So i am shopping for a place to have my engine built at, but i am not sure where i should take it. I hear alot of the same pitch from each one of these places, so i want to see who has delt with them in the past and what their experiences and builds turned out as..

So which company do you guys think will give me the best build? Here are my engines and what i want to do with them:

78 Old School 4 port 13b- Streetported-as big as i can go.( has lower compression-70's)

78 Old School 4 Port 13b Full Bridgeport.(have not had it checked out, but i think its a solid core)

88 S4 Turbo 13b, stock upgraded to S5 internals and mild streetport.( has low compression in rear rotor, worst case blown/chipped apex)

91 S5 Monster Jport 13b (have the ported irons and housings already, just needs built).....


Who do you think is best suited for these builds? Mix and match, stay with one?? I NEED opinions and storys from customers of these companys!!

Thanks guys!!!

 

I am a bit bias, so please take that in to consideration.
Atkins has been moving more in to Marine/Aerospace/commercial engines. There porting sucks IMO (all 3 atkins "street ported" engines I have torn apart were crap.) Some people have had very bad luck on here with their engines. I have used there seals in a few engines and had no issues. So its a toss up on them in my book.
Banzai is awesome. If you dont mind the shipping, he wont lead you wrong. If he does, you can have the community noose and hang him! :p
However...
Pineapple would be my choice for a number of reasons.
Mainly they are local, the engines you want built are their specialty (esp the old school), they warranty them, and I have never seen a Pineapple porting job in the last 3 years that I have not approved of. I have watched a dozen engines be built by Pineapple, in person. The quality and time they put in to each engine is nothing like those "DIY rebuild your own engine" videos online. They have had their problems, just like any other shop. I have seen several of their engine be blown up, but it was not Pineapples fault, rather the shop that was installing them who were having issues with their techs.


But remember, it is not going to matter what engine builder you choose if you are not willing to invest the cash. I see no oil mods listed on your wanted list, no supporting mods, or what they will be powered with (carb/turbo ect).

 

I am going HD water seals, Top apex seals, oil upgrades,ect... Not thorwing away a couple grand, i am more willing to throw a grand more to not throw it away! Just to throw that out there... lol..

Thank you for the advice!

 

Try calling Pineapple. I don't know if they still have it, but they had an FC engine that they were trying to sell, already built. I think it was a street ported S5 engine with some other stuff done to it, but I don't remember and I don't know FC's all that much. I haven't had any experience with engines from them, but everyone I've talked to there seems very nice, straight forward and seems to know their stuff.

 

Buy mine...sucka

 

I went with banzai after visiting them and getting to know Chris and Elaine and seeing the work they did on other cars that were in their shop. a note to keep on them though is that they're usually booked at least a month in advance. see the url below for my album on the progress as banzai rebuilds my engine and acquires the new parts. as they rebuild they set up a webpage with pictures to walk you through the entire process from teardown to build-up of your own engine. they also send you constant emails with photographic updates of new parts that arrive and if they find anything broken.

https://www.rx7club.com/members/thatpoorguy-131086-albums-resurrection-2105/

 

here is my personal webpage on banzai's site devoted to my rebuild

http://www.banzai-racing.com/2009_cu..._breakdown.htm

you may also really like this first gen they did a rebuild and blower kit on.

http://www.banzai-racing.com/sa_project.htm

 

My personal experiance with pineapple has not been the best. My friend had 2 enignes built for his FD and both blew in less than 3 months. When one was torn down when I inspected it the cause was no bevel on the closing closeing edge of the exhasut "street port" that was done. the apex seal was crashing into the port and you could clearly see it on the apex seals. Not to mention the port trailing edge wasn't ported straight it ran down hill. The right side of the port closed about 6mm later than the left, it was that bad. check out www.nopistons.com and you'll get a lot of people that ahve had very bad experiances with them. There are also many people that have had bad experiances with atkins. I can name 3 off the top of my head that had engine failures due solely to the build quality. If you want it done right you're going to have to do it your self or pay the big bucks. My recomendations are CLR motorsports, Judge Ito (whereever the hell he's working now), or Mazda. I have heard nothing but good about banzai, but i have no experiance myself with them, nor have I torn apart one of their engines.
best discussion area ever. read through the FAQ's also.
http://www.nopistons.com/forums/rota...rting-f81.html

 

DIY is always easier than it sounds ^_-

If you buy the Atkins rebuild DVD it walks you through all the basic steps and I think it's only $50.
If nothing else it'll give you a [pretty good] picture of what has to be done for a basic build.

But then.. You want porting done and that's NOT a good idea unless you have someone doing the porting and leaving the rest to you.. Also I don't know if this complicates the side seal or corner seal installations..

 

I'm a good friend of Rob, so I'm partial. I've owned a bunch of different port designs over the years. Everything from a 12a peripheral port motor with a ton of extras, to a "fuel mileage" port for a dd n/a 90 I had....to my current single turbo FD motor, thats putting down somewhere around 500rwhp. (No traction upto 100+mph!) and tons of other motors in between. With that said, I've ran the crap out of all of them, and never had one grenade on me that wasn't my own fault. Like the time a bolt and lock washer came off the air cleaner assembly and was ingested at around 9k rpms in my fuel injected 13B peripheral motor.

 

let me make payments i'm all over it,lol

 

see now that seems like a very reasuring idea! I would love to have progress pics of the engine being built if i cant be there to see it! With my kid taking up all my day and working nights, i would never get to see the build anyother way!

 

i would be sssooooo pissed at my air cleaner!

 

Rob has had some interesting characters work for him over the years which have burned him more then anything... I can think of 4-5 people that I would never want touching my engine that worked in that shop at some point. But now its just Rob, Dan, and Chris. Dan is amazing at engines, I would trust anything he builds.

 

did you know the engine in your car was built by Pineapple when you got it from CJ,i hear all of the horror stories about the bad rebuilds when it's actually the idiot that's tuning it,or they didn't have the money do do a great rebuild so it was done on the cheap.not the builder's fault,i have had several engines for different cars done by Rod and they have all survived my abuse.

 

Yes I knew it was, and I was also told it was a street port and when I got the exhaust off of it I was discusted looking inside the exhaust ports not really ported, but more like attacked by a die grinder for maybe 15 seconds per port. Not to mention that the car was "tuned by rob, so you shouldn't mess with it." It got 10MPG when I drove it home on the freeway from PDX to SEA. A few weeks later it put down only 138whp. Then I tuned it and now I average 16mpg city and freeway and I make 190whp. The only thing streetported about my engine is the cleaned up runners on the 12A Y center iron. I was very disappointed by what was supposed to be a street port, but hardly was.

Oh and the bad rebuild was supposed to be tuned by Rob... Noone but rob did anything to the FD including the RB exhaust.

 

I have had IT engines from both Pineapple and Atkins. (Not used Banzai tho.)

Rob seems like a good guy and I would use him for crazy porting projects no problem. Atkins is great too, but I personally think that they're more comfortable with engines that are closer to stock. (Which is great for my Improved Touring car.) I'm not sure that they want to do custom porting all the time.

But that's just my opinion.

 

thanks for your opinon, thats exactly what i am looking for here

 

Concerning your FB Adrain....What I told you was that the car needed to be tuned, and you told me that you had a ton of webber jets, air bleeds etc, so that you could do that. Don't you remember how badly the car jerked when cruising? The carb was put together by Rob, and he guestimated the jetting. Please don't say stuff that you know isn't true.

 

Well I'm in a similar situation right now. I was going to have a shop in my neck of the woods do it, but that isn't going to happen now. Attkins was #2 on my list with Pinapple being #3. Unfortunatly I haven't seen anything here that gives me great hope..

 

it also had racing beat sway bars and 4.77 gears. wait no it didn't... it was running like **** and i swear you said i needed to take it back to rob to let him retune it because he tuned it and he knew what he was doing. There's no way i would have taken it back to him because he let it out of his shop running like that.

 

go to jeffs automotive on canyon road in puyallup, he has like 250 7s on his lot, it all he does and he does the job right. I have been going to jeff for about 5 years and he has always done right by me, and stands by his work. Kinda rough around the edges, but know what he is doing, he has been racing them for 20 years, mostley 1st gens

(253) 537-8075

 

dang to get ur engine rebuilt by one of these shops its like taking a gamble. i was considering driving up to pineapple racing too but i dunno im sure there are pros and cons with every shop... but the stuff stated above about rob just scares the **** out of me No one likes Throwing there money away.... If i have someone do this i will want the job done RIGHT.....

who has the best warrenty?

In the process of getting a fcs4 rebuilt and ported

 

"My Engine Rebuild

Just to give a quick back ground. Ibought my fd almost 4 years ago, 100% stock running great. last year after a very bad chain of events with a mazda dealer. this past springI had to tow my non-running, leaking every thing fd to Banzai Racing (3hr. 45min.). I was told by two fd owners, they were the best around. Chris and Elaine were great to work with and they give great advise. by early summer and few mods I was pulling 338rwhp, but the best part is what happend last week and is why Iam writing this today. two weeks ago i was down for some tunning and i thought the car was running great, better than ever. after tuning chris was not happy about my idle, he made some adjustments and told me to keep an eye on it and to come back asap so he could look in to it a little more. i returnd the next week with spark plug wire Chris suggested by email Ishould up grade, that might fix the idle that I thought was fine. after 20min. of testing he told me he was going to pull and rebuild my engine. I almost s**t myself, I told him he was crazy and to check again. He told me it had to be done and it was all under warranty. I got the car back and it is better than ever. The point to all of this is, after all the problems I had with mazda and all the problems I hear poeple having with other shops even just getting parts. It really nice to know someone still will do the right thing, take pride in their work and be truthful. Chris and Elaine are the best! you couldnt pay me to go any were else.

Joe : '94 SSM : joe1573"

this especially sold me on banzai

http://www.banzai-racing.com/BR_testimonials.htm

 

Wholy ****. it really doesn't get better than that...