It's been 2 years since my build "Take 2" and I'm moving on to "Take 3".

When I did "Take 2", I did 99% of the build myself, in my garage. There were a few things I didn't want to take on myself.
1) clearancing of my entire rotating assembly for the new heads (oversized valves)
2) porting/machining/oversized valves of my existing heads.

I know John Bray has built several engines, so I gave him a call. I ordered the EvoMS "stage 2" heads, "stage 2" cams and sent my rods/pistons/heads/cams off to him as he said he said he had a mock up engine to properly clearance everything. My heads and cams had about 9000 Miles on them. They were essentially brand new.

It was 6 or 7 months later that I finally received all of my parts back. (not my parts, replacement parts that were existing cores). Now, I spend a lot of money, we all do if you want to modify a Porsche, but I know what the value of what every part/service is. When it came to the heads and cams, the cost was astronomical. I mean 5 times the cost of what it should be. This was just one of those things that we are told to believe "there is only 1 or 2 guys in the world capable of doing it right", so I bit the bullet and paid the outrageous cost.

After I completed this build, the car would ALWAYS smoke on start up and under heavy load. I've been around cars a long time and knew this was improper valve seal install. I talked to John and he said he would pay to have the heads re-done and new head gaskets. The car was just apart for 7-8 months, and the last thing I wanted to do was pull the car apart to send the heads off again. Summer was here and I could live with a bit of smoke. I drove the car for the past 2 summers like this (a few thousand miles) but decided to take it apart again to change a few things. It was embarrassing to go to car shows and start the car with a cloud of smoke. I decided to increase the displacement to get some more low end torque and quicker spool. This is where some incredible discoveries were made.

Upon disassembly, this was discovered.





The pistons were NOT clearanced properly. In fact, The valves were hitting the tops of every piston. The center-center of valves vs reliefs. Heads are 44.8mm, pistons are about 51.6mm center-center. This is not a great start. I now need to check all the valves to see if they are bent.

Next up, was looking at my "stage 2" cams.




The cam rings tension is completely gone. Should these not have been replaced on a $3000 set of cams? Also the exhaust lifters were hitting the thrust faces. This is a flaw in the cam design.

Finally, let's look at my heads. I can get a brand new set of billet aluminum heads with valve train for a North American car for $2000? These "stage 2" heads were modified stock heads (they require your heads as a core) for $8000? I guess you are paying for the "only guy capable of building Porsche heads"? Buying these heads gave me a lot of pain, and that's if they were flawless, as you would expect them to be for that cost.




Every stem seal is off. They're all up against the spring hats.

Valve stem. Showing guides are not concentric to seats causing side loading.

A bunch of exhaust have this score mark. Probably from installing them and scoring it with the spring compressor. We had to file down the marks on the stems to get them out of the heads.



Should be 0 gap on the keeper. These are pinching all the valves so they don't rotate properly for a good seal.



The heads are an absolute mess. I don't know what else could be wrong with them, other than water leaking into the cylinders. Was this the top quality products I paid for?

I've tried to reach John Bray over the past 3-4 months. I was going to discuss my smoking issue and that I was finally going to deal with it. I was also going to talk about doing a larger displacement engine. After several voice mails, texts and Facebook messages, I have not had a single response from him. He has disappeared. I've moved forward with doing the engine without John and have made all these discoveries in the process. This is the magic curtain in the Porsche community. The parts that are over priced, but are considered the only option. Here everyone gets to see behind the curtain.

 

Wow...Sorry to see how you apparently got screwed by this guy. I could have done better work than this with a hand grinder and a blindfold. Hopefully this nugget will make good on this overpriced crappy work...But doesn't look good.

Really feel bad for you buddy....and what an A-hole to take all that money and do crappy work like that.

Good luck getting it all back running right.

DC

 

Sorry to hear about your problem. I have personally dealt with John Bray for years and have had only amazing experiences. John has built the engines for the highest powered Porsche’s in the world (including my old 997 which still holds majority of the Porsche records). John is an amazing engine builder in my book and many others. I’m sure there is 2 sides to this as there are for every story. I have messaged John Bray to inform him about this so hopefully he has a response to this shortly.

Why did you drive the car like this (Smoking) for 2 years?

 

These photos sure do portray a mess of an engine. Not sure what John’s story is but if he is ignoring you it is likely for a good reason. These motors are never right the first time. And sometimes take a tweak or two to get them Dialed. Why did you drive a smoking engine for TWO YEARS? Who tuned it?
John has been nothing but a straight up builder for me and many others. Good luck figuring out your issues

 

Sorry to hear about your problems and there is really no excuse for a smoking problem but there’s a couple things that should be pointed out. The tension rings you claim have no tension aren’t designed to be a total seal nor should they be tight in their housing - in fact, if it was a tight fit it would create other problems. Their function is to keep oil in the correct area of the cam for the variable timing and a total seal isn’t designed or needed.

Second, if the pistons were really contacting the valves that hard they would be bent and you would have dead cylinders. That’s likely the clearance pocket so they don’t hit.

I’m not sure what you mean about the thrust face hitting the lifter so maybe a photo would help explain that.

A smoking engine is not acceptable but dealing with it two years afterward is two years too late unless you had an agreement to take care of it at a later date with the builder.

 

But maybe the valves are bent - I’m curious to hear what else you find.

 

sucks to see this man. regardless of what people say piston to valve clearance is something that should have been measured and is a 100% mistake on his parts.

i wasnt gonna post about this because my issue ultimately got resolved but i actually had an issue with John this summer. i pushed a headgasket on my motor and while it was apart i decided to switch to a GT3 cup crank which I already had sitting here. instead of having custom rods made i figured i would just buy a set from him since he already had them. anyway I got a set of "1800HP GT3 Crank Rods" ordered up. Carrillo offers 3 expedited services 200$ for 4 week, 400$ for 3 week, 600$ for 2 week. i paid 600$ for a 2 week service - naturally

Long story short 5 weeks go by and I get my rods, they appear to have similar webbing to to regular off the shelf Porsche Carrillo rods. SO I compared them to a set of off the shelf 996TT carrillos and besides them being a few mm wider for the GT3 crank bearing journals. I got suspicious and concerned so I emailed Carrillo and asked "hey what does Carrillo rate these at" they came back and said 1200HP, I said my car makes 1500WHP would you use these rods. Carrillo said NO way.

So I wanted to drama free return my rods and forget about it. I overnighted them back, didn't see any money for 4 weeks so I just called my credit card company supplied them with a return tracking and charged my 2.5k back with them.

Not nearly as bad as your motor but still a colossal waste of my time.

 

I try to share information for others to make decisions based on my experiences and get responses like "I'd like to know his side of the story" and "if the pistons were really contacting the valves that hard they would be bent and you would have dead cylinders".

Maybe zoom the pictures up if you're having trouble seeing where the issues are. Anyone who's has disassembled a Porsche engine down to splitting the case and re-assembled it to a running engine will not ask why it took 2 years take apart again. It's a lot of work, and for something that isn't affecting performance, you just let it go for now. As stated above, I did 99% of this build myself, in my garage with no previous Porsche experience. Upon disassembly, these are the flaws..... from the "experts" I paid and trusted.

The parts I received were all flawed. The heads, cams AND pistons. I don't subscribe to the "well, it's never right the first time" mentality. If I did, I would have just done the heads myself and had the pistons clearanced at a local shop to my specs..... for a LOT less money!

 

So did you get a response? I am amazed that this thread hasn't elicited more comments.

 

Sorry to hear of all your troubles. It's always disheartening to throw so much time, sweat, and money into a project and end up with issues due to other parties involved. Hope you get it all sorted out soon. Definitely keeping an eye on this thread.

 

Sorry to hear what you’ve gone through VR6 and I’m sure your frustrations also pile up with all the different set ups and changes. That’s a long time and not knowing all of the details I can just say I have worked with John for years and none of his work since the beginning when there were only a few people in the game. Over the years I’ve learned to give him a build from A-Z so there’s no he said she said or other issues. Was there a third party involved. It just doesn’t sound like him as others have mentioned. Engine builds can get complicated and it’s just compounded when there’s more people and time involved. For example there are many many specialists out there who say they have engine packages but they are done by John or they get assistance by him. Myself included! Over the years I’ve worked with many builders some of the best and I’ve seen a lot of random things happen for a lot of random reasons. Hopefully plays out better once he catches wind of this thread and we can see his side I just wanted to chime in and also mention I know John has been on vacation for the holidays otherwise he would’ve responded right away. Whatever’s going on I have faith in his skills and ethics as a person that whether he knew exactly of it all or not or whatever the case maybe he’ll try to make it right by you.

Best of luck and let me know if I can be of any help in anyway as many people around here have done the same for me. Cheers

 

What is that mess on the intake port?!?

 

I have been coming back to this thread to try and make sense of it. I have been searching for pictures to compare to yours and spent some time looking before posting this. Several have indicated your engine builder is reputable and one of the best out there, however your pictures show a different story.

While I have not had a 997 TT engine apart I have had other engines apart and rebuilt a few (I would always use a machine shop for the head and block work though). The last one was my old Audi, and while the valve train is much more simplified, I searched high and low for examples of valve seal location and they all appear to be positioned toward the head and not the spring retention cap at the top. This was in all probability the source of your smoke. As far as the rings binding, I can't remember what mine looked like the last time I had the head off a car. The scoring on the side of the valve looks worrisome.

The piston reliefs look like they were purposely cut (although they do not look like a lot of time and attention was given to those cuts), but like previous posts, if you were contacting the pistons, I would have expected blown compression on any cylinder where that occurred. There should be evidence of contact on the valve, I am not sure the markings in the picture are valve strikes rather than just a less than clean cut for relief. But I could be wrong.

The camshaft sealing rings I cannot speak to, although that one close up, if not normal for a 997 cam, looks strange where there is material cut (from the engine builder or is that they way they are from the factory?). I tried to search for pix of camshafts, but none were close enough to help ID this.

The head makes no sense. As BRN posted, what the hell is on the intake port? Is that material that has been chopped away somehow? I can't imagine the effect on the air flow.

On the bright side, based on other posters, when your builder returns from vacation, unless there is more to the story, I am sure he will handle your issues professionally.

One last note: I am not criticizing your decision to wait and I understand your reasoning, but if that had been my engine and I spent all that money on it and it smoked right after the rebuild I would have been dealing with it right then and there, but that's me.

Ed

 

Brother I feel for you. If I remember right the original Evoms kit you put on the car had major issues as well. Looks like you keep trying to do things right but the “best in the business” aren’t what they claim....I had a very similar situation in the LS1 world about 8 years ago so while not the same money, it was the same junk parts and workmanship.

I hope Bray makes it right but I am cynical about the auto performance industry.....

 

lol okay,