Alpiners! please don't make the same mistake I did.
Read this at your leasure - Ian
Have any of you ever dealt with PAECO? If you have, I hope you had a
better experience than I did. I delivered in person my Harringtons
original engine. Included was 2 cylinder heads. One was the original
head that had been ported and seriously milled. It also had bad corosion
in the combustion chambers. The other was a very nice used head that had
never been milled, a virgin head. After looking over both heads, we
decided that the original head was not useable and that we would use the
virgin head in stead. The work he was selling me was his basic head mods
which include:
1. intake and exhaust ports enlarged and shaped for maxium flow.
2. Combustion chambers contoured and smoothed for efficient combustion.
3. Valve pockets relieved for maximum flow.
4. Valves ground to a precise 3-angle racing type seat.
5. Entire head glasspeened to clean to a like new finish and stress
relieved.
6. Valve springs shimmed to the correct installed height.
7. Head to block surface milled true.
This basic head mod was to cost $450.00 plus the additional parts needed
to do the job. I paid him the deposit of $450.00 and told him I would
save up the rest of the money to finish it off. Which was suppost to be
another $400.00. I was confidant that this work would be carried out
correctly, because this operation has been in business since 1964, he
has a very impressive catalog, and he sounded like he knew what he was
doing. It was expensive, but I felt that if you want to get things done
right, you have to be willing to pay the price. Well...was I ever wrong.
When I call him to find out my balance, He wanted $600.00 not $400.00.
This guy totally played me for a fool. Now, I'm no expert on building an
engine, especially a fine tuned engine like the one I was hoping to
get...but I'm no fool. I know my way around an engine and I worked in
tool shops for about 15 years before going back to college. The head he
sent to me last week is a joke. For starters, I opened the bag and found
that it was still covered with bead blasting media.( I poured about 2
TBS. out of the bag.) I immeaditaly called Carl, who is the owner, and
asked him about this. His reply was "Just blow it off with an air gun."
I could tell that he didn't want to talk to me. I questioned this again
and he treated me like I didn't know what I was talking about. I invited
my friend Jan Servaites over to take a look at the head. Thats when the
fun started. Jan observed that NONE of the special head work that he
claimed to do had even been done. This head had been seriously milled
and ported. (sound familliar?) Thats all. I took the head to Tiger Auto
for yet another inspection when it dawned on me what this guy had done.
He sent wrong head!! This guy did a very poor valve job on the junk
head, no precise 3-angle racing style cuts, the head surface was
scratched and never milled, the new springs were resting against the
bare aluminium head, NO hardened spring cups!! the valve heights were
all over the place too. The only head mods done to this head was a port
and polish and this was done by Hartwell 30 years ago. NOT by him. Of
course this guy has no defense and just says "Send it back" "Send it
back" when confronted, he couldn't say anything and wouldn't even admit
to a mixup. He knew he had been busted. This man basically stole
$1000.00 of my money. I have yet to see any of my old parts or the other
head, which he probably sold thinking that I wouldn't know the
difference. What he doesn't realize is, I rent to two Lawyers, and my
best friends father is a Lawyer in B'ham, Alabama where PAECO is
located. I am also not working right now, so I have nothing better to do
than make his life miserable unless he refunds all of my parts and
money. To make it better, Jan went looking on the internet for other
horror stories about PAECO. To our amazement, there are other people
that he has screwed and one case that sounds almost like mine, word for
word!! PLEASE take my advice. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH PAECO IMPORT PARTS
!!! You could be sorry.
Thanks,
Ian Spencer
P.S. Please contact me if you have had a bad experience with PAECO.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 10:39:54 CDT