I kinda doubt he'll ever see this post so I'll throw up how the private messages went:
from lourenco on Focaljet:
"Hi Eric,
I am planning on buying a short block from Tom. I would like to know how is the short block working out? I know you had shipping problems with recieving the block, but I just want to see if he built it okay.
Thanks,
william."
My reply:
"To be perfectly honest, I could not in good faith recommend buying anything from Tom after all the troubles I had. It took me over 8 1/2 months to get a working shortblock from him. The first was destroyed by UPS (after an extremely delayed shipment on his part) and the second had a pin hole in the cylinder wall that we didn't discover until we had rebuilt the entire motor. I asked him to build me a new shortblock and ship it to me so we could do the swap in one day (this was already 7 months after I had overnighted him a check so I could get my parts quicker. He refused and said that he needed the parts out of the one I had before he could build me another. So we had to pull the entire motor out again, tear it down, ship it back out to him, and wait for it to come back. Needless to say I wasn't very happy about it. He also said that he would pay for the shipping/fluids/gaskets/etc. ($160) that I had to rebuy due to the first block being bad- I still have not seen that money to this day. He was supposed to send a check with the MIC that was also late, but it wasn't with that shipment. Every time I asked about it he avoided the question. I was supposed to send him my block and crank but I will not do so being that he still owes me that money.
I also spent over a month trying at least 12 different programs from his MIC setup (with a scantool hooked up to the car) and could NOT get that to work either. When I said that we'd tried about all we could and asked for a refund so I could seek other solutions, he just said "I don't do refunds". So now I have a $815 paperweight in my garage.
There's wayyy more to the story but I just can't write it all out in type.
As far as how the block itself is- the first one had a hole in the cylider wall, blew coolant into cylinder #1, had to be pulled, torn down, shipped back to NC, and replaced. The second one (8 months after the order was placed) is in the car and is running fine. I drove the car to Detriot and had Lidio at Alternative Auto Performance tune the car (w/ 42lb injectors, chip, and stock MAF) on the street. I would highly recommend him to anyone thinking of having a car tuned. It put down 187whp and 214wtq on his dyno at 8.5psi out of the Aerocharger.
If I had to do it all over again, I would obviously NOT buy it from Tom- I would order the components individually and build it myself with the help of local machine shops and race engine builders. It would have been cheaper and a lot less hastle. You can also check out Marcy Motorsports as I've heard they will do a package for you as well.
If you have any other ?'s, let me know and I'll be happy to help."
He just sent me back a PM:
"Thanks for the information. I don't really want to wait a long time since Tom might make a mistake. I will do what your recommending. I was kind of thinking of the same thing since of everything I read on focaljet about your engine and the other engine Tom made. I think Marcy Motorsports or a local shop here in florida will do a better job. I have never heard anything bad about marcy."
HeHe!