about them but sorry to hear what you went through fella ! I've been there with other "tuners" so know what it's like ! But not 11k's worth tho !

Jb

Richie Russ

Chip, there really is 'no other side' to this, the facts are there, if i wanted to be really arsey, i could post all the emails which he has sent me trying to blame one thing after another until he finally stumbles across something that he likes the sound of !!!

UBster

shocking chap, glad it's all running well for you now.

I know what you mean about service though, you pay £8500 for an engine you expect not only a top product but a very very high level of service.